Best Stranger In A Strange Land Poems
Where I walked the mile before
No longer resembles the same soil
Change I know is an inevitability
But I feel a sudden variety
English is what I speak
But the people that I pass speak meek
Meekly Russian, Indian, Pakistan and Chinese
Not English so what am I to do?
The place I grow up in I can’t speak to
I could rush out and gather a book for Russian
Or one for Chinese to
Gosh I’m dizzy
I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly address so many tongues
Now I am feeling like a stranger in a strange land
I guess I’ll just smile
And not speak
And they’ll feel right at home
I sat in my yard, revering to the sublime splendor.
A Setting sun lighted wheat fields with a gold fender.
The universe is a celestial art by a creator in the sky,
Waves of fuchsia purple swept over the vast bay.
A vast sense of relief overwhelmed the crowd,
Our balance is being reset by an enigmatic cloud.
On a club seat with a friend-calling stranger,
My plans are drying out, and he rules my future.
Engage in conversation with an utter stranger,
On a bus, train, or airplane, there is no danger.
Do not fear woodpeckers; you're a snug man,
There is a chance that this connection won't span.
Stranger, your smile brightens the world.
Stranger! Can we sustain an eternal odd horde?
Stranger, let's smoke, drink coffee, and talk.
Relationship talk may sneak into silicone caulk.
Lightness after pain bestows short-term happiness,
The agony of aliens sparks elation and craftiness.
When wooing a scumbag, truancy may be attractive,
Where howls prevailed, calm gropes were inductive.
But not everyone I described was abrasive,
People greet, faces saying farewell, prate to give.
No words upright a graceful aura, no weakness,
Laying our sins at God's feet, exulting in meekness.
A stranger might canalize me into his world,
My own is ponderous, but I've done nothing absurd.
Since when I'm with you, I would sure cut loose,
With you, I flee in a sustained way that I can seduce.
My anxious thoughts rip through my wrecked heart,
A genuine man, riven and split into red and blue charts.
I will be a stranger as I wade down the dreary street,
A stranger is resting on concrete, seeking an exit.
Written: September 23, 2022
Now life spurns me,
granite and absolute;
flinches at my touch,
hardens visibly at my voice,
morphed to dry-ice opiate in my presence.
Avoidance of the plague,
ducks and dives prizefighterly,
evasive bob and weave, skirting contact,
lest it's fabric may somehow
contaminate.
Spoken words,
when life stoops to speak them,
are naked critiques, each
phrase select paradigms of
contempt.
Didn't life love me once?
Didn't the feeblest jest elicit laughter?
It held my hand so tightly in
erotic pleated lap;
kissed me full on the lips;
whispered it wanted me,
my paramour.
Didn't it?
Emotional plates somehow shifted gravity,
heart aligned a different axis;
looking back at
only the bad;
grudges swollen, the
ink sacs of poisonous squids,
arcane black injections of hateful
disdain.
I am but a stranger
in the strange land of the heart;
an alien orphan
umbilical to a
memory;
stranger in the
world.
I drown at leisure in quagmires of
anguished tears and muted screams;
defencelessly, with only my selfishness,
nothing more than a
dream in the head of
a dying
man.
My feigned indifference, the winch
dragging forth the
dying day...
It was another quiet day,
As the hours quickly slipped away.
Shooting from the hip,
On another daily trip.
Away from the troubles of the day,
In a place that never let’s you stay.
Strangers wanting to be friends,
In this life, chances are it all depends.
Not the way but today is right,
What will be ahead for me tonight?
I see eyes that stop and stare,
In them compassion and love somewhere.
Catch me crying into the night,
No longer strong to have this fight.
Twelve burning bushes all in a row,
No-where now for me to go.
Hold my hand I see the sign,
What was yours now is mine.
I am a stranger in a strange land,
What I want I can’t fit in my hand.
I am a stranger in a strange land,
Why make me sit, when I need to stand.
I wander the streets during the day,
Try to make the most of my short stay.
I see all kinds of poverty,
Most hidden from us to see.
There’s a glow in my heart
And it’s a good place to start.
They see things that I can’t see,
I’ve looked everywhere but it’s not to be.
Running in and out of my soul,
Sometimes life is an own goal.
There are holes in my memory,
But they are safe havens for me.
I am a stranger in a strange land,
What I want I can’t fit in my hand.
I am a stranger in a strange land,
Why make me sit, when I need to stand.
Written by Robert Meader November 2003
?RJM Publishing 2003
Stranger than strange
Something’s wrong.
They try to rearrange,
By moving me along.
Join society,
Step in line.
Refrain from impropriety,
Follow the sign.
Like a puppet on a string,
Aware but controlled,
On the threads that I cling,
Going once, twice then sold.
As if in auction,
Or just the roll of a dice,
Sold with caution,
My name was a price.
His name is obviously fake
So he inoculates himself from me
He's waiting for my first mistake
So I'll wait also but more patiently
"I have been a stranger in a strange land." Bible, Exodus 2:22
The compass whirrs.
North toward rock, south toward sand.
East toward ice, and west toward river.
Like a game of spin the bottle I take a chance on north,
run my hands over stone and pebble,
the spine of life a twisting snakeskin, shedding.
The compass whirrs
as words and winds uproot me to the south. Dust ridden,
arid. Earth sizzles, a roast overdone. My flaking skin
drenched in sweated drought.
The compass whirrs
as those years of crinkling sand dune heat melt
somehow into eastern snow. You don’t understand
how or why or when those summers became leaves that
fall, became sleet upon which you slip, recklessly, helplessly, toward time’s
splash. The final plunge pool.
Now, western waters offer a mirror,
sometimes murky, sometimes crystal,
and still, the compass whirrs, as you realise
that strange land - your body.
The stranger - you.
I am just a stranger in a strange land,
Finding it hard to fit in or understand.
So many things in the name of progress,
Many more were lost, but it’s to be expected I guess.
They are gone, now leaving only memories,
They now belong to part of history.
We know we can’t bring back the time before,
Once it’d passed through that portal it closed the door.
Leaving me here a stranger in a strange land.
Knowing I can never go back to what I left behind,
Yet knowing I now am a prisoner in this time.