Poems by-Tali Cohen Shabtai

Narcissism

I’m my poetry’s number one fan
I don’t underestimate that sometimes I
am my own audience
more than that I sin by loving myself
if I dig deep into the meaning of the term
I’ll reveal more elements
that are woven into my personality
such as pride, the sense of value I feel for myself
for example when my eyebrows thicken in its reflection –

I read a well-researched, yet baseless study that the eyebrows indicate much more than aesthetic sense.1.
The study’s head researcher, Dr. Miranda Giacomin, sided with my claim without knowing anything by saying,
“Narcissists love attention and admiration and may keep their eyebrows thick so that they are noticed, recognized and remembered. The thicker the eyebrows, the more self-centered the person bearing them.”

Lest I mislead you
Narcissists regularly suffer from repeated fluctuations of self-esteem that vary dramatically from the height
of grandiosity to depression.
My grandiose thoughts
can move within an unbearable gap between
two poles
between how I experience myself and
how I look from the outside.

Between glorification and lowering my value, moving between these two extremes with
acute mood swings
similar to wave fluctuations, to guitar cord oscillations and occasionally to breakdown –
that Dr. Cooper treats
and also curses my arrogance and pride
by saying that I
am applying
Groucho Marx’s saying by saying:
“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”

So I looked in the mirror and hugged her
I fall in love slowly

There are religions and perceptions
preaching that self-love is egotistical and illegitimate, although
there are studies that indicate that we are born in love with ourselves, very much so.
And that this love is self-nourishment and a necessary condition in order
to survive

That is what your babies
will testify to
most of all.

1.1 Researchers from the University of Toronto, Canada, found a direct link between thick, well-groomed eyebrows and narcissism
2. From the poem “Summary” that appeared in the book “Nine years from you,” 2018, published by “Iton 77” publishers, Tali Cohen Shabtai

I am Tali

I read prose only in the third person,
and only translated prose,
poetry, I also read in Hebrew.

I love Wislawa Szymborska, she copies in written word
the creation
in a brilliant fashion, and was recognized during her lifetime and was not among
the female poets who danced the ‘dance of death in life’
for that I lowered her credit.

I think it’s impossible to tag in one breath! A contemporary poetess with
characters that preserved the myth of the ‘cursed poetesses’. For they are
found only in the underground or tomb
There is no negotiation with this judgement

Mainstreamism repels me.
Bestsellers I do not touch.
I love nonfiction books.
Newspapers do not count at all as the writing and reading genre.

And my therapist I address in the second person singular
while omitting the third degree: “doctor”, it’s ok, it’s acceptable –
many poetesses have sat in my chair in front of him
Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath,
and those who ended up as their own hangman.

I often write in the first person singular and also to talk
It is
my way to circumvent
myself from afar.

And do not ask what I often write about! I do not like rhetorical questions that belittle
my intellect.
Tali Cohen Shabtai.