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Showing posts with label Frankie Quinn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frankie Quinn. Show all posts
Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

A Cornetto In Prison

I was given a Cornetto today,
I looked at it and wondered.
A passing friend asked
What’s wrong?
I replied, if this was your Cornetto
How would you eat it?
He looked at me and wondered,
Don’t know, he sighed
And walked on.
I looked at it again and wondered.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

A Cornetto In Prison

Frankie Quinn  ✒ In light of the recent Kenova report, there is a crew of individuals and organisations who are keen to label every IRA activist as a tout or compromised in some way. 

As an ex-POW and a republican activist my whole life I can not allow this to continue without comment.

The war against the imperialist occupation of Ireland by British troops and their economic counterparts was justified and the correct thing to do. For many Volunteers of the IRA this was the honourable course to take. As under international law an occupied country has the right to try as best it can to achieve freedom and sovereignty. This includes the use of armed struggle.

The historical context for such action lays deep within the Irish psyche, when presented with discrimination, harassment and outright murder of one’s families, friends and comrades, when the law makers become the law breakers then there is no law. Hundreds of young and not so young men and women took up that challenge to serve their people and the cause of Irish independence. Reluctantly a generation of Irish people decided to become part of the Republican Movement. By far, most of these ordinary people were involved for the right reasons.

Of course, the longer the war went on the more the Movement was infiltrated by agents. The lowest of the low human beings. These few who secreted themselves into the heart of the Irish Republican Army were to become part of its demise. There is no doubt some of these agents were known and even promoted to higher ranks within the IRA. By whom and why?

At a very early stage the British intelligence services had established who they could manipulate at a high level within the IRA. There is no need to go into this to deeply at this stage - there are plenty of books referencing these individuals. 

The narrative that the whole organisation was rotten is not correct. The hundreds of young men and women who give their lives so we might have the 32-county socialist republic were certainly not rats or agents. They were the cream of their communities and deeply embedded within those said communities.

Today we have ex comrades trying to distance themselves from these brave comrades. Why?

These are political opportunists who will exploit any situation to farther their personal careers,

This is evidenced by their attendance at the King of England’s crowning, the passing out parade of those employed to uphold British rule in Ireland to name but a few incidences. They call themselves the Good Friday generation of republicans. Firstly, they are not republicans. Fact, one cannot call oneself a republican and then endorse a king. Never mind an Irish republican.

To quote a revolutionary of the highest regard Bernadette Mc Aliskey “the litmus test for any political party was to boycott genocide Joe Biden in the USA”. This they could not do. Disgraceful and totally wrong. While children ate grass, they ate steak with their imperialist masters. When they couldn’t stand up for the poor Palestinian people under such circumstances, how can anyone involved hold their head up? Or expect them to pursue a 32-county socialist republic?

So they try to delegitimise our fallen friends, families and comrades. The very people who got them there in the first place. The thousands of years spent in prisons all over the world by Irish republicans now has to be criminalised, so they can cosy up to their masters. Well, this will not be permitted to happen while there are genuine republicans alive who will maintain their memories with dignity and pride.

The British manipulated this situation to murder what they call their own citizens. They allowed RUC members, ordinary working-class soldiers and civilians to be murdered by their agents. Their agents under the control of the British security services. The report has pointed to countless murders they could have prevented. They choose not to by protecting agents. They are the culprits in this situation and the law makers again become the law breakers. As for the minority of members of the Republican Movement who became British agents they are to be condemned as what they are - informers and the lowest of the low in betrayals of their fellow republicans.

But the majority of people who joined and helped the Republican Movement during the war were and are the salt of the earth, they give everything for that cause in which they one hundred percent believed. These were ordinary people placed in an extortionary situation not of their making. I would pay homage to these brave people and many families destroyed and broken as a result of the war. We will not stand idlily by and allow people to condemn the courageous volunteers of the Irish Republican Army. We salute them and all those who played any part in the struggle for freedom independence and the 32-county socialist republic. That struggle continues in a different way today and for this past 20 years.

In conclusion, the presence of agents within the ranks of the IRA does not condemn the men and women of the IRA who were prepared to lay down their lives, not for a corrupted and infiltrated leadership but for the people of Ireland. For this we will forever be in your debt and we will never condemn you or your sacrifice and commitment to the cause of Irish freedom, and the establishment of the 32-county socialist republic.

