The Big Issue does good things for good people every day.  People who are striving to better themselves and better their world.

The sellers turn over a portion of their scant money to buy these magazines, which are compiled by professional writers and discuss such things as current affairs, political issues and popular culture.

Sellers work tirelessly to make their business work. If magazines are left unsold at the end of the day they cannot be returned or replaced with fresh issues, it is a gamble in today’s cynical society.

Still, some people have a big issue with The Big Issue, and they turn their faces away from sellers, trotting past as if they were a suspicious package on a train, emitting puffs of smoke.

Yet they’re not begging; they are working an honest trade as much the newspaper seller standing at the entrance to the underground is. As much as the shopkeeper on the corner is.

Give it a chance, give them a chance, and know that you’re helping them ever closer to their goal of a better life.

Countless times they’ve tried to ignore

That lonely someone beyond the door

Magazines in hand, a hat on his head

Try hard not to see him; to them he is dead

“Merry Christmas!” he calls to a retreating back

Fighting for life to be free of the wrack

But they shake their heads, flee in disgust

Throwing off thoughts of society’s rust

He’s trying to change, or he wouldn’t be there.

But the good folks won’t let him.

Dead expressions and air.

©Amy Roskilly