The Pretentious Beggar

The Pretentious Beggar


By Sheb Schebella


The pretentious beggar whom lives deep inside, a classical man from another time; well educated but, poorly suited for social life, and often uppity about the price of strife. He is not transparent but thin skinned when it comes religious hymns. The pretentious beggar kneels for no god that he can define, but yet he attends mass perhaps he is only there for wine, perhaps he feels he is the stain upon the glass as he adores the sunshine. What he ponders is not for all to know, but seldom does anyone ask for he represents an avoidance from ones past. The pretentious beggar wears a smile on his eyes, but one would have to look deep inside to know the reasons why. He seldom smiles for the world but gracious with a smirk. The pretentious beggar breaks his bread while he bows his head but the world will never know why and when one thinks they know they are greatly mislead; for it is only in his sleep he speaks of all the things in his head, laying there half alive and half dead as he tosses and turns in his bed. He reveals only to the walls of the names of the ghost that walk the halls. It is in the morning the pretentious beggar wakes, long before the sun will take; and he lays there transfixed peering into an oil painting trimmed in a bamboo frame of a seashore he shall never know and refuses to give it a name, cutesy he is not nor delusional enough just yet to believe it truly exist. The pretentious beggar defines philosophy as such “I suppose its more entertaining at times than the comic section over lunch.” Only twice I have heard the Pretentious Beggar speak, the second time was on a park bench made of ruff timber far from any streets and this he said but not to me, it was to a passing thought I believe “Never trade your compass in for a Gideon’s or GPS neither points to truth.”