Making Of The Outsider Poem by Raj Arumugam

first you devalue
and the person you undervalue
and the man, the woman
must struggle like a crab
at the bottom of the rattan basket
as in an Asian wet market
you do it the first year
and you do it the fifteenth
and you say, as in an old game of Monopoly:
Go back to start…
Efficient discourse and forms and procedures
and cold smiles and paper
will be the clay from which
is fashioned the Being of the Outsider
and then you might strike at the knee
as Michelangelo might have done, and say:
Now, speak!
And the Being of the Outsider does better than Speak,
for the Stranger Sings the Song of Years:
I am the Outsider
The Stranger in one's Own
you don't understand, I don't fit
and we don't see meaning in either
I am your Outsider
you can busy about
first you devalue
and the person you undervalue
you do it the first year
and you do it the fifteenth
for I am your Outsider,
the happy, happy Stranger