gershon hepner Poems

Living perilously on a fault
that straddled disbelief and stranded faith,
he felt a tremor like a quake exalt
his reason, as if wrestling with a wraith.
...

Sixteen when he wrote the piano quartet piece,
and eighty when he said: “I must
revise it, ” Walton proved that those who do not cease
creating have a cure for rust.
...

Three quarters of our body are a house.
First, public ones, the rooms where we display
our treasures and we introduce our spouse
to friends and neighbors, mainly in the day.
...

“Is my team ploughing? ” Housman used to ask,
fondly hoping that the place where he’d
be buried would be where men’s fondest task
would be to dig into his verse, and read.
...

“D’you think God knows what He is doing? ”
a few bold angels dared to ask
when He created Man. At their first viewing,
they saw that He had botched this task,
...

The mistake of impeccable caution
is worse than the error of haste
that threatens all change with abortion,
performed with impeccable taste.
...

He said some books have pictures and
some pictures books. All poems must
be illustrated not by hand,
but by ideas that shake the dust
...

Cataracts and hurricanoes spout
in certain areas only, while elsewhere
the land is parched and dried out in a drought,
while fires burning wildly scorch the air.
...

Harsh, unstifled in the dark,
she finds her voice and makes her man
perform in ways that, cruel and stark,
cause blood and shit to hit the fan.
...

Your answer to intellect is a great crime,
your words are quite empty, as weak as your verse,
I see that you’ve stolen a lot of my rhyme;
your spirit has failed; you are more than perverse.
...