Have you ever experienced being a stranger in a strange land?

The inward eye abruptly receives a stinging sensation
As your esteem is pierced by contempt and disdain
Quite quickly your naïve-colored face, complacent in its divine playground
is cracked open and dysfunctional
In its un-open carton, it is clear that everyone will begin to notice
The yellow soul seeping through and soaking your skin
What reason have these eyes
What right do they have to leer
This assimilated soul feels justified to stare
Filtering daylight through the never ending stretch of land between you and them, until finally a thin line shatters all hope of attaining naturalization
The beauty of your surroundings and your apparent bubble of dignity are now
Scorned with humility in a battlefield of contending egos

In a town where being a “tourist” is the biggest insult,
walking straight, unwavering, and invisible keeps you doing as they do
While smelling the flowers and fresh cut grass,
admiring the whole grain sands in the pavement,
eyes wander piercing an unfamiliar gaze.

Weary feet hesitate, turn twice, and follow an imperceptible smell
a direction that could be, maybe this way, maybe that way,
which way you don’t really know.
A humble question to your neighbor at the corner
Is a resignation of your application for native status

With a cocky smile, mocking under his breath you swear you hear him scream,
“I’m a local,” as some morally instructive observation of the obvious.
“You must be a TOURIST?!”
“No, no,”
you say and defend your year-long encampment here
on the very same island your new-found friend treads upon each day.
A stench of intimidation fills your subdued posture
And he appears to revel in your inferiority.

This man has stripped you down, naked
in front of the world,
and broken the solid ice beneath your feet
plunging you into icy waters.
A shock wave travels at light speed through your system
every skin cell turning from bright red to ghastly white.

Gawking, passerbys take the opportunity
to scavenge the dregs of self-worth, dignity, and respect
that float to the top of your hole in the ground.
You are paralyzed in surreal time
as ravenous wolves fight
for fresh meat buckling at the knees.

Dark eyes shift their gaze on a whim of another’s trepidation.
Drama unfolds from the space around you
like humid posters from a wall.
For no reason but an insult…your emotion appears to tear apart in clots

Without even looking, you sense more and more spectators
and a bead of sweat starts to trickle down your arm.
What to do. WHAT TO DO?

After flailing around in your self-inflicted fate
a stranger in a strange land,
an insignificant nobody
you accept your neighbor’s condescension and breathe.

Calm, composed, and focused,
A smile begins to form and blood returns
Flooding your wit
creating pressure, making diamonds.

“Listen here you jackass, a tourist in your mind I may be, but chew on this:
I’m out seeing the world and everything it has to offer,
feeling it, tasting it, hearing it, you even think it, and I’m doing it. You.
You sit there and mock me, but you are a wall flower,
a local ornament to an everyday routine.
Life passes you by and you don’t even know it.
Every day that you get up and follow the same cyclic life, doing the same things, seeing the same people, eating the same food, at the same times, you have deserved the class of being a local, and I congratulate you on such a fine accomplishment, but I must leave you now. I have some other place to be, at some other time.
I thank you kindly for your advice
so tomorrow I can be a local here and a tourist somewhere else.

02/15/2006

Author's Note: Wandering NYC in 1998. Living at 1582 York Ave. Apt. 3C...a tourist on his own island, Wyatt defended justice and the Amerikan way!

Posted on 02/16/2006
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