gershon hepner Poems

By paring and paring and paring away
from lives that we cannot repair or replay
the passions that helped us once love and connect
to people whose values we’ve come to reject
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Reason when distorted by
desire turns to spiral from a square;
but of itself when it is unaware
it asks not how or when and why.
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You can’t hurry love, they say,
but shortcuts may be taken,
I’ve found whenever I make hay,
and rarely am mistaken.
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The beauty of the embers, not the fire,
lasts only while they burn, and when they die
lose those warm colors that all men admire.
With dying embers we identify,
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With your own face to act is hard,
and using someone else’s may
make life more easy for a bard
who’s not quite sure what he should say.
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'Disgusting' is the label on what makes
us totally aware of separation
from what we call unholy, the mistakes
God made to fill a void with devastation.
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Transparent sounds of hoofs may sound like thuds
or clangs to those who are insensitive to sense;
translators’ works will turn out to be duds
if meaning is of minor consequence.
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Using language to create
alternative reality
we may produce a distillate
transcending the causality
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The evening should not be judge of day,
and day should not become the judge of night;
don't emphasize the end when you replay
events whose alibis are quite airtight.
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“Are you Jewish? ” they are asking
some members of the tribe. It’s hard
to say when you are multitasking
in two worlds and no longer barred
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