London (West) 1990-97

I got back home but found I couldn't rest
so I reached across and rolled one of the best;
as I dragged the lungful down into my chest
I considered my defeat.
I decided that the thing to do was cruise
- it seemed there wasn't much less left to lose -
and without a car I had to use my shoes:
I was a stoned semiotician on the street.

I wandered into unfamiliar places,
a new array of signifying traces,
I even got to see some of their faces
- for a while it was a treat.
Then I lit the other that I'd ready-rolled
and I wrapped myself against the bitter cold.
I felt that I had only just been told
to be a stoned semiotician on the street.

It was obvious the people here were rich,
ostentatious middle class and thick and kitsch,
they'd been limousined through life without a hitch,
they were the privileged elite.
But it only took a block or two of change
for the opposite extreme to be in range
and, juxtaposed like this, a little strange
for a stoned semiotician on the street.

The poverty exuded through the air,
pressured residue one step beyond repair,
men and mortar both in terminal despair,
reversal tangibly complete.
And as the underclass got on with being proud
the decay hung thick and heavy like a shroud
and I hurried for the solace of the crowd
just a stoned semiotician on the street.

Then a hundred further metres through the night
to a boiling urban pool of neon light
where reality meets dreams, and black meets white,
I knew my journey was complete.
For here the symbols clash - and decompose,
lubrication to the social ebbs and flows:
from the soup the new miraculously grows
before a stoned semiotician on a seat.