THE ROAD TO PARADISE

Down among the drummers and the dreamers and the drama queens, the crippled ballerinas and the streetwise

Visionaries, missionaries, lunatics and derelicts, the young has-beens of nineteen – with sad eyes

Go all the skinny young musicians with their Fenders and ambitions, getting the Spanish inquisition and the flashing eyes

The actors, the painters, the poets, the profits, the young man who surfs the internet ­­– and cries

We’re refugees on the road to paradise, refugees on the road to paradise

And then there’s Romulus ’n’ Remus, prima donnas, lion tamers, also very-nearly-famous social butterflies

In cool designer labels – telling fables ‘round the tables, while the old man just mumbles “fabulous thighs”

And all the phony stoned philosophers, lovers with St Christophers, undercover officers in disguise

Sheilas with tequilas and drug dealers with their feelers out, some say “fire”, some say “ice”– and someone sighs

“Were refugees on the road to paradise, refugees on the road to paradise”

Well, I was crawling down the pavement of old Peascod Street, when I saw you in the gutter muttering alibis

Groaning to your mobile phone, “ Will somebody please take me home, the basement is filled with Bosnian spies”

Refugees on the road to paradise, we’re refugees on the road to paradise