The last of the Mohicans
(Chingachgook)
Walking through the
churchyard, I saw him there;
An original man, beyond
compare;
An ancient eccentric,
with a Mohawk;
A pensioner punk, who
wanted to talk.
He asked me if I cared to
share a few
Roll-ups and cans of
lukewarm Special Brew,
And listen to a serious
matter;
So I sat with him and
heard his patter.
He said he was a ted in
‘fifty-six,
When Rock around the
clock was at the flicks.
He had a flick knife, and
during the show,
He slashed the seats at
the Trocadero.
In the early sixties, he
was a mod;
A pill popper,
immaculately shod,
On a Lambretta, going up
and down
Fighting with rockers in
a seaside town.
In the late sixties, he
found a guru,
And went to a commune in
Kathmandu,
But it was run by a fake millionaire,
So he came back home and
shaved off his hair.
And in the process became
a skinhead;
Moon-stomping to music
Jamaican bred;
Skins in the sixties, he
said, were cool cats,
And only very rarely
racist twats.
He was a Starman in
‘seventy two,
When Bowie finally made
his breakthrough.
But when The Dark Side of
The Moon appeared;
His taste in music went
deeper and weird.
He grew his hair longer,
became a freak,
Saw Hawkwind and Genesis reach
their peak;
Back in the day when they
were worth seeing,
Before the Pistols came
into being.
The filth, the fury, Mary
seeing red;
The established sounds dying out or dead;
He adopted a chain from
ear to nose,
And the declaration;
anything goes.
He was a punk till around
‘eighty-four
When the old romantics
became a bore,
And for want of something
better to do,
He found consolation in
sniffing glue.
In ‘eighty seven he
rapped with a mate;
And then acid tripped him
into a state
Of ecstasy; with new
drugs to consume,
As DJs scratched and
pumped up volume.
And in that smiley state,
he changed his name;
“Chingachgook”; the chief
of Mohican fame;
He’d reached a peak; and
he had it in mind
That he was unique; the
last of his kind.
Brit pop was hardly a
sensation;
He felt it to be an
imitation;
A ringing knell to the
finality;
And demise of
originality.
The scene petered out
like a dying flame.
Twenty years went by and
no eras came.
With nothing but more of
the same in sight,
He aimlessly drifted,
without a light.
Up shit-creek with no
paddle or canoe,
Drowning to the sound of
radio two;
Trapped for an age, in a
digitised grave,
Of Brit-pop, house, metal,
mod, punk and rave.
And that was it; he had
no more to say;
Silently he sat, and I
walked away;
Leaving him staring
blankly into space
Or maybe some other faraway
place,
Where out of the blue,
comes a sea of change
That’s against the grain
and feels a bit strange,
Unconventional,
untraditional,
Alternative, cool, and
original.
Chingachcook; the unique;
the peerless one,
Looked tired and jaded, by
the time he was done,
And all his anecdotes, are
written here,
Complete with glue, acid,
roll-ups, strong beer,
And the thoughts of a man;
long in the tooth,
Offering an observational truth;
DJs and bands are playing
nothing new;
A watershed movement’s
long overdue.
