Inferno, Kid

Thank you for visiting. All proceeds from the sale of the 'Inferno, Kid' text will go towards Milford Hospice, Limerick. Each book costs €12 and €3 postage to anywhere in the world. If you're interested in supporting this fundraiser, please follow the 'Contact' link below.

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‘Inferno, Kid’ is a coming of age tale on a path strewn with vice and vanquished hope. The story is told through nine chapters written in a hip-hop/rap cadence.

'Inferno, Kid' tells the story of a young man growing up on a tough estate in Limerick. It is set around 2010 when the city was the focal point of national media coverage and state investment. The chapters offer a gritty framework for poverty, crime and social engineering. It is an unvarnished social commentary with a hugely challenging main character.

You can learn more about the project and the development of its animation at www.infernokid.ie

Chapter 1: Gangland

I don’t know who was worse
Destroying my Street
Crime and drugs
Or the state’s conceit
Gangland names
Were enough of a threat
Fixed stares and eyes
You’d be sorry you met
Some were local
Some from over the sea
From sink estates
And hostile esprit
Those that came first
Raised the tit-for-tat
Omertà became law
Death to the rat
People lived in fear
With doors tightly shut
Eyes fixed to the ground
To avoid getting cut
Heroin buried in your garden?
Wasn’t worth telling the Shades
The trouble only began
With three fire brigades
Would the Shades be there
To hold my Mam’s hand
When the windows come crashing in
After taking a stand?
The state will protect you
Just let the Shades know
Will they walk the child to school?
The answer is no
The gang had an army
Every soldier a lost soul
The swagger and the venom
Over pity and the dole
Beyond the flash cars
The money and the bling
Was a ruthlessness unknown
All hail to the king!
Nothing went unpunished
Business or a slight
Soft enemies quickly fell
Knives at a gunfight
James disappeared
Amongst the briar
Behind a broken fence
And rusted barbed wire
It didn’t happen in the mountains
Or out in the wood
It was the heart of the city
Because they could
He knew it was coming
The old train track
The cold eyes about him
The tools in the sack
The railway gates
Were a subtle marker
The edge of control
And now something darker
Like so much else here
There was another era
Free from fear
And the drugs’ chimera
The tracks were a getaway
And a coming of age
My parents’ generation
Finding a stage
So much would happen
To tarnish that shine
The tracks became a dark place
of sinister rhyme
The depths of that evil
Was coming around
James openly wept
As he fell to the ground
He pleaded like a child
For mercy or reprieve
Soiling the earth
He knew he’d never leave
There’s so much hidden
Buried in that soil
Secrets under bodies
A macabre toil
You leave us to rot
Alone with these thugs
Band-aid solutions
And collective shrugs
Down by the train tracks
You’ll hear no funeral knell
See no grave stone or markings
Where James quickly fell
But if you listen real careful
A sound so deprave
The gentle faint thud
Of a man digging his own grave
*
Shooting other criminals
Is all well and fine
But taxpayers and voters
Crosses a red line
A rugby player from Garryowen
The club not the place
One is a bourgeois mecca
The other viewed without grace
Shane was murdered
In a case of wrong ID
They’d mixed up classes
And that was the key
Fear gripped the whole city
Us free from our cage
Taxpayers suddenly worried
Of a living court page
You see it’s fine for my Mam
To live in fear all her life
Worried to death
Drowning in strife
A stream of pills
Reduced her to a wreck
Up all night in terror
You’ve some brass neck
Brass neck to suggest
You ever really cared
About our daily trauma
Till someone dared
To open your eyes
To how we survive
In a world without rules
In one massive dive
A single life is lost
Beyond this wasteland
National outrage
The whole grandstand
Jeffery was murdered
Down in Southill
Lost his life at 19
Someone getting a thrill
Out with the lads
Shane was the same
Wrong place, wrong time
When the Reaper came
Shane’s culprits got the book
Shopped by their own
The headlines abated
The Shades went home
Jeff’s killers are free
Free as a bird
The contrast is frightening
Comic & absurd
*
The Shades are a gang
Just like the rest
Rules and omertàs
Behind a fancy crest
They target small fish
Come down with pure hate
Beat us with vengeance
In the Lee of Estate
Yeah, the ‘Big Fish’ sometimes
Whatever that means
Pomp and ceremony
Staged news scenes
The absolute power
At the very top of the tree
Is far removed from reality
From you and from me
No joyrider ruined the country
No dealer broke the bank
No shoplifter shut Anglo
Caused the economy to tank
The developers, the bankers
The politicians, the ‘hoes
Sold the country for a song
And the emperor’s clothes
They thought they were touched
Embodied the Black Swan
Soaring like Icarus
Above waves of Chandon
What happened to those criminals?
Where were the Shades?
Justice in this country
Is just a horse trade
My door is kicked in
For a small bag of dope
‘White collar crime’?
Just another trope
200,000,000,000 euros
That’s the scale of their crime
The laughs and the jollies
As they partied the whole time
But is it us or the bankers
Who ends up in jail?
Who cares if the posh boys were guilty
Or the clear paper trail?
They sailed into the sunset
With bags full of loot
Retired or went to college
All far from destitute
The fate of the nameless
The roots of our plight
Were never of real interest
To those talking shite
‘Regeneration’ was the answer
The goose and golden egg
Manna from heaven
A panacea bootleg

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