A Pariah's Heartbreak

By Shaakira Ally

A Pariah’s Heartbreak is a series of beautifully written poems which gives a compelling look inside the chaotic mind of a trauma survivor. The poems give an alluring and devastatingly painful account of issues such as solitude, heartbreak, gender based violence, society’s disapproval, anxiety, trauma, mental health issues, among many others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398433663

Shaakira Ally

Shaakira Ally is a poet, spoken word artist and poetry slam winner. She graduated with a Bachelor in Education from the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, where she majored in English (Language and Literature) and Historical Studies. Her poetry focuses on issues such as gender-based violence (and other types of abuse), mental health issues and discrimination.

Book preview

A Pariah’s Heartbreak

An excruciating truth

An irrevocable curse

A pariah’s reality

Struck by a million bolts of lightning

With anarchy through her it desecrates

Impelling every fibre, it lacerates

Melting her skin right through its subcutaneous layer

She feels the intensity of her heart’s beat from the inside of her throat

Her vocal chords rupture as she screams

from the severe agony of her skin’s corrosion

The malodorous pungency

of her burnt flesh is unbearable

The bones of her limbs are now dismembered

She cannot claw

her fingertips are severed

Toward the shrine she coerces

her disfigured skeleton to grovel forward

The lightning tauntingly mocks

Purposefully missing

each time she thinks it will knock

Finally she makes it to the shrine

and prays like a pilgrim

Stuttering as she pleads for absolution

from her so-called ‘crime’

The lightning laughs derisively at her

Each electrostatic discharge

now even more diabolical than before

An unanswered supplication

A pilgrim’s humiliation

An irreversible damage

A devotee’s disgrace

An atrocious rape of faith

Her body can no longer bear to fight the ache

So she begs for its embrace

But the lightning vehemently rejects

it intends to desolate

It violates her soul with its wicked titillation

Heaven ablaze

Hell in a rage

Still the lightning continues to titillate

But the lightning does not follow

with a thunderquake

A rape of her mental state

A pariah’s heartbreak

Pariah

When they rubberneck at her what do they see?

They speculate: how did this accursed creature come to be?

A minority feel pity toward her

Pretending as if her existence is that of normality

Their recognition of a higher deity

entails them to practise sincerity

Fearing the Almighty they try to treat her humanely

Ignoring the evident deformity

They then turn to silent prayers of sympathy

Trying their best to disregard her abnormality

Others stare at her fearfully

Running off hand in hand with their anxiety

Veiling the eyes of their seeds

Trying to protect them from nightmarish dreams

And then there’s the postulant saints

Who go out of their way to be virtuous toward her

With their saccharine smiles

As if they could actually feel empathy

Yet they are only that way in the presence of society

They fool themselves into thinking that

they have given their fair share of philanthropy

They should be nominated in an Academy Award ceremony

The preponderance of the antagonists glare at her

in utter disgust and abhorrency

Among them are those who make her the subject

of complete ridicule and buffoonery

They hunt and assail her until she feels anaesthetized

They taunt her until she is dispatched

of the anchor that holds her mental psyche

They rape her of a happy life

This is why she would rather embrace every writhing bite,

To the grave’s delight

Ending her plight

She says: ‘Angel of death,

I await our tryst’

She knows she would find solace in aeon

and eagerly awaits her tryst with the angel of death

For him to deliver her to her final fate

She prays, ‘Oh Lord, please send him

You rule the Almighty throne

while I am here doomed and all alone’

She wonders if she would she be welcomed

by the custodians of heaven’s gate

She did keep her faith

She tried to keep her purity too

but that they despoiled away

Taunting