Please Lady Please
Please lady please, do play our song
again, it isn’t over yet,
though I sometimes done you wrong,
those moments, lady, please forget.
I wanna hear our song again,
although you don’t feel close to me;
I’m not like all the other men
from whom you’ve vowed that you’d be free.
I wanna hold you one more time,
and play our song so you’ll recall
the times that you declared that I’m
the man for who you’d always fall.
Country music, old and new,
can never sound as good as tunes
we’ve sung together, me and you,
dawn, day and night, and afternoons.
[...] Read more
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Less Seductive
Less seductive than potato casseroles,
some women don’t deserve from me a ballad,
to get one, they have got to please me with their roles,
more like chopped liver than potato salad.
My favorite women arfe not entrées but desserts,
tiramisu, a sherbert or a crème
brûlée, and after I have cleared my breath with Certs,
I get rewarded by most fatales femmes.
I’ve learned that making unforeseeable what life
becomes can be for sexual tastebuds most exciting,
and since my unchaste chef is my blue-ribboned wife,
I do not worry about wine and lighting.
Inspired by Kenneth Turan’s comment, LA Times, September 2008, reviewing “Appaloosa, ” comparing the seductivness of Renée Zellweger, playing the role of Allison French, to that of a potato casserole:
Given the marked lack of piano-playing women with extensive wardrobes in Appaloosa, both Cole and Hitch are smitten, albeit to varying degrees, with the newcomer. Which really is too bad. Though the press notes insist that Allison French is 'beguiling, ' the reality is that she is anything but. With a simpering manner that offers all the charm and seductiveness of a potato casserole, she is not only unconvincing as the object of multiple suitors, she is also so off-putting a character that you wince when she comes on the screen. Though the Oscar-winning Zellweger has been excellent when she matches up well with the roles she plays, this is not a part she connects to at all. French is such a distraction that it's difficult to focus on the rest of 'Appaloosa's' plot, which involves the attempt to bring that reprobate rancher to justice and the working out of various romantic entanglements. One of the best lines in 'Appaloosa's' script talks about how fate has a way of making 'the unforeseeable that which your life becomes' and the way French's presence derails the entire enterprise is also something no one had the vision to foresee.
11/27/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
What Is Your Favorite Work Of Art?
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE WORK OF ART?
What is you favorite work of art?
The answer that I'd like to hear is "You! "
You've been my favorite still the start
of our relationship, and when I view
you even in a reproduction
made by a camera I want to touch
the source of this work's great seduction,
the work of art I love so very much.
Even if you don't say "You! "
and your answer doesn't correspond
to mine, please do not look askew
at me while you are looking far beyond.
Kate Murphy interviews the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.in the NYT,4/29/12. He tells her:
I first heard Rufus Wainwright by accident about five years ago. I was doing research at Hampton Court in England and I came out one summer afternoon and he was doing a sound check. I heard him sing a song called "The Art Teacher, " which just happens to be about a girl falling in love with an art teacher at the Metropolitan Museum and looking back on this experience in her middle age. It's such an evocative and brilliant song, and I've loved his music ever since.
[...] Read more
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Some Chicken
Some chicken, Churchill said, some neck.
It seemed that Britain’s had been wrung,
and after death no chickens peck,
but Britain did, though Hitler flung
his Luftwaffe at it, to blitz
the nation which was not a chicken.
This is a simile that fits
each one of us. Though we may sicken
as we approach near-death, it’s not
our head, which time attempts to sever,
that helps us to survive, but what
some call the life-force that says “Never! ”
Like slaughtered chickens without heads
it lets us run around until,
ignoring prayers and futile meds,
we say to God: “Now do Your will.”
Inspired by a poem, “The Hen, ” by Ellen Bryant Voigt, which first appeared in Claiming Kin (1976) . Charles Simic quoted it in the NYR, December 18,2008, in a review of poems by her Ron Padgett. He cites Edward Hirsch, who correctly states: “A bleak energy of mourning permeates her work.” Simic adds: “We have become a nation of self-absorbed individuals who care little about the lives of the underprivileged, and that attitude has even affected our literature. Voigt doesn’t have trouble putting herself in other people’s shoes.
THE HEN
[...] Read more
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Hands And Tongue
Hands on which all babies crawl
and later learn to catch a ball
don’t always love to curl
around the parts of me that quiver
when you’ve touched them as love almsgiver.
Are yours like those hands, girl?
Tongues that dare to make a speech,
and sometimes even taste a peach,
don’t always care to kiss
the lips that, though they are unsealed,
belong to men who aren’t well-heeled.
Are yours like those tongues, miss?
