Morning, big city location,
a Japanese subway station...
a single gaijin (foreigner)
all by himself, in a corner,
and yet surrounded on all sides...
the wave of humanity rides...
People stare, with mute undertones.
No wonder he feels so alone.
Morning, 8 AM.
Kyoto Subway Station.
A single gaijin,
a foreigner surrounded
yet standing out in the crowd.
The train clips along,
slows down, stops, starts up again
repetitively.
Whilst humanity surrounds,
one can still feel so alone.
Wayland Bunch a gaijin
With aspirations of being haijin
Worked tediously for some time
Writing poems that don’t even rhyme
It was a dark cool night, Manhattan, downtown,
when in the shadows, a figure emerges
with acts of stealth, it surges,
without even a single sound
As it makes it's way, quietly through the streets,
it is unseen by even the closest of beings
how can it move so far and not be seen,
in a city so populated, it is quite a feat
The shadow moves into Central Park,
the air of movement, sophisticated, scripted
as if practiced, religiously, encrypted,
cunning, as though it owns the dark
Suddenly a scream pierces the night,
the shadow moves to where it heard the sound
to see a woman, being forced to the ground,
by the light of the moon, is now into sight
So swiftly it moves, in the blink of an eye,
it reaches down, raises a figure before it
the man sees only two eyes,through a narrow slit
a voice is heard, commanding, Gaijin must die
" You are without honor, goodbye Gaijin"
in a single moment, a sword is drawn
one stroke, so quick, the shadow is gone,
the man falls to his knees, so it begins
The Samuari..........
Unable to imagine attempting the steep descent before me;
I furtively follow a turquoise topped Canadian cabinetmaker
and her Aussie friend discuss a chair lift down?
With a grumble and groan
I realize there must have been a chair lift up!
After one aborted boarding of the lift
Pay, pay, one had to pay!
Where to pay? How to pay!
Ahhhhhhh, here silly Gaijin, pay here!
I grab the circling chair; hold tight to my “go bag”
and clamber to the seat.
And away we go. Echoes of Jackie Gelson!
I watch the wee ones whoosh and bounce by
swinging their stocking covered legs
adjusting their baseball caps “Go Tigers!”
“Take me out to the ball game wheedles its way
into my frontal lobes
The lyrics printed on the wall of a building
beside the train station (in English)
running pell-mell from mind to hum.
The lifted landed me with a running stop.
within an atrium on the top floor of a modern building.
Somewhere?
Oopps.
Beings, precious, small, frail, they
walk at a precise pace, more wary, than gaijin*
with their large log-like feet,
of the other small precious lives,
the flight of tiny, blue and gold-faced, birds,
the cream dipped moth .. on an errant breeze.
Close-cropped, clean-cut, trimmed and clipped as their hedges,
softly edged like the bamboo fenced trees and lawns;
the Japanese glide through their Tokyo
as the kanji glides across the page.
Beings, precious, small, frail, they
walk at a precise pace;
more wary than gaijin with their
large log-like feet,
of the other small precious lives;
the flight of tiny blue and gold faced birds,
the cream dipped moth on an errant breeze.
Close cropped- clean, cut trimmed
and as clipped as their hedges,
edged like the bamboo fenced trees and lawns ;
the Japanese glide through their Tokyo
as the kanji glides across the page.
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