For Sinéad.

She was Ireland itself 

screaming through a woman’s throat,

Her voice the keening of a thousand graves,

They sectioned truth and called it anecdote

While counting coins from children sold as slaves.

That photograph torn—not paper, but the veil

That hid their bloody altars from our sight,

Each rip a victim’s starving wail,

Each fragment burning in fluorescent light.

Her skull shaved bare like hills 

stripped of their trees,

By Empire’s axe and Rome’s unholy hand,

She bore the scars of centuries on her knees

A living map of a colonised wasteland.

They pumped her full of chemicals and lies,

The same poisons that pacified our soil,

Whilst Tuam’s babies rotted beneath night skies

And we genuflected to her nation’s spoils.

MAD? Yes—like any victim telling truth

About the boot that crushes on their neck,

They stole her children, murdered Ireland’s youth,

Then called her crazy when she named the wreck.

She was no songbird

she was a banshee keen,

Prophesying death that already came,

For every workhouse child never seen,

For every mother bearing Empire’s shame.

The Pale crept inward, swallowing her mind

Like conquest swallowed Gaeilge from Irish tongues,

Her madness was the fury of the blind

Made to see their culture torn and hung.

We crucified her on a cross of gold

The same gold stolen from her bleeding ground,

Then wondered why her story turned so cold

Why prophets die when truth cannot be found.

Her death was an Ireland’s suicide,

The slow decline of a people force-fed shame,

Each pill a coffin where a soul resides,

Each overdose another unmarked name.

But dead prophets rise like Phoenix flame.

Now just ashes fertilise the rebel seed

Sinéad, screaming to break all mental chains,

Your truth the weapon that souls need.

The revolution starts with naming rape

Of bodies, minds, and nations torn apart,

Your voice still haunts every colonised landscape,

And still beats for Ireland’s rebel heart.