Demonstration Day

Fifteen and short, I strode the cobbles
of Carnaby Street in August '83, and bought
a lemon-yellow tie there to the tune of 'ABC',
music no longer of its time but new to me,
as was the sleazy caff where I had lunch
(a peanut-butter, cheese and celery sandwich)
before tea and a doze, posing in Green Park,
stretched out like I came there every day to be
one of the crowd and nobody's fool. Really.
The hours inched by. I thought they'd fly

if I raced through the shops and galleries until,
hobbled by growing pains, blinded by genius art,
begged by a battery of nuns not to Proliferate,
I escalated Underground and out of sight. But
I thought wrong: you cannot walk away from it,
...