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6 May 2024

hip priest

 he smiled     and smiled     as if he were willing to play the villain if necessary and that’s the way of it     in my neighbourhood     he was slightly fleabag       you know the type     vaguely disaffected     stinking of skunk and sweat     he spoke low and slow      didn’t give away too much     he played a private game        no one knew it’s name      all human suffering       resided in his eyes      but he didn’t seem to care      he was nearly clued in      almost wise       his were written memoirs     pen and paper      torn from life     he was veteran of some ancient revolution     but he wasn’t a victim     he was a survivor     he’d seen thousands like me        eager to impress      with my vacuous knowledge    but he was a book closed to me     “…nothing matters anymore, the war was lost long ago…       …I stopped resisting the flow and learned to let go…    …it’s not the best of all possible worlds, but it’s the only one we know…”    he was an individualist      and if he ever got lonely he didn’t let on      he’d been weathered smooth       by millennia of dust and rain    I was an acolyte - he’d send me to the shops       but nothing he said was news to me      nothing he said seemed real

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