Even the boots weren't his,

but slid to him - 'Wear me!'  -

down the patent scree of charity

heaped Dachau-sized in a dis-

used church. Heart of the city,

shod, he'd trod out over

all the roads from Dover

up to York, a mercenary

who's not for hire, and long,

long past surrender. New

every morning is the dew

that trickles down his strong

and wholly beaten face,

minding the wet earth with

no thought at all but this

undifferentiated place

of bone-cold, pissed & grimy

panic. Bad apple,

he's the ill-windfall

that sinless kids & shiny

frightened mothers had bricked

up out there in immemorial air,

a feature of the playground rare-

ly noticed save to kick

a ball against or shun

by some long detour of the mind.

Don't catch his eye, or try'nd

pretend the two of you are one,

or that 'but for the grace

of God ...', or that you've seen

or haven't seen, or mean

to change the ethos of the place

one day by getting to the top,

by charity, by writing verse,

by legislation, prayer or, worse,

by hosing 'em off like crap.

Land's landowners do not

own him: he's set up

to mark the edge of what

they've mortgaged, family plots,

against the fear that their 'a lot'

meant nothing, that it'd cave in

like a sepulchre into its grave

or like the whole town's squat,

collapse, rot down into

its Underground. At least

it's warm down there, though the greasy

air, an edible blue,

has farted, coughed, had more

goes round, and round and round,

than the Circle Line. Scroungers,

buskers, rich and poor,

begging not to differ, do,

going down the tube; the walls

sing there so wishing well

that pennies drop into

his hat like autumn leaves

in spring. Ghosts walk through him;

out of work or window-shopping,

passing the fast bucks, he's

their shadow tricked out of exist-

ence, one bad dream, a nightmare

he wakes up to, shares

with no ones in the mist

of bottle-Green Park, Hyde

& streets. Impenetrable porous

stuff, this alcosaurus

fossil who's survived

the State of Welfare. Missed

somehow by Smith & Bevan

and untouched by their bland heaven

on earth, their housing lists

and innocent-proof benefits,

he's walking in no fixed abode.

Self-employed as his own commode,

this wall-banger's never pissed

nor sober either  -  head

hung over, shoulders ridged,

like the parapet of London Bridge  -

the Thames flows out between his legs,

a hose of golden daffodils!

A gardener, if you ask him

who he was, or sometime

ancient mariner, a cul-

inary maître de chef, surveyor,

soldier, priest, or man

of property, he also ran

a builder's yard, 'bricklayers

to the Queen'. Whatever,

he'll spin any fib

to ease a vicar from a quid.

He's the great un-sung performer

of our age, and all the stage

a world he's worked out perfectly

to tap the green complicity

of the saints who've got it made.

Dead to the world, he's friend,

long-lost, to hostels, monks,

to magistrates & café drunks,

soup-servers without end,

amen. Their raison d'être,

he's our familiar spirit,

a could-be me whose image fits,

a mirror-lurker to our hate

of self, injustice, belly

weight, all that's intractable,

that touches us & isn't bull,

that turns grown legs to jelly

at the thought of someone

out there - in here - out there,

falling through without the

usual supports of an

imaginable life. Mire is

sacred: drawn mud-caked

and sentimental, faked

to a shadow of old chesnut fires

in charcoal on a bathroom wall,

you have been framed. Untouch-

able, or as we'd say, 'touched

in the head' and fumbling small

change, the old school vag-

rant warms his hands in flame

on a brazier in Drury Lane.

Not many left, these days.

The new breed's shot away

or on the run from being

cared for. Not you, ay? Free

as a turd on the King's high-way,

three coats to the wind & hid

in God's own beard. Enough

to make out living rough's

romantic, or some other glib

unnecessary crap

that doesn't touch on what

shit stars made you a shit  -

what kicked off all of THAT

FUCKING  PANIC ... Being

shit is easy, like 'genetic',

and there's no help for it.

Shit doesn't sink or swim;

it stinks, gets stepped in,

wiped, sniffed, squozen out

(by its own choice, no doubt).

A system can't hold in

too much at once, it drops,

shit flies, shit hits the fan

(or bottle/road) when shit's a man

and the wind blows all his props

to hell, to shells he can't

believe in or live out,

except on paper, touted

like this version planted

on you  -  drugs Customs

use to keep the undesirable

alien. Well, that's my fable,

whatsyername. I'll call you Samson

for your knack with walls

and for my ass's jaw,

because you're stronger than the flawed

pretenders up here on the ball,

more generous too: you give

the game away. It's love

that scares the shite out of

the cast up here, that is,

if we, or you, would let it ...

Dark. Day centres night

now to a wall outside the law

where the fine can't touch the poor

or vice versa. Too tight,

too late for that. All suits,

briefs, shoulder-padded

business tarts, their value-added

hearts in shares, en route

to Cla'h'm, have clip-clopped home,

poured out of Town down trains

& tubes like guttering rain,

& left the Sights (chic, smoke-blown,

smeared) like sore eyes at a party.

