Chaos Pose by Taz 

I wandered lonely as a...

Pissed-up punk on Carnaby Street,

Twelve years old, wild and sweet,

Skin-tight jeans and a pierced nose,

Dennis the Menace jumper —

Sid Vicious chains and chaos pose.

 

Just doing the smoke, though,

Never near the veins,

Lurking in the underground

With Bridgette’s dyed pink rat for brains.

 

Running from a copper,

Calling him a twat,

Photographed for postcards

While trying to score some smack—

Well, weed, but still, imagine that!

 

The foreign bloke was shouting,

“Stop Po-lease!”

No chance, fella — we thought you were the bizzies!

We pegged it down an alley,

Watched from o’er the wall,

He pulled out his camera —

And the other punks posed all.

 

Now those tossers will be famous,

It’s just our fucking luck.

We ran back up the alley,

“’Ere, let us get in this muck!”

 

Us gals, lips puckered,

While Tommy took a piss —

The shutter flickered, caught us —

God, we were loving this!

 

We’ll all be fucking famous,

Or so the story goes,

Our youth in black and white —

Our sins in every pose.

 

So if you ever see a postcard —

A punk boy pissing up a wall,

And children dressed like scoundrels,

Rainbow hair and all —

 

That was me and my crew,

Most of them now dead.

We thought we ruled the world then,

But were damaged in the head —

 

By too much grief and trauma,

By being bounced around in care,

Homes and foster faces blurring,

No one really there 

 

But in those wonder years we bossed it,

With hair of green and red display.

We were “lonely as,” back then,

While acting peacock proud,

Our little hearts were broken,

Our minds lost in the crowd —

 

A crowd of home-grown soldiers,

All fighting their own war,

Searching for a reason

To believe in more and more.

 

You don’t see many punks now,

Lost kids wear new disguise,

Behind their glowing phone screens,

With pumped lips and filtered eyes.

 

But I’m thankful for my memories,

As wicked as they were,

They spurred me on to fight again

When life began to blur.

 

Reminding me that somewhere deep

Still lives that gobby lout,

Who laughed at pain and strutted proud,

Through drizzle, blood, and doubt.