There is One who Sells Wilted Flowers he Picks up from a Nearby Flower Shop

Everyday I see / meet / sit beside / give a dollar to / refuse a dollar to / listen to winding tales I assume are lies / listen to winding tales that leave me afraid / make way for a pale, ghostly hobo / make way for a disgusting smelling hobo / make way for a frightening hobo who seems out to get me / feel a second’s desire to help a staggering, cold, swollen homeless / forget this homeless / read student poetry about how they feel when asked for money / listen to the radio during a snow fall – all homeless must go to the shelter, says the radio; those who will not go cannot be forced to go, says the radio / look at the yellow patch of snow and get angry with the insensitive bum who pissed on the snow- at the very center of the sidewalk! / see an empty pile of dirty clothes and wonder where the bum went – did he die? / forget this question / wonder where this woman, smelling of urine and something else more offensive is going…why does she ride the bus everyday? / walk past over a dozen inadequately covered men and women huddled on park benches, shivering in the cold…

In the US you cannot call people who beg beggars. Beggar is a politically incorrect word.

Homeless, the PC word connotes so much. It is discomforting. It means these dark dirty hands are not pleading you. It means somehow they have a right to ask…since you have a home and they don’t.
How did they loose their homes? I wonder.

In a country where language is riddled with paranoia some terms and some questions remain forever politically incorrect. I cannot ask a homeless where his home once was…he will take offense. I cannot go to an African American and ask for a scientific explanation as to why three out of every four homeless I see is Black. The African American society will take offense. And so will the entire US community, which does not see itself as propagating racial discrimination.

I must find my own answers and ask my own questions. If I want to ask someone else I must be cautious and rephrase my words till the words themselves become meaningless and the answers become too polite.

But I find it difficult to form a new question. Again and again the same question comes to me …In a nation where every foreigner finds a job, where the poor have televisions and cars and refrigerators, where food is not a problem, nor is education, where the value of each citizen adds up to almost a million dollars, where the government takes care of you in times of illness…in such a nation what causes such abject, such painful existence? Why does this happen?
Racism, I am sure, is the answer.
And yet it must be a sinuous, careful racism. It is not the racism I understand where discrimination is outright, where jobs are refused, in fact not even offered.
This racism eludes me. I cannot understand how it operates.

No, “Beggar” is the incorrect term to apply to these so many disastrously poor people in the US. Beggar is an economical term, a person born out of economic deprivation. Beggars are what we have in India and Nepal.
A homeless is born out of something else…it seems almost like they were born out of a breaking of will…and yet I don’t understand it, not in their term…how is this will broken? Why do they opt for this terrible life?...for it does seem like a life opted for…and yet, can one opt for such a life? Would I have opted for hunger and dirt and cold and death and pain if I had other options? And US is so full of options. It is the land of options. There are so many to pick and choose from.
I have seen poverty…and this somehow, does not qualify.

Sometimes there is a homeless who will refuse money if you offer. She will shake her head and keep walking.

Sometimes one will sit by the roadside and sing – a deep, beautiful voice. If you throw money into his cap he will bow politely and smile at you.

Some will talk very loudly to the world, laughing or cursing or simply having a conversation with it.

Some will pass lewd remarks if you pass them.

Some will refuse they are homeless. They will pose as travelers who don’t have enough to get back home. They will wear placards around their necks saying they need only twenty more dollars to get back where they need to, saying they will refund the donor who will donate the money, saying they will work if you provide work.
But they are there everyday, on the same spot, with the same placard around their necks, for months.

Some, with a bottle in their hand, will flaunt their drunkenness. You know what I will do with your precious money, they seem to be saying.

There is one who sells wilted flowers he picks up from a nearby flower shop.