Inspired by Natalie Angier, writing about fish in the Science Times of the NYT, February 19,2008 (“What People Owe Fish: A Lot”) :
Being a resolute hydrophobe who has no more desire to go for a swim than might a kitten in a bag or Luca Brasi in “The Godfather, ” I admit I never thought of myself as a large, scaleless fish out of water. Yet after reading Neil Shubin’s brisk new book, “Your Inner Fish, ” and speaking with other researchers who use fish to delve into the history of vertebrates in general and ourselves in particular, I realize that many traits we take pride in, the body parts and behaviors we exalt as hallmarks of our humanity, were really invented by fish. You like having a big, centralized brain encased in a protective bony skull, with all the sensory organs conveniently attached? Fish invented the head. You like having pairs of those sense organs, two eyes for binocular vision, two ears to localize sounds and twinned nostrils so you can follow your nose to freshly baked bread or the nape of a lover’s irresistibly immunocompatible neck? Fish were the first to wear their senses in sets. They premiered the pairing of appendages, too, through fins on either side of the body that would someday flesh out into biceps, triceps, rotating wrists and opposable thumbs. Or how about that animated mouth of yours, with its hinged and muscular jaws; its enameled, innervated teeth; and a tongue that dares to taste a peach or, if it must, get up and give a speech? Fish founded the whole modern buss we now ride.
2/19/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Curb Your Inner Larry
When humor is combined with inconsideration,
as it so often is in “Curb
Enthusiasm, ” men are like a hostile nation,
Arabs versus Jews and Serb
against the Croat. If you’re trying to be funny,
suppress your cruel proclivity
to sound embittered. Sweeten words like honey
to show your sensitivity.
Ignore the fact that being rude is lots of fun. Your hon-
esty is not a Stradivari
which people might enjoy to hear you playing on,
so always curb your inner Larry.
Martin Miller writes about the reunion of Larry David with the cast o the Seinfelds on a forthcoming episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm (LA Times, October 3,2009) : :
He knows he has issues. When asked about Dr. Phil's brief appearance on 'Curb's' second episode this season, he declares: 'I like him. I would definitely go to Dr. Phil if I could. You know what? I'm putting this out there right now that if he would take me, I'm going. Does he still have patients? I don't know if my problems are big enough for what he's used to.' A more immediate problem surfaces, and Dr. Phil is nowhere in sight. Larry spots something in his salad.”Is that a scallion? ' he frowns. 'I've got a date tonight.'
When informed he's probably one of the most eligible bachelors in town, he laughs. 'I wouldn't go that far, ' he said. You're rich, you're famous - you got a great sense of humor. 'Women don't like the humor when it's combined with inconsideration and insensitivity, ' he corrects. In real life, to some, his actions may be taken for inconsideration and insensitivity, but in the world of 'Curb' it's always hilarious and, to Larry, completely authentic. 'This show is the only chance that I have to be honest about anything, ' Larry said. 'Your life generally is so dishonest. Your dealings with your fellow human beings are so dishonest, everything is so dishonest, to have this opportunity to be honest is very refreshing to me.' Later, in the parking lot, the farewells are said. No handshake. 'Yeah, this was fun, ' Larry said
10/3/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Not Topless In The Vatican
Not topless in the Vatican,
a woman tried
to topple Benedict. You can
my words deride
because I was misreading “topples”
to signify
the revelation of her nipples.
You wonder why?
If such mistakes make you annoyed,
please do not whip
this poet, for it’s Sigmund Freud
who caused the slip.
Among the Pope’s fine homilies,
“Be vigilant”
applies to such anomalies.
Be diligent!
Rachel Donadio (NYT, December 25,2009) reports how a woman caused Pope Benedict XVI to topple after jumping the barriers of St. Peter’s on Christmas Eve. The headline of her article is “Woman Topples Pope at Mass, But He Isn’t Hurt”) . I misread the headline as saying “Topless Woman at Mass”. Intrigued by my error I asked Linda to glance at the headline, and she made the same slip. WE both made the same Christmas midrash.
ROME — Pope Benedict XVI delivered his traditional Christmas blessing on Friday after an “unbalanced woman” jumped the barriers in St. Peter’s Basilica and knocked him down as he walked down the main aisle to begin Christmas Eve Mass on Thursday. The pope quickly got back on his feet after the incident and celebrated Mass before thousands of the faithful, urging them in his homily to become “truly vigilant people.” Television images showed a woman in red leap toward Benedict,82, as he began to walk up the central aisle, as the police and bodyguards scrambled to his aid. The woman also knocked down Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, said a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. Cardinal Etchegaray,87, fractured his hip and will be operated on at Gemelli hospital in Rome, Father Lombardi said Friday, according to The Associated Press. Father Lombardi identified the woman as Susanna Maiolo,25, a Swiss-Italian national with psychiatric problems, The Associated Press reported. He said Ms. Maiolo, who was not armed, was taken to a clinic for necessary treatment. She was the same woman involved in a similar incident at last year’s Midnight Mass, Vatican officials said.
