gershon hepner Poems

What we’ve got here is a failure to
communicate,
they said to Paul in “Cool Hand Luke.” Adieu
the loony gate
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Never warlike, though by Wagner weaponed,
langsam, Mahler indicates, nicht schleppend,
first symphony’s third movement has material
whose fascination comes when what’s funereal
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Like us when on the telephone,
the dead communicate
in order not to be alone,
so children think. How great
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When we dance will you be gentle,
or bitter as the instrumental
lines of music in C Major
that, dying, barely thirty-ager,
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Gas is what I used to guzzle,
and often still inclined to pass,
but now I have to pass on mazel,
running out on me, alas,
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Fondling Venus’s left breast,
Cupid gives her on her mouth a kiss.
Both are blatantly undressed
But you don’t wonder what’s amiss,
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More amazing that the crucifixion
was, of course, the holocaust.
That’s why some believe it’s fiction,
view Jew-haters have endorsed.
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If moshing with a chick were kosher,
I’d lover to be her kosher mosher,
but since I have been told it’s treif
such dances with her are not safe,
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Bartholdy added to the name
of Mendlessohn made people who
feared antisemites hide with shame
the fact that Felix was a Jew.
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A fable that’s agreed upon
according to Napoleon
is what we should call history,
but ascribe its mystery
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