Mrs. Robinson
When Mrs. Robinson persuaded
the graduate to choose her charms
did she expect to be downgraded,
compared with adolescent charms
her daughter would provide to Dustin?
She didn’t, and the price she paid
for trustin’ him proves gals who’re lustin’
for guys who’re looking to get laid
by older women should be ready
to be abandoned by them. Youth,
although attractive, isn’t steady,
and shortness of the tooth
may come to bite an older gal
prepared to educate a guy
who’s younger. There’s a rationale
for giving older men a try.
12/5/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Postage Due
The future will outlast
us all, but it is to
our present and our past
that postage must be due.
In the future which
we make we may hope we
will live on, but our niche
is now, unfranked and free.
Ted Kennedy once said: 'We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make.' When he was born, President Herbert Hoover sent Rose a bouquet of flowers and a note of congratulations. The note came with a 5 cents postage due; the framed envelope is a family heirloom (John M. Broder, NYT, August 27,2009) .
8/27/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Muse And Centaur
He says that she is his muse,
she declares he is her mentor;
the former’s cognomen is Cruz,
the latter’s Almodóvar, center
of her artistic life, director
of her best movies, their embraces
shown not on screens by a projector,
but promontories in private places,
collaboration of Penel-
ope and Pedro paradigm
of poetry whose words excel
by pivoting their prose on rhyme.
Charlie Rose interviewed Penelope Cruz in a segment of “60 Minutes” on January 17,2010. She declared that Pedro Almodóvar had called her his muse, declaring that he was her mentor.
1/17/10
poem by Gershon Hepner
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I am the sin you never confessed
I am the sin you have never confessed,
offense you have wished to commit but have not
because you’re afraid to come out of the nest
where you rest in retreat, always fearing to blot
the copybook no one will look at but you,
while I remain part of you that, though essential
for all of your happiness, trusty and true,
can’t force you to reach me or your own potential.
Inspired by a poet who read Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXVII and Byron’s “When we Two Parted” before reading a poem of his own which had the line “I am the sin you’ve never confessed”.
11/22/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Does It Haae A Meaning?
“Does it have a meaning? ”
they ask. He answers them with gall.
“I hope it doesn’t, but it will occur again,
and you will see once more what happened then,
as surely as the leaves that fall
when browning follows greening.
Men are like trees, the Bible says,
doomed sans divine majestic lèse.”
Richard Eder reviews 'Preempting the Holocaust, ' by Lawrence L. Langer (Yale University Press) in a book review in the LA Times (November 22,1998) . He quotes Raul Hilberg who, when asked whether the Holocaust had any meaning, answered: “I hope not.”
11/22/98
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Shattered, Without Sleep
When you feel shattered, without sleep,
the time left for recuperating
depends if company you keep
keeps you awake while you are mating,
for if while mating you are wide
awake, forbidding sleep to shatter
love-making, being bleary-eyed
when you are not is no great matter.
When you feel shattered, without sleep
because your dreams kept you awake,
perhaps change the company you keep,
for it may be your big mistake,
not waking you before you dream,
to make sure that your sleep is deep
once you’ve regained your self-esteem,
not wasting time by counting sheep.
[...] Read more
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Wellcome
Tabloids, Henry Wellcome often said,
are better than a liquid or a powder;
by tabloids he meant not material read
in broadsheets, or the gutter press that’s louder
than New York Times or NPR, but pills
we tend to take unless we need injections
to get relief from all the pains and ills
that tickle tabloids’ major predilections.
Inspired by an article on the exhibition of the collection of medical memorabilia gathered by Henry Wellcome, exhibited at the Wellcome Collection at 183 Euston Road, London (Ed Rothstein, New York Times,1/29/08 ('One Man's Jigsaw Puzzle, Capturing an Odd Word') ,
1/29/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Being Funny
My second choice is being funny,
my first is being sweet,
if not as treacle or as honey
at least as sugar beet,
but since more naturally I'm sour,
with sweetness not my style,
I'll try to make you laugh, not glower,
and swallow all your bile,
by being funny, if I can,
for if you laugh you may
believe that I'm the sweetest man
you've met, at least today.
Roy Blount Jr. ('Be Sweet: A Conditional Love Story, ' Alfred A. Knopf,1998) says:
Woody Allen once told an interviewer that being funny 'is always a second choice.' The first choice, I guess, is being.....sweet. Or happy, or something.'
6/10/98
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Transcending Platonic Platitudes
Coxcomb, charlatan and bore,
Plato paved immoral ways for Byron. He
transcended platitudes that bore,
transforming them with his immortal irony.
Inspired by Byron’s lines in Don Juan, CXVI, cited by Roger Scruton in Sexual Desire: A Phiosophic Investigation, p.237:
Oh, Plato! Plato! You have paved the way,
With your confounded fantasies, to more
Immoral conduct by the fancied way
Your system feigns o’er the controlless core
Of human hearts, than all the long array
Of poets and romancers: –– You’re a bore,
A charlatan, a coxcomb –– and have been,
At best, no better than a go-between.
8/29/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Disarming
Confronting death, they meditate
in charnel grounds and other scary sites,
Tibetan yogis facing fate
of death, which they allow to claim its rights
and undermine their great elation,
rendered harmless as they now invite
to join them in their meditation
death, which they deprive of sting and bite.
More than Judeo-Christians re-
alistic, they don’t choose to rage about
the dying of the light, and see
within death’s darkness no cause for them to doubt
that death is no less part of life
than feet and hands are part of legs and arms,
while seeing it no cause of strife,
but part of life that it in peace disarms.
poem by Gershon Hepner
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