Down With The Kids

The past is another country

A crap one, like Belgium

Rife with brown-trousered tedium

Where no one sees disasters coming

Where the phones are big as bricks

Where men sleepwalk down aisles with their future ex-wives

Where the only telly is repeats

But don’t slag it off

Cos I was born on those streets

Where my gawky demeanour and penchant for munching

Made my peers jeer ‘Oi speccy! Oi sumo! Oi bumchin!

I heard that the bruise on your tricep needs punching

Now don’t you go dream of amounting to something!

I told you last Tuesday – or hasn’t it sunk in?’

These lads who led lives of fags, football and spunking

Who sat their exams and got straight As – in flunking

While girls deft as surgeons sat squeezing their blackheads

All strung out on burgeoning hormones like crackheads

They used boys like me for their sarcasm practice

I vied for one girl who seemed gentle and kindly

An angel, she’d surely have never maligned me

She’d never go ‘dickhead’ or ‘wanker’ behind me...

Oh the rolled eyes and wrinkle-nosed dry gagging gesture

She did to her friends when I tried to impress her,

As if she’d been licked by some rough-tongued molester

Like Caliban came from his cave to caress her

Or swarms of black locusts had tried to undress her

‘Get back to your books and Nintendo, professor!’

And so I jawed shut

Like a vault

Or a clam

Like a Transformer morphing back into a van

Fast forward

To now

And my ego’s intact

I’ve seen a girl naked

(seen several, in fact)

I keep my achievements impressively stacked

And when I’m a twat, well – it’s part of my act

And one day, I end up in a scene from my dreams

I’m up on a stage and the crowd’s mostly teens

And so mustering all my newfound self-esteem

I think: Right – time to show these kids just what ‘cool’ means

I thought they’d like me

I thought they’d admire me

I thought they’d be inspired

Aspire to be like me like I was some guy off the telly

I thought they might at least smile politely

Oh in my head, how they’d applaud

They laughed and howled and cheered

But in real life I got ignored

Cos they thought I was weird

The youngsters sat there looking bored

They made me feel a crooked fraud

Till something deep inside me roared:

I will not take this anymore-d

Okay, I’m not ‘down with the kids’

So I say

Down with the kids!

Drown ‘em like a sack of philistine kittens!

The kid gloves are off

It’s on

With the man-mittens

I don’t wanna be cool

I wanna be a curmudgeon

I’ll speak at your school

With its fresh dreams to bludgeon

‘The Oxford English Dictionary defines “teenager” as

Buhhhhh! Uhhhh!

Aged 13 to 17

You young minds who sit before me today

Are rubbish

You download your rubbish opinions like ringtones

Scoop rubbish maize snacks into bum-fluff edged gobs

A putrefied mackerel smell wafts from your pissy bits

You lurch between fury, indifference and sobs

Your clichéd McHeartbreak, your shrill swine-faced hissy fits,

Your feelings are rubbish

Glum zit-witted yobs

And even if one of you does become an astronaut

The infinite vacuum will press its thumb against your tiny visor

And not let go till you’re a joyless atheist

You still think death is other people

Children

Huge, freakish, ungainly children

You need to think about death more

I remember that I’m going to die

At least five times before breakfast

Which I take at 2pm

In my underpants

Playing Super Mario Sunshine on my Gamecube

While you’re stuck in a classroom that smells of pencils

Whatever I like!

Pork pies in gravy

And Poppets

And booze

I can eat what I want!

I can drink when I choose!

Oh I think I’ll consume this huge vat of cheap wine

So I’m rat-arsed in time for the 3 O’Clock News.’

So fuck the kids

Well, don’t fuck the kids

But down with the kids!

Get off my lawn!

You’ve never heard of Teletext?

You don’t even know you’re born!

With your wi-mo i-hood my-isode nanos

And ability to hear through the ears in your knees!

No wait

I’m thinking of crickets

Yes...

Crickets

Their chirruping wing strokes as teens sit in judgement

And gag after quip after joke I make tanks

Grip my mic, but I know where they’d like me to stick it

Their faces as hard as a concrete abutment

Their afternoons measured in texting and wanks

So go on, don’t love me! I don’t need your approval!

I’d sooner fork out for a bollock removal

And if you should come crawling back on your knees

Bearing blog hits and Friend Requests begging me: ‘Please!

Without you the whole world is greyer and colder!

Look! Jenny has Tippexed your name on her folder!’

I’ll shake my head slow in the warm changing breeze

‘No,’ I’ll say, smiling. ‘Not till you’re older.’