[...] Read more
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Allowing Spaces To Be Blank
Allowing spaces to be blank
creates a hidden presence for
the inspiration you can draw
by drawing from the mind,
a bank in which the thoughts you stored
lie unproductively, and find
ideas that you had left behind,
to be from blanks, when checked, restored.
Blank spaces are not solid, but
you’ll only find them if you dig,
researching them, a truffle pig
whose nose is sharp and mind not shut,
discovering within the hollow,
provided that your search is stolid,
the evidence you think is solid,
supporting views you chose to follow.
Inspired from a blog in the NYT in which I learned a new word, digg––digg.com, a user-driven news Web site, brings together hundreds of thousands of people to do the work of finding, submitting, reviewing and featuring news stories drawn from every corner of the Web––and was reminded about Willa Cather’s amazing story “The Sculptor’s Funeral, ” which, as the blogger points out, leaves blank spaces that create an “inexplicable presence”:
In Willa Cather's 'The Sculptor's Funeral, ' a train pulls up to a snowy Kansas town, carrying a coffin. The story is up now at Harper Perennial's site Fifty-Two Stories, which, as you might guess, will be posting a story a week all year long. So far, they've posted pieces by Mary Gaitskill, Louise Erdrich, Tom Piazza and Tony O'Neill, all contemporary authors with books from the publisher. Cather's story will be in their April collection 'The Bohemian Girl: Stories.' Originally published in 1905, the story can also be found elsewhere on the Internet, but the Fifty-Two Stories version is laid out well (and you can digg it) . After reading the minimalists that came later in the 20th century, a story like Cather's 'The Sculptor's Funeral' seems like it is naming pretty much everything. But it's interesting to look back and see where she was deliberately leaving blank spaces, creating an 'inexplicable presence' in the quiet form of the sculptor, whose imaginative art was lost on the place he called home.
[...] Read more
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Deaf Sentences
Deaf sentences cause the refrain,
“There’s failure to communicate, ”
which people who’ve been checked complain
when stymied by a dumb stalemate.
We ought to wonder who’s the cause
of silence in this failure? We
should, when we sense the silence, pause
and ask ourselves if it could be
the problems of our failure to
communicate. We often see,
but do not hear, when we pursue
our own agendas, sentencing
ourselves and those whom we ignore
with deafness, carrying a sting
that’s worse than wasps, and hurts much more.
Inspired by Michiko Kakutani’s review of “Deaf Sentences” by David Lodge (“Hearing and Dreams Both Fading, ” NYT, October 10,2008) :
The title of David Lodge’s latest novel, “Deaf Sentence, ” is, of course, a play on words, and there are many others scattered throughout these pages: “Deaf and the maiden, ” “Deaf Row, ” “I had not thought deaf had undone so many.” And for Mr. Lodge’s sad-sack,60-something narrator, Desmond Bates, who is losing his hearing, deafness is a kind of death — a symptom of mortality, a constant, embarrassing reminder of his aging body and diminishing hopes. After a couple of lackluster novels, Mr. Lodge is back to form: if “Deaf Sentence” lacks the uproarious academic satire found in “Changing Places” and “Small World, ” it nonetheless showcases the author’s ability to use sympathy and slapstick humor to create an appealingly hapless hero and to recount his adventures with Waugh-like verve. The humor is more muted here, not least because his hero is grappling with sobering matters like an ailing parent, a stale marriage and the frustrations and disappointments of advancing age, instead of the sort of career woes and sexual misalliances faced by Mr. Lodge’s earlier heroes. Indeed the novel occupies a similar place in Mr. Lodge’s career as “Exit, Ghost” does in Philip Roth’s, and “Villages” does in John Updike’s: the book is a veteran novelist’s meditation on aging and death and the diminution of youthful dreams.
[...] Read more
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Dangerous Edge
Our interest being on the dangerous edge,
we think we’re able to see more
in truth than those whom we deplore
because they do not plumb the depths and dredge
the nuances of books in Hebrew, Greek,
and German, even English, though
we think vernacular below
our goal––the knowledge-heaven that we seek
beyond our grasp! We’re insecure
about ourselves, but as for those
who aren’t we’re somewhat bellicose,
despising them because they say they’re sure.
Inspired by Robert Browning’s “Bishop Blougram’s Apology”:
A simile!
We mortals cross the ocean of this world
Each in his average cabin of a life;
The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room.
Now for our six months' voyage-how prepare?
You come on shipboard with a landsman's list
[...] Read more
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!