Tina Gorjalina: Poem about Narcissism for Students

Tina Gorjalina

Once there was a gorgeous girl

named Tina Gorjalina

Crazy for the way she looked

You really should have seen her

Mirrors irresistible

She kissed her own reflection

Pouted out her lips and said,

“What absolute perfection!”

Wished for mirrors, giant ones

on every wall and ceiling

and paths of them beneath her feet,

"My goodness, I'm appealing."

Her bedroom lined with photographs

that weighed down every shelf

None of Mum or Gran or friends

just hundreds of herself

She couldn't bear the other girls

She barked at them like dogs

She said they’d need a handsome prince

to turn them back from frogs

But sometime in her teenage years

with something in her eye

she asked a friend to help her out

That friend just walked on by

And what it was that landed there

infected both eyes now

It grew and spread with rapid speed

but Tina knew not how

The last thing Tina ever saw:

her stunned and staring face

with disappearing, panicked eyes

and mirrors in their place

A sci-fi, mutant, android girl

with chrome, robotic eyes

her two-way, concave corneas

exposed her inner cries

For deep beyond her glitching lids

what everybody knew

Miss Tina Gorjalina

had been blinded by the truth

The world could see inside her soul

But she could not see out

The world could watch her vanity

reduce to deepest doubt

A mixed-up mind, a selfish soul

A darkness dawned within

A fading flash, regrets rehashed

“The girl I could have been.”

So old she grew and lonely too

She never saw again

except black streams of memories

that flickered in her brain

A beauty on the outside still

You really should have seen her

Crazy for the way she looked

Poor Tina Gorjalina

©2009 Mark Bird