TOLCHOK 79

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 the Maine Road stadium

and he
ruffled our feathers, may.have
been a fat fuck
but was
really
up for it

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 Arsenal

good
   that he

want to protect
this neighborhood from us
but
   we all in the shadow,
of the SS-20s

and him
desperate to take us down
cart us off
down to the station
in his tiny car

but we
      gave him the look
and a
few choice words

spelling out how that
would not
have been

a good
idea

this on the eve
of the Thatcher election
about
   to kill

that Britain of old, finally,
definitively

once
and for all

got clockworked by a plod
we did
   came so close
to a brutal tolchokking
purely
    in self-defence Your
Honour
(that Peterloo mindset
hard
   to forget)

as you sow
so shall you reap
(maxim valid
for the police and
State
      dystopia displacing
all hope of
dreamscape)

only
   wanted to
play football, national sport,
favourite pastime,
that bottle
    in blue, par
for the course
misreading wholesale,
P.O.V. skewed
completely

thought
    we were going Alex
Delarge

about to turn punk
proletarian evil

in this city
     where Marx and
Engels

saw
    the machinery of
power and profit
in what
they saw.


TOLCHOK 79

TOLCHOK 79

got clockworked by a plod
me and my droogs we did
 
just for
kicking a ball around
next to an old bomb site
around the corner
from
  Maine Road
 
behind which, in the distance,
the brutalist concrete Sauron towers
of Moss Side
speak gloomily, epitomize every
class-driven mistake in social planning
  (and now
we know for a contested fact
how easy these
vulgar monoliths have
the capacity
to burn)
 
 and all of us
United fans
the five of us
living in
a tiny
  terraced house
under the shadow
of the floodlights
just a stone’s throw
 
so we were
playing
celebrating
(me getting my Masters
droogs passing
their exams)
 
but then he arrived, breath of
freezing air,
  stripped that street of all its
June sun warmth
instantly
  shunting us once, twice, off
the street,
  threatening with (absurd as it sounds)
jamming the four of us into
his tiny British Leyland plod vehicle

taking us down
  to the cop shop, Star
Chamber, Guantanamo, Devil’s
Island
  to a place beyond the stars, or down
in the basement cold storage locker
of the Overlook Hotel
 
face
  pudgy, near featureless,

 harbinger of whatever V of Vendetta
police state future
  Thatcher revolution
waiting in the wings (waiting for
the killer pass
out on
  the outside right
position)
  back to the
future, no hope
of world cup revisiting
 
so
  fat blue referee in
car far too
small for him
 
bundling himself out
shoving himself
up in our
  faces
 
one fat dude with
thge power of State over
life and death
  and yet
 
could see from his face
 
one step too far
knew
 
all on his own
  this side of nowhere
tactically clueless
 
no cavalry
to call in
  rush, a la, Big Horn,
a la Peterloo, Starmer Met-style
to his rescue
 
having
pushed his luck
exceeded his mandate,
torn the heart out of our moment,
killed our day
 
no more
intricate dribbling,
magical ball wizardry
                     for us to
attempt
   imagine we
had mastery
 
just the trudge back home
  chance for the
justice
  of a people’s tolchok
 
gone
out of touch
fallen by the wayside
 
risked the red card
crazy courage
found wanting
 
guess like it is
for
everybody here
then
  and now
 
closer by the day
the Britain I was born into
to fate of dystopian state
 
  determined, as of old,
to close down everything, close
down spaces,
no space
  to play, no
place to be free
 
got to
  take to insane conclusion
the logic of enclosure
  no space to write, no
space to be
 
and me
 picked out from the gang of us
on account of my twangy
hybrid Mancunian
Souf Effrikan accent
 
marked for
interrogation, on
the spot cross question
 explaining to him

who I am
  what I am doing here
 
dissertation on satire, learning
my trade at the heart
of his fiefdom
 
bit by
bit

becoming
street smart about
finding a
special acumen,

learning the lethality
of every potential linguistic weapon
getting the
distinct hang of
how to dismantle everything
 
got
clockworked by the plod
once upon a time
me and my droogs
we did

TOLCHOK

TOLCHOK

got clockworked by a plod
me and my droogs we did

next to Maine Road
for playing street football
alongside a football ground
(none of us
even a
City supporter)

and pushed around by
the law severely human right
violated
   and seriously affronted
aforementioned street
being empty
the thought
    did cross our minds of
doing him in
(burying that fat
navy blue body beneath
the Kippax Stand)

and all of us
at Manchester Uni
me for
me Ph D

working on Swift’s excoriating
satire
  most violent stuff
confined
to print

tolchock called down
on mostly everything

got
clockworked
but no orange

that
C-charged
most creative of
colours
Eden-juicy
most sustaining of fruits