Self Portrait at Twenty Years
And then when I faced my first real defeat
I shrunk into my shell, snail-like, and coiled
further in until the outside world was barely
a whisper or a bad dream. I turned to drink.
I turned to letting loose, becoming a being
not of intellect but desire. Purely Bacchic.
I was sick, in tears, angry, and a mess.
All the things you can be at that age
and people would still excuse you for it.
But the secret, which I whispered, sometimes wailed
but never let slip even when with friends,
lovers or loved ones begged me for it,
to understand why I was the way I am,
to understand why I carried myself like a wound,
was that the defeat which brought me to my knees,
bloodied, was not after a fierce fight,
or even an attack, but simply the fear
of stepping on the battleground. I barely
touched the sand and ran away.
Wounded. Wailing. Worthless. All wrong.
Creep #1
I denied her her proclivities
because she is an angel, yet
she hates me like Satan was spurned
from heaven, which is between her thighs.
Love is a bastard, and I am bent
upon the other edge of exile, searching
for who birthed it. No, it’s not she
who I sought to worship but found
my prayers denied.
And now scientists,
therapists,
even those I called friends,
tell me my mind is twisted,
or that what I proclaim
to be love was really lunacy.
What do they know? My love is deep
like quicksand. Dare not pretend
you can ever, ever escape it.
A Single Note of Despair
He hung his head low, bent upon a table,
as his hands rose up and cupped his ears.
The noise, that terrible noise, outside,
right outside, of machinery burrowing down
into the ground had left an aural mark
in his brain as well. There was a hole in it now.
There was a hole where no thoughts could be found.
Nor dreams. Nor any inkling of sense. Only sound.
Only the sound of the machinery now imprinted
into him. Last night, the burrowing outside
had stopped, yet within, inside that hole
it had not. It kept going with no variance:
just a single note of despair. And now,
even with ears cupped to the point that his hands
were crushing his skull, the burrowing sound,
the hammering sound of the machinery
was still striking that note. That single note.
And it sang a one worded command.
(Sameen Shakya’s poetry has been featured in publications like Alternate Route, Cosmic Daffodil, Hearth & Coffin, Roi Faineant, and Thin Veil Press, among others. He holds an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from St. Cloud State University and is currently based in Kathmandu.)
