by Sheila Mannix

During the Paris Commune, in all corners of the city, 

there were people shooting at the clocks: in 1916 

Irish revolutionaries used them to make a barricade.

The most delightful of all was a barricade of clocks,

writes Joe Good. At last I saw a use for those horrible 

marble clocks, like the ones inside the entrance to a bank. 

In 1963 Frank Zappa composed Concerto for Two Bicycles. 

Another barricade stretched across Upper Abbey Street 

was made with the entire stock of a bicycle warehouse: 

thousands of bicycles, piled eight or ten feet high, 

jammed into each other.