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.

Poetry 2017 Featured Salman Sowdagar

Poetree

Bearing no foliage
Let alone fruits
There it stood
From ages
That big old wood
In a corner of the park.

An oak and maple
And the likes do shed
But only for a time
Unlike that big old wood
Which takes all the rain and sun
From ages
And still stands heedless
Of the stroller's want
For shade.
No wonder no eye it draws
Save the lover's
Which seeks in its vastness
Privateness
To bring forth emotions
Raw and romantic
And those that invoke strife.
But had only that lad
Who meets his beloved under the tree
Every eve
Done something special for her
On her anniversaire
She would be more than pleased
And not walk out the park
Stamping her feet in disgust
Leaving alone the lad
In company of the big old wood.
The lad followed suit
But only to return
In the dead of night
With a paper in left hand
And a white chalk in right
To write
On the brown bole
Of the thick tree
The verses he had inked
For his sweetheart
Which talked of love
That filled his heart.
The morning
That followed the night
Saw the lovers reunite
For the lad had inscribed
Poetry on a tree
Which seemed to the girl's eye
Strikingly beautiful.
But had they once looked up
Before leaving the park
To the big old wood
They would see
On the topmost bough
Of the big old wood
In all its glory
A fresh bud.
And had they once looked up
Before leaving the park
To the big old wood
They would know
Indisputably
Poetry revives not only love
But also life.