TALI COHEN SHABTAI

TALI COHEN SHABTAI

Salonnière

I live with a vieille dame

Among her Prozac and cigarettes

She welcomed me by a first introduction

With Anne Sexton's book in 1967

She gave me a contract to stay neurotic in her

House

And behave like a

Petite Muette beside her bedroom

At that time she looked like a hostess in a house of ill

Repute,

Walking like a salonnière in her salon littéraire (never with visitors)

With that appearance of maison-close, then

She invited men to clean her old furniture

From new dust

I met her first seven years ago,

The time it took for her foundation

To blend un parfume

To her taste

Less than the time it took me to find

The favored delicacy for my

Lady cat

I barely could read her language, but -

We were aware to the provocation of

Douleur-pain.

She would not be surprised by any disgrace

I would bring into my life

Neither by any sensation I would choose to have

In my colors le matin.

She warned me from being a

Poète maudit  - a cursed poet.

I watched her, I knew.

It all started with a clothes cupboard

Contrast

You look

At the crimson lipstick

Setting it against the faded color

Of your life.

She must be courageous

To wear that color

In days of mourning.

"I'm bleeding".

No, you can't

Be that brave.

She smiles

.

Four Years – In The – Country

Writing The Book:

A poet is a type of clown who is placated with his pain

There are many people/ who walk

With the injuries I inflicted/

They know more about the story

Behind/

The sixty four cents or so/that they will never

See

At close range

Four years separating ever-since that time/

They carry their own steady beat/

‘Which musical work?’ a twenty four year old child

Understands already that ‘it requires strengthening’!

The child is not from here. He has been a man for a long time,

he has been crowned that way

By women with huge buttocks

Who had enough of western “creations’

Four years since that time/

This porridge is bitter!/I had to rent Puerto Rico

From one of the gangs in Trenton/

To insert a challenging beat

Into the “creation“

Inebriated/ Also a poet

That with him we looked like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

Would have offered the same

Services/And I don’t care about counting the number of his books. /

Even if I persuaded /

A black female lover from the past who could harden spongy vaginal

Tissues for a cent Jewess

To return/

To the

hlo

Would have offered the same

Services/And I don’t care about counting the number of his books. /

Even if I persuaded /

A black lover from the past who could harden spongy vaginal

Tissues for a cent Jewess

To return/

To the

creator/  who all she knows/is to handle in

Words./ That would have push some blood into “The Creation”

Although she did manage to make her dream come true the creator/

I too managed/

To kick her in the ten-thousands in four

Years./me

TALI COHEN SHABTAI

TALI COHEN SHABTAI, is a poet she was born in Jerusalem Israel. Tali began writing poetry at young age of six, she was an excellent literature student. She began Publishing her impressions in the school’s newspaper. She firstly published her poetry in a respectful literature magazine in Israel the “Moznayim”at age 15. Tali has written three poetry books: “Purple diluted in a black’s thick “bilingual 2007 “Protest” bilingual 2012 “Nine years away from you”2018, Two of her books are bilingual , and the third book  “Nine years from you” is scheduled to be published in foreign edition abroad. Tali’s poems expresses spiritual and physical exile. Cohen is studying her exile and freedom paradox, Her cosmopolitan vision is very obvious in her writing Cohen Shabtai lived years in Oslo Norway, the USA. She is very prominent as a poet with special lyric"she doesn’t give herself easily, but subject to her own rules". Tali studied at the "David Yellin College of Education" for a  bachelor's degree. She is a member of the Hebrew Writers Association and the Israeli Writers Association in the state of Israel. In 2014, Cohen Shabtai also participated in a Norwegian documentary about poets' lives called "The Last Bohemian"- "Den Siste Bohemien",and screened in the cinema in Scandinavia. By 2020, her fourth book of poetry will be published which will also be published in Norwegian.