If you hear commotion, a fracas in the street

You might suspect there’s murder when rival gangstas meet

Perhaps a boy lies dying who called himself “Young Blood”

But it’s children who are bleeding, wrong side of the ‘hood

That night was rent with wailing of bravado and of fear

Blood curdling as a dog fox though no-one chose to hear

No-one saw the stabbing, but everybody lied

Don’t twitch aside the curtain if the Moorside Crew’s outside.

 

A pensioner stares vacant from a hospital’s spare bed

With kohl black eyes, a busted lip, blood matted on her head

They took her bag, they took her purse and when they saw her pee

They took the one thing she had left – they took her dignity.

Then with the twenty in her purse they bought themselves a hit

To course around their veins and to turn their brains to shit

But don’t be tempted to speak out as one brave man had tried

Don’t twitch aside the curtain if the Moorside Crew’s outside.

 

Yes, one foolish man reported this, his house was fire bombed

The tenants knew just who they were and where they all came from

But omerta met the local police who said they weren’t perplexed

For silence curbs the residents ensuring they weren’t next.

This noble man’s an outcast, the pariah of the street

His neighbours cross the road for fear the Crew should see them meet

He wears his mark like Cain, blacklisted far and wide

Don’t twitch aside the curtain if the Moorside Crew’s outside.

 

They throw bricks through our windows, they piss on our front doors

They’re not “misunderstood” or “lost”, they’re rotten to the core

They groom the smaller children – recruits to run their drugs

Who they themselves aspire to one day become thugs

Make no mistake they ARE the law on these forlorn estates

It pays you to remember this; it will not change; it’s fate.

So don’t go out in darkness but in your bolt-holes hide

Don’t twitch aside the curtain if the Moorside Crew’s outside.