East Tyrone Remembers.

⏩Frankie Quinn is the National Organiser for the 1916 Societies.

Challenging A False Narrative

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Corners
Sharp concrete corners probe the subconscious,
Subjecting the mind to a dull grey,
Everything running in straight lines that stop,
Jut out, and attack any eye that dares to
Seek out curvaceous figures.
♞♜♝
Square bodies in a rectangular box
Pace to the end of space
Then turn to face another point
That pokes out like a finger of accusation.
We are condemned to walk around the outside of life.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Corners

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Prison Walls

I wear these walls like an over-coat
Heavy and grey they hang on me
Forcing me down in darkness
Where only silver buttons shine
Each one given to me by a passing friend.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Prison Walls

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Time

Time cuts him
Like a blade drawn across his throat
Frustration flows swiftly out.
♞♜♝
Relaxes him into settled sleep
Alone and gaunt,
Beside me seeps the richness of his life.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Time

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Drink

Whiskey stole the child.
We watched the demolition of security.
We learned that vodka tears don’t smell.
♞♜♝
They smart on welts like salt and
Burn deceiving eyes.
♞♜♝
Enchanting self-esteem to shipwreck on the
Rocks that swirl inside a Black Russian,
Drowning innocence.
♞♜♝
Adults now, we struggle out of an empty bottle,
Exhausted, trying to find a hearth to rest at.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Drink

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Pensive

Inside a box tied with wire
Our hands touched: crowds
Gasped as time ran out
On lips wet from captive kisses.
♞♜♝
Gordian knots untighten when
Your gentle fingers tug at their ends
Frayed from wear. Your hands
Pulled hard, melted my trust.
♞♜♝
A soft light blinks on a barbed horizon,
Only the sun set deep in our eyes.
Obstacles impair our vision of a future
When hope is our sunlight.
♞♜♝
Regrets are smiles wasted: pain is more
Than love, in a room, of an evening.
Gently put your hand inside the
Box, cut the wire gripping me.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Pensive

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Treadmill

Birds visit in the mornings
Picking up scraps discarded
By prison monks.
♞♜♝
Each in a cave meditating.
Women visit in the evenings
Picking up scraps regurgitated
♞♜♝
By bull dogs enemies’ a creation of
Arrogances dangle on batons
Wielded on the back of a generation
Who didn’t turn and run.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Treadmill

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Mirror

I don’t know you
Why do you stare?
Your eyes, they’re empty.
♞♜♝
Ah yes I know you now
- SMASH -
Fuck it, I can’t bring myself
To look at you.
Don’t dare condemn me
I wasn’t there, when you
Killed me.
♞♜♝
My head, it’s too heavy for
This, I am only a child
Please hold my reflection; it’s escaping.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Mirror

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Reflection

Beneath a heavy patched quilt
Lay the body of a child, lifeless
As I lifted it the soul of morality ran
Dripped over the edge of my fingers
Turned into anger; smashed off a cold floor.
♞♜♝
Inside out it turned, stood up, walked
Into an unforgiving breeze that left a
Face without a smile,
Whose reflection couldn’t hold lips
Away from the sharp edge of shattered glass.
♞♜♝
Crows picked out the eyes of innocence,
Jabbed pointed beaks into blueness turning
Black like the caped, white-necked bastard
It widened into a gaping hole where contorted
Corpse became a person; without Emotion?

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Reflection

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Jackie

Who am I? she asks.
Beauty, so shocking they file past
To stare.
Unaware she smiles never
Once believing that it is her
Their eyes scan.
♞♜♝
Maternal instinct confuses;
Her womanhood on fire now.
I must remain
The cornerstone of a family
At war, she too a soldier.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Jackie

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Yes Sir

On other wounds they thrive
Licking exposed parts with flaming tongue
Condemn those who dare to ask why?
- You must not question.
They alone have the right to pass judgement
On any who fail to conform.
But they believe in what they do.
One Austrian-born aspiring despot believed the same.
♞♜♝
Kiss three times those who cast the first stone
Glasshouses shatter when truths are thrown
Inside this world where loyalty is rewarded
Men become sycophantic saps.
Marching into promised land
Where uniformity reigns supreme
♞♜♝
But change is brought by those who stand alone
Who claim the right to be themselves?
Who claim the right to dream?

