The last of the Mohicans (Chingachgook)

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.