Big Issue! Would anybody like an issue today?
Music, theatre, sport, news and many other features too.
Would anyone like a Big Issue? Don’t be shy, come buy folks.
Something different, to read later on maybe?
Would anyone like a
Big Issues in society today, where we can go home and say
that it’s okay for someone to be on the street in the cold,
hoping you’ll stop and pay for a magazine he can’t even read,
because he’s “working not begging” even though he’s grey and old,
Did you ever stop and count the issues he sold?
Not half as many as the rubbish we’re sold by the press,
by men in suits trading souls for gold.
Would anyone like a big issue in their life?
Would anyone like to think about their wife
working on the street in his situation,
sleeping on a bench in an underground station.
Where the only thing done about her plight,
was to write about it, to write about
Something different, to read later on maybe?
Hard to see amongst the music, theatre, sport, news and
many other facial features staring gauntly out of the grey pages,
speckled black with meaningless words
promising hope and a future, and the first year’s credit absolutely free,
and the answers to your prayers with cosmetic surgery that will make you look fine,
So you can use your pile of gold that you got after remortgaging your soul on a falling market
to buy some time to lie down
before the bell chimes, telling you “your time is up number 32,
Please come in now, this is the end of your trip, have a nice day,
don’t forget to visit our gift shop on your way out,
don’t forget to pay,
don’t be shy, come buy folks,
Don’t be shy, come buy failure written down,
turned around and sold by someone who missed you whilst you were away,
wrote a big issue about you,
cried into a shirt-sleeve about you,
about the time you ran away,
about the time you didn’t say why my time had come,
about the time I stood in the rain,
About time to go- just leave,
amd in the long caresses of the night-time weave a web of dreams
for all the people in the world to walk upon,
still soft, though relics of a time long gone,
Tread oft the halls of solitude but fear not the dark,
as you wear nothing but sway stark naked into the distance,
He shall be your ark and watch over you,
and spread flowers beneath your feet,
and wash your hair with spring water,
whilst his daughters waft perfumed sweetness into the air,
and the heady scent strokes your mind to rest,
with a pillow of silk and a bed of tissue.
Dream on, and dream not of your big issues.

by Tristan Withers