Down With The Kids - Tim Clare

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
And what do I have for my breakfast?
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.’