Teenage Gangs of the 80s:

a Ryan Stoker Novel

by

Marcus Coates 

Chapter 1: New Decade, Same Issues

I walked along a familiar, bland street;

On reaching the corner and the turn,

The road became a meadow track beneath my feet;

I looked toward the sun and felt it burn,

Myself glimpsed healing - body strong;

The air inhaled pure and clean,

I hesitated … feeling doubt, feeling wrong, 

It's just a dream, to be whole, to be seen?

Ryan Stoker, 1981

            This time he’d produced something tangible, he thought, reading through the poem. But was there a better way to describe the thought? he wondered, looking around the room. A room decorated with yesteryear wallpaper, peeling away at edges where it met the nicotine-stained, Artex ceiling panels. Wallpaper thrown up in haste by a decorator with more important things on his mind – like getting down the pub for a few jars of the golden stuff and a bag of pork scratchings, rather than spending the time to beautify the walls of a generic council house on a generic housing estate in a generic Greater London suburb. Through what genetic lottery had he ended up living here for thirteen years in a room with lemon yellow walls and a grey ceiling? And more importantly, was there a way out? Now, that would be poetic. 

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Marcus Coates, 2026

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