Wilted Funds

Riffing on comments about police finding the time to fine a flower vendor, embodying a double standard that’s a bit of a mind bender.

Cash bade me welcome, yet my soul felt black,

Saddled with rust and kin.

But clever Cash, observing what I lacked

From my first entrance in,

Whispered in my ear, sweet but tauntingly,

“Come and become anything.”

“I’ll work,” I answered, “earning my stay here.”

Cash said, “Thus shall it be.”

“I, criminal, ungrateful?  Oh so queer,

I don’t comprehend thee.”

Cash took my hand, and smirking did reply,

“Who made your job?  Oh, me!”

“But Sir,” I remarked, “I cannot live on

The crumbs which you feed me.”

“Work hard and spend less,” Cash said, with a yawn,

“And you’ll be rich like me.”

Desiring just that, I rose before dawn

To plant my ‘money tree’.

I tended and toiled, watered and weeded

For months to grow some flow’rs,

Yet I quickly found my stock depleted,

By uniforms with pow’rs.

“We’re just making sure the laws are heeded,”

He said from his ivory tow’r.

They had never, ever come to ask Cash,

How I had gotten a job,

Yet when I behaved gray, they scold me brash

Like some tax-skirting slob.

I guess they’d prefer welfare be my ‘stash’

Than fight the corporate mob.

Inspired by a photo of a flower vendor receiving a citation, and the poem ‘Love III’ by George Herbert.