Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy
Thank Christ I'm not your enemy
There's no struggler loves ya more than me
Oh, Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy

Margaret ground against her knuckles
To hold her temper at her teeth
Funerals are triggers in an Irish family
And daddy was a lion
But he also was a louse
She swallowed twice to
Clear the bile from her mouth

The house, awash with sycophants
Instantly enshrined
The parish priest, the butcher's boy
The football player's wife
All busy painting angel wings
Complicit in the lie
That's the way we Irish do it when we die

Riddles wrapped in rosary
Clover grenades
Fools who suffer mightily
As our high Saint Sinead
We celebrate our loneliness
Our combustible rage
"He made us this way"
Not that Margaret wasn't her own complicated layer cake
Educator/activist -
Republican gone straight
Traded Weather Underground
For some peacetime in the shade
But in her heart of hearts
She is as she was made

When she shaved her head
At Trinity and toured BDSM
Clinical, athletic sex -
Detached, competitive
The discipline appealed to her
The flogging and the rules
But the emptiness roared back when she was through

A missile wrapped in rosary
A clover grenade
Fools were suffered mightily
She shot sharp like Sinead
And bristled at her loneliness
Her combustible rage
"They made me this way"

Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy
Thank Christ I'm not your enemy
There's no struggler lovers ya more than me
Oh, Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy
Margaret learned to make her fate
When Uncle James lisped with a wink
"If you're not tall enough to touch the bar
You're not tall enough to drink!"
She jumped and smacked it with her palm
The day that she turned six;
She's wrestled Jameson's and Guinness ever since
(And tonight she's losing
Tonight she's getting her ass kicked)

My missile wrapped in rosary
My clover grenade
Fools picked apart her sanity
She collapsed like Sinead
Encircled in her loneliness
Her combustible rage
"Who made me this way?"

Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy
Thank Christ I'm not your enemy
There's no struggler loves ya more than me

Oh, Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy
Oh, Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy
Oh, Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy