The Stranger

I saw the stranger at the window,
he motioned me to stop.
There was something eerie, unnerving about him.
I turned and ran!
Blind panic coursing through my veins
like a bursting dam,
inundating the sleeping vales,
as I sped on, alongside a tram
and there in the window
sat the stranger! grinning a grin!!
Accursed stranger!!
And so I ran on
his smile pursuing me
under the lonely sky
until I found refuge
in the pages of an old antique book,
where swains, Knights and damsels bold
vouchsafed their troth
and plighted their.. plight
in a verdant sceptred sequined isle
set in a verdant sceptred sequined sea
and I by divine right
most correct aristocratic and fair
it’s monarch true!
it’s King!
in a palace, sumptuous and rich,
fit for a King! which I was
with a rich and goodly court
full of goodly courtiers
and here, to entertain me,
the King person, My Fool!
AARRGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
twas the stranger, dressed in motley
cap’n bells, holding a rubber chicken
and so, down to the servants quarters I nipped.
and out the back door, I ran
perused by the jester’s ringing laugh
as into a war zone I blindly fell
dark ominous skies, over twisty lanes
and in the distance the continual pock pock pock
of the guns, big Griselda and enormously fat Freddie
‘You there!’
‘What me sir?’
‘Yes you sir. what’s your regiment?’
I was being addressed y a fattish man I Colonel’s uniform.
‘The fourth foot and mouth sir.’
‘Well take this dispatch to the front.’
‘Yes sir. who shall I give it to sir?’
‘General stranger DSM and bar.’
Without stopping to think
I leapt into a passing taxi.
“To the front!”
I opened and read the dispatch.
“Situation hopeless. Men exhausted.
Enemy overwhelming. Oh Mother.
Where did I go wrong?
My bitter tears fall like the Sybil’s leaves
onto this fractious ashen earth.
Yours sincerely, Brigadier Smyth.
P.S. send more coffins, we’ve run out again!”
The taxi sped through a barren ‘no-man’s’ land.
Shell holes.
Torn barbed wire.
The occasional MacDonald’s.
At last H.Q. loomed out of the mist.
A large country house, standing strangely untouched
In the dead centre, of that barren place.
My interview with General Stranger
Filled me with apprehension and nervous tension
so I nipped into a pissior
for a quick one off the wrist.
As I jerked furiously away
I searched for a suitable image
to facilitate spurting.
Valerie Singleton? No.
Michelle Hunnziker? No.
Ah! I know! A robot.
Wearing a blonde wig,
& a wonder bra! Perfect!
AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Success! & I shot my life giving seed
All over a cartoon crudely drawn
on the bog wall
of Adolf Hitler being buggered
by Winston Churchill!
H.Q. was a gloomy place.
Officials wandered around looking serious and unhappy.
I was directed to a waiting room
I waited.
As I waited it all came back to me.
The stranger.
My panic.
The Antique book.
The war zone.
My nervous tension.
Spurting.
The General will see you now.
I entered furtively.
An old man with a lined face
sat at a large desk.
A window behind him
The sun streaming in.
“You have something for me?”
“Yes sir. This.”
He began to read the dispatch.
“Hopeless…Ashen…mother…coffins eh?”
“Is it all in order sir?”
“Yes. Private…?”
I looked at my name tag.
“Private…Stranger sir.”
“& do you know who I am?”
“Yes. You are General Stranger sir.”
“& not only that!”
& he ripped off his mask to reveal
‘the’ Stranger, leering at me,
Towering over me, a look of triumph,
On his strangely familiar, yet unknown face!
But luckily, in the waiting room,
I had had, had had
A Realisation!!!
“Not so fast ‘the’ stranger.
I think not.”
& grabbing his face I pulled.
The mask over the mask
(What an existential nightmare!)
came away to reveal…
standing before me…
looking abashed and caught out …
why…
It was me!
The stranger was I!
Stranger to me.
Stranger to you.
A stranger to what I felt welling up now
from that deep deep well,
at my very core.
A response to the pained troubled being
who now stood before me.
deny it if I can. Why…
It was love. Love.
& I warmly embraced the terrible stranger
who had perused me
all my days.