Poetry 2018 Longlist, Salman Sowdagar

Of Loneliness

Has it not touched anyone?
What’s that? Make a guess.
It’s no pun,
That word ‘loneliness’.
A feeling so dreadful,
A nightmare more or less,
Has taken lives beautiful,
Into the graves of nothingness.
Neither the Queen nor the King,
Neither their sweet little Princess,
Nor her Prince Charming,
Have had against it the finesse.
No living soul; none,
Has succeeded to suppress,
This helluva dragon,
That troubles the masses.
It holds a power,
You can never assess,
Which makes people cower,
Under its stress.
You will not know when,
Slowly does it progress,
Into your life’s den,
And puts you in distress.
Is there a way out?
Going for a congress?
Or shouting out aloud…
About it in the press?
Try everything; it won’t go,
It’s better to confess,
A friend it is; not a foe,
A part of your consciousness.
It can be a positive thing,
If only you have senses,
To understand its calling,
And to caress it; your aloneness.