Emptied, dirt comes trickling in

in overcoats with bits of string

like hold-alls no one's held. Sly

blind, unblinking in a dream

of men as trees, clod-booted,

dog-been, trailing roots

from Chorley Wood to Watsitsname

and better off unseen, they've been

well camouflaged. Red-rimmed,

mascara's over everything

and only the eyes are clean  -

eyes of the storm, of nothing,

wind, of swirling suburbs,

skirts, hair, ad-men's blurbs,

of rubbish, wires, sharp railings

against walls. Wall-eyed,

the city shuts its lights,

its breath exhaled: tonight

my Samson's shuffling, high

as week-old game, light-headed,

one of nature's vacuums,

to the park. There's room

at Lincoln's Inn. Frightened

out of sleep by Sam's

blind feet and excremental mutterings,

one of the tribe, a wandering

shrew with frozen hams,

smells business or a sort

of warmth. 'You want it, eh?

What have you got? Not gear.

I don't do gear.' Sam caught

the begging and the bruised

evacuated lots that cracked

beneath her voice, the paddywhacked

shy, brittle girl so used

to being used she's given up

her ghost to flesh. His wolf-

wise ancient eyes engulfed

the fouled world of her make-up,

hairpiece, rags, and looked

into her sheer gift,

the wide warm bath of it,

he'd drift in to before. He took

the woman's arm to stop

himself from falling. 'S-s-slag.'

Sam shivered, clutched his bag

and every un-housed, un-fucked

night he'd had in all

his life, and shook her hand

off his sleeve. 'Bitch.' Sam

bedded her down by the wall.

Night squats across the Channel.

Waters slop uneasily.

Its dank legs stretch to Brittany

& Cornwall as the god pulls

down his trousers, holds

Atlantic breath: the white moon

heaves ... At sea, fly-blown

old tankers pitch & roll

and halliards in marinas start

to jitter, nervously, like horses

under starter's orders;

whole washing lines of shirts

are sucked up in the jet stream,

coiling, sprung, a snake-

wind snapping its tail awake

as tins break in & out of dreams,

spin chattering up deserted streets

like a dog's electrified hare.

Waves rise and pump, rear

up, and crashing deep

into the groins and shingles,

roar, sigh, rush again,

as inland, forests, dense

brush dripping, flare in glee-

ful bursts, roots tearing,

tugging at the earth as if

some vast, invisible mastiff

had locked jaws on snaring

wire, or a goddess tore

her hair. The hungering beast

ripped tops, whole chimney-breasts

& trunks clean off. The deep roar

deepened, swirling blood

& planets, head over heels

overhead, and bled black squeals

and howlings as it split the wood-

en clapboard, cladding, flimsy

cloth of womanish caves

asunder like a graveyard

robbed and plundered by

some Second Coming god. Towns

& cities have no roofs

that are remotely god-proof

when god's in a real gown-

ripping mood. God

& London fucked that night

to loose the stone-clad, fright-

ened spirit out from its cod-

dling fist. Once stiff, unmoving

parts lay, thrashed about,

or bent low down, devout

in venal ecstasy. Nothing

could withstand that unpent,

so long-bottled force,

that passion hurled at the source

of its own unrepentant

walls, though on the night

that Samson burst his heart

and tender hatred, shafts

of inextinguishable light

burned out in all his bones

like fiercely molten gold.

The last and inmost, oldest

wall, the one he'd grown

himself, for which he'd sown

and sold unnumbered lives

and solitary deaths, sighed

in his depths and groaned

through spitting, broken teeth:

'I'm coming now, yer bastard,

luv ...' The very last, hard

shoulder of the storm beat

down against the wall

and shoved; the whole dark scrum

of night swarmed, tumbling

in behind, and rucked, mauled,

foraged, locked: a million tons

of muscle. Stones, cut centuries

ago as if to stall time, try

to hold by ancient discipline

their own against the all

black, thudding stream. But earth's

a sod. It quakes, not worth

its salt when half an ocean-fall

of tears have soaked and soaked

and soaked its bed. Unclenching

the city's soiled fist inch

by inch, the wall begins to float

and waver like a dead man's cry,

to rattle in the storm's sheer throat,

till, finding the foundations out

and bulging, belly-eyed,

the nothing wind that's everything

blew out its lungs and blasted:

'Coming now, yer bastard,

luv ...' The wall caves in.

Un-zipped, its open flies lean

outwards for a moment, hang

jagged edges over the man

who's broken through and seems

as wholly incorporeal

as wind over his fucked love's

bag. One last great shove:

enough. The wall is toppled.

London screams and breaks

on Samson's head.

Who was the vagrant who

flint-fisted felled the first

wood here, whose common woe

cursed clay and caves and blue

winds wintering the water's edge?