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Yes Sir

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Charley Donnelly's Farewell

Feel the olives sour and hard underground where freedom
Wept beneath the feet of Irish rebels betrayed by home grown
Suits with buttons stamped by the crown two heads
One looking forward; the other back for people who stood
For liberation shielded by stone ditches on every other side a gun.
♞♜♝
Crack. He falls, a muttering Slán a Chara between comrades
Of another tongue, cradle a rebel who fled from contra invasion
To fall beneath the orchards of a sun-baked land where dryness insults
His throat he fades away into the evening with eternal night lark’s song
Through the exploding clatter of stripped bark scorched by hate.
♞♜♝
Carry back the bodies of fallen soldiers who stood shoulder to shoulder
With international consciousness, they brought together those prepared
To free nations oppressed by all the isms of conservative thought
Plant them beside the oak and drench them with water to grow saplings
For future generations who will forever bring them to remember us.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Charley Donnelly's Farewell

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Earth

Love me like the earth loves its plants
Nurture shrubs to sturdy tree
Bury in deep your soul-laden seeds of fertile gentleness
♞♜♝
Love me like powerful sea waves on distant beach
Kiss secrets on to lips of flowering red-rose-pink
Revealing pleasure’s awaiting ache.
♞♜♝
Love me like the mountain’s wild-heathered brays
Here you brush your fingers over rosebuds
Soft, moss-covered stones
♞♜♝
Love me like silver salmon thrusting forward against all odds
To pebbled floors where life begins
Beneath wooden hills.
♞♜♝
Love me tenderly as the morning loves the dew
On grass asleep or in twilight’s peace
Securing another day for things to grow. Love me as I do you.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Earth

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Water

I have moved closer to the river’s edge
To listen as the fresh water forms my thought
Clearing misty clouds to open new fronts
Here I can be alone without nosy memories
Confusing, brightening sunlight cheating the dark
♞♜♝
Open, new cavern, free the cluttering objects
From overcrowded corners where those black webs
Catch the bleak gliding bluebottles before they lay
Eggs becoming maggots that eat the beauty within
Explore freedom from the depth of clear water
♞♜♝
Reach into crispness pick the shined stones from
The bottom where smoothness dried forever
A million passing tears and turned a rage to a rivulet
Allowing new begging for flowering willow’s whiteness
To consume the wilted weeds scurrying for recrimination.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Water

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Tears

Tears When she cried, her tears fell in his eyes
 Filled them and returned his reflection
 To her mind where softness joined both
Becoming one drop together on water. 
♞♜♝
She held the moisture in her hands, kissed
 Life came running down her face with marked
 Colourful streams staggering to trembling lips
 She licked salty pearls and passed them to him. 
♞♜♝
He absorbed them, became her shimmering light
 In the same brightness created by dreams
 Quivering inside her head were lonely memories
 Of a lover long gone, he forever marked her soul. 
♞♜♝
She drank the shine from his clearness then
 Filled his heart brimming with kindness and love
 He tried to accept but the waves would not allow him
 He turned beneath them and died with no sight of her.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Tears

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.




Caged

Frooping neck like a flower stem
Placed in glass case where water
Can’t fulfil the dreams of fear
From dark oul’ petals that fall one by one
On a dry surface where nothing lives.
♞♜♝
Bring back the times when sweetness
Was a ship in a bottle on a shelf.
No one could reach the beauty
Inside the corked paradise we lived
It together on a hill where strips are
Stars above us in a place where catchers
Have feathers in their hair and share
The passion of buffalo’s breath
As steam rises from a woolly back
And they snort orders to the wind,
On a morning in wild plains across the
Sea of light, grass surfs towards the
Wavering sky.
♞♜♝
She is dying from his stubbornness
Caged inside a greenhouse
Green flies eat her eyes, green tears stain her
Face.
♞♜♝
In her garden painted stones peep out from behind
Fences where people hide and mock
The birds eat from her hands the words
Of ancient Irish maidens with flowing hair
Skipping across the bridge of water long
Flown between the pillars of truth spent
So carelessly in the hands of those without
The courage of one who saved the land
From marauding bulldogs, their teeth sharpened
By another in a river of silt where no one
Feels the softness of moss under bare foot
On a mountain. She can talk with the angels
As the morning frost lets the sunshine on her face
And bring the sparkle to her reflecting soul.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Caged

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