Still Alone

Surrounded by friends,
and by family, too,
I look around me
and I can't help but feel
alone.
~
I do not understand
how this could be
How this all-encompassing
dark abyss, this terrible
lonely hole, can never
be filled, how the love
and companionship
that had once filled it
can be forever gone.
~
I cannot believe that they
can simply disappear,
but perhaps, as if they were
nothing more than worthless dirt,
They have scattered on the
wind of my life.
~
My parents are always
there, loving and supporting
(except when I go against
their beliefs, of course, but
that was only once, long ago).
They talk and I listen, and
I talk and they listen, yet
the hole is still there, the
particles still scattered.
~
Outside, I stand, sometimes
in the wind, sometimes in the
rain, and maybe in the sun, too.
I hear the birds sing their lovely
songs, and hear the laughter of
my neighbors, but sometimes
only the river water, dark and
murky, is there, gushing over rocks
in a never-ending journey, on its
way to a place no man shall ever
know.
~
And I dare to think that I am
still alone. I know not how
this can be, with so much life
and love surrounding me, but
somewhere down the line I
lost it all to the winds of time,
and so far gone is everything
I knew in carefree childhood.
I know that I may never find
it once more, and I can only hope
that someday what is left
in this world will be enough,
that everything still waiting for me
will be enough to fill this cursed hole.
~
But I can only hope, as at the moment,
I am still alone.
~
~
~
A/N: I realized that I haven't written anything in a while and that made me a bit depressed (hence the nature of this poem), so I blew off some homework and started to write. This was what happened. I wrote this in maybe five minutes, fiddled with it for five more, and then decided to post it. Critiques are very welcome.

but perhaps, as if they were
nothing more than worthless dirt,
They have scattered on the
wind of my life.

This is a great simile, but I think you're saying the relationships you had were worthless dirt? I"m not sure if that's what you meant.

This has a lot of good base emotion in it, but the poem is too inwardly focused. I can't feel what you're feeling, I can't relate to you at all. (When I say you, I don't mean you as a writer, but the speaker of the poem, since it's in the first person...) This poem is all about what you're feeling, but you want to bring the reader in and make them feel it too. Make me relate, make me feel with you. You've got a great simile up there! Try to use more poetic devices, less situational stuff (This happened with my parents, now I'm lonely inside still) to describe your feelings. Don't just talk about it, describe it and show it. Here's an article I wrote a few years ago that might help you, and some of the commentors have given their advice too: Emotional Poetry Here's another one by Snoink on Navel Gazing. Not to say you're actually navel gazing in this, but it still may help you to figure out how to improve what you have thus far.

One of the most important things a poem can do is affect the reader in some way. Make them feel, make them think, make them react. Another great place to learn how to do this? Read more poetry! Trust me, reading poetry is sooo good for you.


Best of luck!

Thanks for the advice! About the worthless dirt/worthless relationships thing, thank you for pointing that out. When I reread it after I wrote it, I saw dirt all by itself and thought of worthless as an adjective to add to it. I completely neglected to realize that, as dirt is part of a simile, I was adding worthless to something else too. Haha, that's what I get for careless revising though.

Also, thank you for pointing out that I did quite a lot of telling, and there was definitely some navel-gazing in there, too. Your advice really helped a lot, and I'll definitely use it while revising (though I'll be a bit more careful this time around (^_-)).

your poem was lovely I enjoyed the deep expression of feelings its difficult to express onces feeling in writing but I think this poem has something to do with what you are experiencing or afraid of experiencing and you did a good work in expressing it. But from every bad experience there must be a cause and until you define that cause you feelings will never be truely understand. what I see in this poem is that the cause of the poets sad experience is not made know to the reader so it will be difficult for the reader to fully understand the depth of the poets feelings. What I advise you do is take a verse or two to explain a cause for this sad feeling.

Anyway maybe its just me. Keep writing