It’s been a while since his fingers have twisted a spigot.  
When he thinks about it it’s like a bubble in his windpipe
trapped like a marble in a straw that he can’t cough up, 
or cough out and the sherry nurses his injuries
and the cider dresses his wounds. They’re bandaged 
and dressed and bandaged and dressed to the extent 
they can’t heal, unless they’re all untied to expose
a fresh wound. 

He is scruffy and dirty. And his face is the stone of a peach.
That is correct. Treading breath first, his feet are reluctant 
to follow the squalor of his trousers, the debris of his 
kicked and clouted coat, the slouch poking a route 
to a smudgy horizon via the margins of Miss Selfridges, 
Starbucks, HMV,  French Connection, the public steering 
clear of his road, him coveting the perfume of washed skin 
and a bed in a nice hotel just for one night. Only waging 
an anti-deodorant war because if he could scrounge 
enough change the one thing he wouldn’t spend it on
right now is a tin of Lynx or any deodorant.