Sopranos
Sudden blackness overwhelms
when we are dying or when we
have lived as surrogates in realms
where television makes us free,
and we are left to give our own
interpretations of the dark,
with exegesis that alone
can diagnose the godlike spark
that gave Sopranos life throughout
America and north New Jersey,
and crime they organized with clout
devoid of Mafioso mercy.
Did the blankness of the screen
denote the pulling of the plug,
stretching like a limousine
imagination with a shrug,
or was it maybe a polemic
against the dying of the soul
of the United States, pandemic
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Mea Culpa'd
Crusades, blood libels, inquisitions and conversions that were forced,
indifference to the blood of helpless Jews spilt in the holocaust,
a litany of crimes for which the Pope should use his bully pulpit,
and yet equivocates while in denial, hardly mea culpa’d,
will be forgotten soon, because the mantra never to forget
itself will be forgotten and the crimes of Nazi will be set
aside, diminished in importance by great other acts of genocide
and claims they never happened to six million, and the Jews just lied.
Pope John Paul II has expressed condemnation regarding the acts of the Church against the Jews but has failed to admit that the responsibility was not that of individual Catholics but of the Church. Furthermore, he maintains an eerie silence about the passive role that the Church as a whole, as Pope Pius XII in particular (whom he wishes to canonize) played during the Holocaust.
I wrote the first quatrain on 3/14/00 and the second on 2/10/-0, compiling my poems on the Shoah.
3/14/00,2/10/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Separate From Me
“Separate from me, ” said Abraham to Lot,
“our people cannot coexist with one another.”
Lot chose to live in Sodom, where it’s very hot,
and said to Abraham: “It really doesn’t bother
me that all the people there are dreadful sinners.”
Its nightlife influenced him to be the city’s chooser.
Some people do not have a knack for picking winners,
but do not pity Lot. Although he was a loser
who nearly fried to death and lay with both his daughters,
he ended up the ancestor of Israel’s kings,
when Ruth the Moabite caught up with Boaz, tortoise
that breaks its safety shell and flies with wifely wings.
This is a story that we learn in Aesop’s fables,
relating how the tortoise overtook the hare;
Boaz was a hare who didn’t care for labels,
thought anti-Ruth discrimination wasn’t fair.
In ancient Athens ostracism was ten-yearly,
a ritual that allowed return, recalling Lot’s
descendant who returned to Abraham sincerely,
by tying nuptial knots while cutting Gordian knots.
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Scripture of the Zen
The universe is scripture of the Zen,
and while our inner feelings come and go,
its feelings form an archipelago
where on an island prison live most men.
The scripture, when it’s read, helps to release
the feelings which, confined, lead to confusion,
but once they’re understood help to increase
the sense that life is more than an illusion
The scripture of the universe does not
require any priests or temples, and
interpretation of its poetry and plot
is what Zen masters hope we’ll understand
at every moment of our lives. It changes
according to the moment and the season,
sometimes remote as Himalayan ranges,
sometimes approachable with rhyme and reason.
With this scripture we can reach the realm
where thoughts that are exposed are safely bared,
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poem by Gershon Hepner (21 September 2008)
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Love As A Work Of Art
A work of art in which far more than just part
of the work, its feeling, can be all
it is composed of is far more than merest art:
it is the love in which all lovers fall.
The 12/30/10 WSJ listed the New Year resolutions of some major cultural figures. Olafur Eliasson, a Danish artist, best known in the U.S. for erecting man-made 'Waterfalls' around New York, said:
One of my goals for the year is to create a work of art that only consists of a feeling. I'm trying to work out how to get at that, how to define it as a work of art. There are obviously many feelings, but the one I'd like to create is the feeling of community. Highly abstract, I know.
I bought this solar-powered airplane, but right now it's all in pieces in a garage. Before I got it, it flew, but I took it apart so I could see if I could also turn it into a work of art. But aesthetics and aerodynamics didn't work out so well with me, and now it won't fly. So if the engineers can help put it back together, my goal is to fly it from Berlin to London this summer.
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Not Forgotten Or Passed Over
Not forgotten or past over, though
the numbers simply can’t be comprehended,
which is the reason why we tend to know
far more about the way that Anne’s life ended
than of the way six million died, with smoke
of harmful fires drifting from our eyes,
unseen except within the minds that choke.
How sad that when a single person dies,
by hate and senseless prejudice bereaved,
we say, “This must not happen, ” but pass over
the victims of mass murder, debriefed
by those who claim to understand Jehovah.
Inspired by September Song, by Geoffrey Hill
Undesirable you may have been, untouchable
you were not. Not forgotten
or passed over at the proper time.
As estimated, you died. Things marched,
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Milking Stars
Man cannot milk a star that shines
in galaxies in milky ways,
but can milk love, when he entwines,
unstar-crossed, trying to amaze,
the woman he attempts to enter
when she is ready, being wet,
to let thim penetrate her center,
where she has dragged her net
to capture lights that emanate
from all the pores of his excited
body, shining, when they copulate
in starlight, being unbenighted.
Inspired by a poem by Anne Sexton:
When Man Enters Woman
When man
enters woman
like the surf biting the shore
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Do Gray Women Blush?
Do gray women blush,
when they’re feeling blue
getting a great rush
for a man who’s new?
Do they ever get,
to their extreme surprise,
suddenly most wet
when they see the size
of the man who made them
blush? The answer’s yes.
I know, because I’ve laid them.
Who are they? You must guess.
Inspired by a sexy dream I had last night, and by comments Roger Scruton makes about blushing in Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation.
This was Linda’s response:
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
Grey is the color of cloudy skies
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Mixed Metaphors
Fast and funny, smart and very nimble
is his mind, the poet thinks,
making what is complicated simple,
mixing metaphors like drinks,
until, becoming quite inebriated,
his speech begins to slur,
and, manic as a tom-cat that has mated,
his poems fail to purr,
and thoughts like literate lemming herds stampede
as fearlessly they dash
till, unrestrained by Microsoft, with speed
on pixeled screens they crash,
as slow as death and very sadly humbled,
like cats that have been fixed,
while, static as statistics, he has stumbled
in metaphors he's mixed.
Barbara Ehrenreich reviews 'Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, ' by James Gleick ('Pantheon' in 'Think Quick' (NYT Book Review, September 12,1999) . She says the book is 'nimble, smart, often funny, and -best of all - fast.' She explains that Glueck says that 'we glom onto Diana or O. J. or John Jr. like a lemming herd in full stampede. Against all expectations, the collective brain that emerges from our ever-richer connectedness is turning out to be kind of dumb'.
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Bringing Triumph To The Brain
Advances in research depend
on unexpected brilliant breaks
the gods fortuitously send
not triumphs born of our mistakes.
Gruesome often is the fate
emerging from a triumph, but
mistakes will often impregnate
a barren mind that had been shut.
Although by blind spots we’re deceived,
and inspiration tends to wane,
errors that we have conceived
may bring triumph to our brain.
Inspired by Owen Gingerich’s review of Ingrid D. Rowland’s book “Giordano Bruno” (The Long Road to Infinity, ” WSJ, December 19,2008) :
Part of her purpose, she says, is to portray Bruno as a literary figure: “He was perhaps, more a poet than an empirical observer. Yet his intellectual contradictions, his blind spots and his insights serve as a reminder that scientific investigation has always depended on inspiration as well as investigation, on mistakes as well as triumphs.”..Ms. Rowland’s gripping chronicle gives a clear picture of his pilgrimage and a vivid, horrifying account of his trial and gruesome fate––in Rome’s public square.
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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