People ’round here don’t take kindly to strangers.
Maybe it’s our smell, or just the look of us-
the look that says we’ve seen things, dark things,
things that’d turn any normal man’s innards into pulp;
things that’d transform a soldier into a suckling babe.
People don’t take kindly to strangers.
People don’t take kindly to me.
They don’t even have to know my name, or where I hail from-
I’m a stranger, that’s all there is to it, and I have
destruction sewn into my cloak,
and misery slashed across my lip.
They’ll look, but not for long, and their eyes’ll find
sudden interest in the stones of the street,
and their whispers’ll carry into
uncharted territories, with uncertainty
weaved into their tones.
I’m a ghost to them, a phantom blotted with grime and blood,
here to haunt their way of life, to mark the dirt
with my suffering and sadness,
to make them like me. No, they think,
as they watch me from their windows.
No, it can’t happen here.
No, he can’t happen here.
I’m a harbinger of what lies beyond their walls-
I am the absence of security.
But I’m not what they fear.
People ’round here don’t take kindly to strangers.
Maybe it’s the hardness to our jaws that outlines
a life of unseeable sights, or maybe it’s the shadows in our eyes,
the shadows that flicker against stony stares,
serving as a reminder that there is a hell.
People don’t take kindly to strangers.
People don’t take kindly to me.
Stellular Scribe 