OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: Prisoners of War: The Homeless in Seattle, and Savanna, and San Diego, and . . .

Sleep becomes a bogeyman you hide from. There are dreams, and none of them sweet. None offer rest or respite. The whiter than white flashing glare. The eardrum splitting roar, and the terrified screams of agony. The harder you close your eyes the brighter the glare. Cover your ears with your hands and the roar and the screams get trapped inside you. Jim Beam is the only hope of solace. Like Jack Daniels and JosÃ© Cuervo. And grass and weed and horse and white pills and red pills and whatever it will take to get out of today and into tomorrow . . . or never having to go back. But you do go back. You have to. Except it's not you. It's the "other" you that goes. And at last you come to the realization -- or you don't -- that the person who once was you -- that smiling confident kid, just out of high school with so many hopes and sweet dreams, is at long last dead; in fact, from all you can tell, he (or she) never even existed. Whoever he was is gone: it's a hollow caricature of that once youthful man or woman who is now homeless on the streets of America.

And I cannot begin to say how much it sickens me to hear anyone say, "My taxes are high enough." Because, so long as there is even one veteran, now lost to him- or herself and to the ages, your taxes will never be "high enough." You can never, and will never be able to pay that debt you owe. Never. Because you can never put Humpty and all his pieces back together again. All that is possible now is to treat him or her with the respect to which he or she is due, and to try to see to it that the streets never become home. You owe it. We all owe it.

And it's going to get more expensive. The report cited by the Department of Veterans Affairs states that, whereas the Vietnam vet "spent five to ten years trying to readjust to society before becoming homeless, Iraq and Afghanistan vets may end up homeless within 18 months."

You want to "fight them over there" as opposed to "here"? Then you go. Know this, however, if you do: "You" will never, ever return. Someone with your name may make it back. But "you" won't. Until that day -- be very grateful you can try to pay at least a little of the tab . . . and respectfully shut the hell up!

-- Ed Tubbs
Palm Springs

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