Boy

Where did it all start to stop?

When did the green turn red?

When did the skies stop being limitless, when?

I remember the banker telling me that if l’d just like to sign here then the mortgage would be all mine.

But l didn’t, l just froze, iceburged in time, frozen in the heat of the moment, as memories bubbled up through my stillness of times when l never thought this hot and heavy fear would come,

Memories packed away for years in the tupperware of my mind came screaming to the surface, perfectly preserved.

Of that small place l once knew, a rural island in an urban sea, the wake sleeping, dream walking of the past came back to me and stopped me from signing.

Stopped me from moving.

Listen, l’ll tell you about it, my old home.

When boys were free as air, fast as light, hearts light as the air that was to fast and free for kids to catch.

Who ran on winged feet down back alleys, back doubles and got back sides slapped for being boys.

The boys who walked through moonlight, dreaming off limelight or a spotlight in the sun.

The boys who flew across green skies in the spitfires of their imaginations.

Soaring across everlasting battlefields that were flecked with daisy clouds.

The boys who hung around like dogs outside the whining bars pawing for a taste of the adult club.

And slunk like cats through country lanes using diamond eyes to travel home before the cats eyes came.

The boys who played on Kidd lane, and giggled on Lovers walk, who trotted down stallion road, galloping to the backbeat of Summers that would never end.

Harvesting the minutes, pilling them safely in wheat fields where they waited, patiently for the reaper man.

The boys who feared nothing because there was nothing to fear.

The boys who feared nothing because there was nothing to fear.

Running on the cola buzz through the calmed down, slowed down, old town that was the whole world.

The boys who heard their dreams scraping off knees, bouncing off goal posts because they had all the tick tocks they could dream of.

The country bumpkined, cider with Rosie, pub called the plough, village that l knew.

That village, my village, that’s all gone now.

Cause it was bulldozed to brick a brack, and re sowed with mod cons.

Made new for 2.4 family invaders,

Town luxuries with countryside views, a new age hustled and bustled, marched and perched on our hills.

The new wave had come and the old ways went under once,

twice,

three times.

And l tell you those boys have been beaten into the moulds of modern men.

Backs broken by the bankers red, traffic red, blood red of the world.

But those boys,

Those boys feared nothing because there was nothing to fear.

Nothing to fear.

And then the bankers words rain washed there way back into my mind, a pitter pattering of smiles and puddles of just sign here, thank you thunderclaps, that’s how l remember it.

I didn’t want to sign it,

I didn’t want to sign it,

But l did.

Well, you have to don’t ya.