TOLCHOK 79
Got clockworked by a plod
me and my droogs we did
basically copped us
soon as we tumbled out
to play
ball in the street
just round the corner
from Maine Road (City’s
old stadium)
and he
ruffled our feathers, may have
been a fat fuck
but was
really
up for it
and me already thinking
cat stance and a couple of
short but
sweet wing chung punches
old battlegrounds the streets
of inner
Manchester, Sus laws
to suppress, sabres
of Peterloo Cavalry
my Norman ancestors
harrowing the North maybe
carved up this place
English history total
free-for-all
total
bloodbath of
tribes and factions
me even
wearing red in this
stronghold of
skyblue
and there we were
just out for fun
have a bil of
a kickabout
(nothing too
revolutionary)
thought
being close to
an old bomb site, would
not be
worrying
nobody
the sky sky blue
but three of us reds
and the fourth
of us
for the Arsenal (team
from the capital
don’t
get more
colonial than that)
good
that he
feel the need to
protect and preserve
keep
in reserve
make sure we don’t run
riot
trample this, crumbling
neighbourhood to death
talking
of which
scars of the 40s blitz and
we out
sunning ourselves
drenched in
the Soviet shadow of
SS-20s
we one of the very first
NATO targets they
need
absolutely need
to go
thermonuclear upon
instantaneously take
out
(hold us
geopolitical hostage
here at the
dead centre of
this
creative, divided
fissile
city
from where
they first
split
the atom
just a few blocks)
and him
certain of
his priorities, that he
got them right
agent
of enclosure
desperate to take us down
cart us off
down to the station
in his fit for purpose
entirely tiny car
this
barely days into
the Thatcher landslide victory
about to
change this Britain, this
Manchester
this
space of collectivity
our faces
telling him
to slow things down, relax,
be chill
we
not in the mood
not
a good idea
plenty of time
to be philosophical
think
this over
we on
home turf, what
if he
just “disappear”
history
might feel obliged
to
go our way
angle our version, run
with our tale.
Got tolchokked by the plod
back then, we did.
He survived
to police another day. Chaotic
good versus
lawful evil, grandson of
a war hero,
what a showdown for ages
that might have been.
