OUTSIDER QUARTET
1. BELONGING
An outsider even among outsiders.
The strangest stranger in the strangest land.
Judged by peers and other deriders
From the human race effectively banned.

Never accepted anytime or anywhere.
Always vulnerable with my soul laid bare.
All that I wanted was to satisfy my longing
And with the like-minded a state of belonging.

At long last my fortunes turned
And united me with kindred spirits.
After years of rejection I've learned
That belonging can bring more than visits.

2. HOME SOUR HOME
Stepping through my splintered front door
I felt myself quiver to the core.
Where silence once reigned supreme
Strange noises came as from a bad dream.
Unfriendly shuffles and unfriendlier clicks
Made me regret having moved to the Styx.
I tried to return the way I had come
But heard harsh words in the voice of scum.
I knew I was doomed by my own shady past
And my very next breath was to be my last.

3. KNUCKLING DOWN
Having spent seven years knuckling down in a small but stifling oppressive town in East Germany I finally achieved that freedom which I had been longing for, but been denied for what seemed like a lifetime.
It wasn't just the neighbours who teased me horrendously with their constant neo-fascist taunts but every man, woman and child I encountered in that grey doomed town of the apparently living dead who made my life one that I would have traded with any other human being in any other country.
Several times I had tried to take a holiday from Hell but the sneering customs officials always prevented me, on some pretext or other, before the final humiliation of the day they publicly burned my passport to horrible cheers from the crowd of unacceptable onlookers.
Was I destined to remain in Hell forever? Never before has a town been so suitably named.
Finally I could take no more. The battered worm turned as I stepped out of my private Pandora's box and picked up a crowbar on the day the local neighbourhood hate-watch committee burst into my humble and frail domain.
Before any barbed words could cut me to the quick I lashed out killing the two leaders with two swift blows.
The mob recoiled for a moment and then surged forward in the fury of blood lust.
When I regained consciousness I soon became aware of my fate. They thought that the death penalty was too lenient - consequently a life sentence had been decreed.
Now I sit calmly and peacefully gazing out from my single barred window at the cold emotionless length of the Berlin Wall happy to have escaped from Hell to the tranquillity of my Room with a View.

4.THE LAST WATERING HOLE
The city was dead. Its population of seven million had recently shuffled off this mortal coil.
A heavy silence hung over the dust-choked streets and cracked skyscrapers.
Darkness had arrived early in the day and would more than outstay its welcome.
All colour and pulse had oozed out of the atmosphere leaving a setting like a film noir landscape in a forgotten book rotting in a lost attic.
The only light, sound and flicker of animation existed within a small cafeteria on the ground floor of an otherwise extinct office block.
"Pass the sugar" asked a deadpan voice.
"There is no sugar, no drinks and no utensils for the provision of refreshments" responded the other.
"Then what can we do?"
"Nothing but sit here gazing at one another for 111 years".
"Why 111 years?"
"That is when our circuits corrode".
The two robots gazed at one another for decade after decade. They did not move as there was nowhere for them to go. They did not speak for they had nothing more to say.
Meanwhile in the outside world nothing happened.