Broken home is where the broken heart is, I thought one day after seven weeks in Spain that seemed like years. And here I was, down in the same old digs and duds, out in the streets where strangers greet you home again.

They call me the terminal lover, born on the last day of time. I was robbed of a past that could heal me, fleeced of a future of crime.

Send me some good news from the front, tell me the lines will always be the same. Tell me the wanderers still know my name.

They tell me that I’ve wandered round this world to places that I have never seen. Whole nations scraped from the face of the earth, whole years in a dream.

I left my baby grand down in New Orleans, outside a bloody battle on Frenchmen Street, where the jazz angels sat up so long into the night. All the red light girls and all the trumpeteers, the stink of the swamp and the empty beers: blues but not a tear to be shed in sight.

Scene: a dusk-lit opening. Pete’s in line just hoping; he has plastic bags of posters, magazines and paper roses. As his movie queen approaches, the volcanic crowd encroaches, and, at last, he’s got his moment. He says: “Baby, won’t you read some lines with me?”

Eden-ite defectors, traveling with steel detectors, pause to pitch their tents out in his field. He hears the buzzer grooving, as he rises to get moving.

Even paradise has a Harley Street, some quack trying to make a buck. He said: “Here’s a pill to cure your pain, and one more for good luck.”

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