Whose fear of meal-mouthed forest

sucked his skull's bone nakedness

of dreams to dress the wet sedge,

log on log, against

the fog-haired river-god

and elemental cold? The sodden

nomad struck his fence

and wasn't. Let others beg

or perish, he's - a wall,

our earliest enclosure, small

holding of nothing, lagged

to keep the wind out, wolves,

eyes, rain, the darkness in. Mid-

paradise the vagrant hid,

shagged, holed up, hands resolved

to prise apart tomorrow.

Years & cities fled out

from his finger ends to shut

stone doors against the widow-

ing past. Now busy men,

not wielding whittled sticks

or spears, bear little bits

of paper, sneers, the mem-

bership of clubs (whatever

that means); churches, streets,

parade grounds stiff with feet,

flags, moving lights so clever

that the sun himself seems dully

unmechanical. All glitters,

face on face, and flits the

sharp-mooned water coolly,

po-mo, smart, who cares?

Dancing the off-sprung splinters

of a glass, its broken mirrors

wheel to catch in their

elsewhere the image of

the man, the vagrant huddled

in his dream, his mud wall,

flesh, his wind, his love.

The morning after: London's

smashed. She's sprawling, a pub-

brawler's mouth, a slack tub-

ful of teeth, gold paving stones

she's spat out with up-rooted

molars, plane trees drubbed

like little Adolf's doodlebugs,

or daddy-long-legs booted

all to hell. 'It's like the Blitz,'

a dazed drunk said, kicking glass

that's dived out of some classy

banker's window. Bits

of lives, of hoardings, indoor

stuff, like panties, fluffy

toys & photos, dandruff

treatments, chests of drawers,

lie strewn about or dangle

in clean air for once,

fair game for looting truants,

eddying, marauder gangs

loosed on the wind. 'An act

of God', wrote suddenly broke

bespoke insurance brokers

on the claims of fat

storekeepers and their 'names',

too punch-drunk yet to launder

their stripped assets. Wonder

gripped the passengers of planes

who'd flown home over homeless-

ness and seen the ploughed

trail of the storm through cloud,

the gashed woods' flesh,

cars crushed or twirled up

high to nest in the springy

whiplash of some wind-bent,

crackling pylon. Clut-

tered bricks and mortals clog

the way through thoroughfares

that aren't, as men go nowhere,

gawping, stuck, like God's

own kings of the road. Hard luck.

The lawyer who's just walked out

of his chambers, baulked at

the night's work, has been struck

by the violence of law & storm,

the contraries of his own calling.

His well-heeled feet are falling

lightly, like a delicate faun,

in trash. He looks out through

the empty space where yesterday

had been a wall, way, way

thicker than rock. His eyes flew

over the rubbled houses

strewn beyond the park,

the cardboard boxes, arks

to the washed-up, rubbished scouses

he'd passed every evening,

both on their way home.

'Well, each to their own,'

he'd thought then, hardening

and breezing on into

his wife's soft bed, or the party

he would have with arty

friends, defending two

contrary views in low

professional tones. Doubts-

in-law, conspiracies of out-

casts, in-casts, legal cloaks

and daggers in the back-

yard of unreal estates,

had long been fretting at the state

of his mind. And now this lack

of boundary, this shock of space.

It was as if mere wind

had unearthed everything

and he was falling through its face,

a slow, interminable fall,

to crack a whole life open.

An angry, broken

cry sounds in the wall

that was not there. A howling

man, or woman, crawed

beneath a ton or more

of rock and medieval cowling.

Arrested now, the man who was

a lawyer then, crouched in

the thick-ruck'd mud and splin-

tered stone to prise the mass-

ive granite blocks up on

his smooth, white finger

ends. He slips. No longer

caring. Tries again.

The bald sepulchral slabs

lift off, grinding their neighbours

into the dirt. Saviours,

well intentioned, always have.

He pauses, ears to the animal

moan. Boots, a coat-tail,

half a dress, trail

from the clearing rubble.

The man, now torn and bloodied,

smeared in dirt, his hair

wild, waving in the air,

met Samson's face. It studied

him from that dead place

where it had gone. He studied

it. The same, but flooded

with some kind of peace

that fluttered subtle bodies,

fires & half-glimpsed lights

all over the startled, sky-bright

land. 'Get 'im off! Yer bloody

jerk!' The woman's thick

voice vomited into his face.

'He's bloody dead!' A trace

of Sam's last spittle licked

across like a spider's web

when the man was lifted from

her lap. His body numb,

cold, stiffening fast, his head

stove in at the back, Sam lay

and filled his eyes with sky ...  Beside

themselves, the two stared wide,

not at each other nor the splayed

white midriff of the one

who'd got away, but at

some sudden nothing that

was all, all 'done',

dead, over, swept away,

and yet had come from him,

was his ... The woman screamed,

once, then made off like a stray

cat silently. The lawyer

likewise disappeared

into the city, cleared

clean off. The broken mirror

of his face is open to the

world and all of it

pours in. Meanwhile, back

in solicitous bars, friends rumour

that he's left his soft wife

and his house, and taken

to the bottle/road, the shakes,

and an unruly life

of vagrancy in your

boots, or in mine.