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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