gershon hepner Poems

The naughty, nihilistic thought
that often comes into God's head
is that perhaps, like Him, we’re dead,
and not alive as we’ve been taught.
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When dinosaurs swished their huge tails
they made a louder boom
than, mournfully, the humming whales
beneath the ocean flume,
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Assuaging wrath with anecdotes
was Lincoln’s modus operandi,
until he struck more serious notes,
maturing like a vintage brandy
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Abstract, aesthetic, an allure
still clings to scriptures like a wraith,
but can’t for unbelievers cure
the loss ineffably of faith.
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See under cocktail cabinets a weasel,
says playwright Harold Pinter,
like naked models standing by an easel
who freeze in deep mid-winter,
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“Just say the ** lines, ” to Alan
Ayckbourne Harold Pinter said.
The word that’s missing wasn’t Wallon,
or made up out of Pinter’s head.
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In pace requiescas, Harold,
while you’re being Christmas caroled,
having died, most people say,
on what is known as Christmas Day
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Don’t remind the August sky
how you used to love July,
and even if you should remember
August skies when it’s September,
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Before you tied a knot on us
my life was as monotonous
as for a passenger-less cabbie,
or a without-a-congregation rabbi.
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With prescience, he sang the about the clash
that faces our uncivil civilizations,
whose differences might lead to nuclear ash
descending from the skies on all the nations.
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