Today I read Tabatha Yeatts’ Poetry Friday post. She had an idea to use the beautiful poem, “Trust a Woman With Many Jars” by Mackenzie Berry, as a mentor text.
Then while I sat in church tonight, the priest said, “We all have narcissism, some a little (he held up two fingers in a small pinch) and some a lot (he held his arms open wide).”
Yes, indeed. We are all sinful. God died to save us from our narcissism, but we remain vulnerable to ugliness in ourselves, and caught from others, as well. Now, with apologies to Mackenzie Berry, I used her poem as a mentor to write my own:
Fear a Narcissist With Many Jars
Who fills them with disgust and loathing
and makes others weep
as they fall off the train of empathy
Fear a narcissist who can blind others with hatred
whose art is dishonest dealing and grift
Who lacks conscience and skill
Fear a narcissist who says, “How stupid are the people?”
and “You have to take out their families.”
Fear a narcissist who
hijacks democracy
on the pinions of prejudice.
Who reviles truth.
Who projects pathology.
Who makes George Orwell
turn over in his grave.
Who learned twisted lessons from 1984:
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”*
Fear a narcissist who
threatens an experiment
a quarter millennium in the making.
Fear a deranged narcissist
who calls for
total authority
retribution
bloodbaths
and bedlam.
Fear a narcissist who demands
immunity from the rule of law.
Fear a narcissist Bible Salesman, who is a
“liar who takes pride in his nihilism.”**
Who breaks anything he can’t have for himself.
Who cons, who dupes, who fleeces.
Who is a broken promise.
Who spreads narcissism systemically
and without partiality.
We are all at risk.
Fear a narcissist, I beg you.
*1984 by George Orwell
**”Good Country People” by Flannery O’Conner
