"white hipster with hipster beard as bum" - written 'round midnight last night on my phone at the counter in a waffle house - kind of a didactic and metapoetic poem about compassion

Santiago de Compostela

Galicia, Spain

Thursday

6 March 2018

white hipster with hipster beard as bum

when the whitest scamming
grinning bum but not dressed like one
kind of well-dressed
like he’s some hipster with a hipster beard

trying to establish his hipster cred
by experiencing homelessness for twenty-four hours
who with his quasi-homeless white-privileged attitude

asks you for money

clear the contents

the descriptive language

and the simile of judgment

in the title and the stanza above

from that seat of judgment in your head

and in your heart

don’t think
don’t hesitate
give the money
free of any thought 

free of any judgment
free of any shame or pride

as though this man were a holy medieval mendicant
stationed along the Way of Saint James
sometime in the cold outer darkness of the 10th century
for whom you have been given the duty of charitable care by God

as though this man were a starving thirsting child
in the maw of the desert devouring the Sahel
that you saw late one night on tv
and you cried over the poor skeletal creature

as though this man were a woman
who can’t be touched
sitting in her exposed home 

without a roof and without one wall

not a shelter at all

but an open display of misery
with her young daughter who’s numb with hunger
who looks up at you with unseeing eyes

(she can see but she can’t see you

because she can’t see ghosts)
from the stench of the gutters of Mumbai

all these must be one with each other
and with the grinning white hipster guy
all must be simply another human being

deeply worthy of your unbiased 
objectless compassion