We Were The Boys

We Were The Boys

We were the boys

With all the promise

Of a brand fire new summer’s day

Life was a ploy with laugh upon us

As we sat in the alley at play

Dirt brown dangerous

No one dared face us

Strangers took their fright and ran away.

***

I was Dan Dare

You just sat there

Unthinking smile on your face

I was ferocious, some say precocious

All the world was my stage

I was Clark Gable, handsome young and able

You were gone with the wind and blown away

***

I don’t mind if you think different

But I was the one with the style

I was the one with imagination

I was the one with the guile

Flirt down danger

Life is often stranger

Than all the dreams of a drunken Anglophile

***

We were the boys

We went at life hell for leather

We were the boys

We thought it would last forever, ever, ever………….

***

The Youtube video below is of the above poem set to music, with me singing and playing the piano. This is an unplugged version. The full song is available on my fourth album 'Lost And Found' out now on Bandcamp under my pseudonym William Peter O'Neill.

Oh, and the first and last photographs on the video are of me as a little boy.