A Stranger 

 

 

 

A Stranger 

 

A man, faded away, breathed his last, in a remote isolated site, all-alone 

his plea for assistance, flopped ‘n floundered, fell to a zilch, for he was long gone  

Was scorched ‘n singed in the crematorium, nobody shed a tear, nobody wailed ‘n moaned 

a name ticked off the list, another life razed down, subjugated ‘n overthrown  

 

Why O’ why, I feel disheartened ‘n dispirited, I hole up, snivel, sob ‘n cry 

He was a stranger, how can he rattle me so, unsettle my earth ‘n my sky 

Extraneous ‘n expendable his existence, he was left to rot, left high ‘n dry 

Had a lesser god devised his world, a lesser mother birthed him perhaps, I sigh 

 

Why people didn’t rush at his beck ‘n call, why stratagems were not his to command, 

Was he just a cog in the wheel of a greedy ‘n greasy chain of supplies ‘n demand? 

To toil ‘n labor, from dawn to dusk, not ever ask questions ‘n pretend to understand  

A somber sorry life, a dismal ‘n diseased death, fate always dealt him a bad hand 

 

A stranger’s death jolted ‘n jarred the bedrock of my subconscious, rummaged my thoughts  

I drudge ‘n delve to hold on, my mind tied, trapped, tangled in these mussed-up knots 

Will I ever fathom the conundrums of reality, be prudent enough to join the ambiguous dots? 

 

Author’s note-

Dedicated to nameless faceless workers who work tirelessly throughout their lives.

I wrote this poem for a prompt-based contest by the Asian Literary society. The prompt was to weave a verse around ‘stranger.’ This verse was chosen as one of the winners. you can see the certificate here-

https://supriyasbanter.com/third-prize-poetry-contest-a-stranger/

#poem,#verses, #soultouching,#everydaypoems 

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