gershon hepner Poems

Art, a guarantee of sanity.
Under arches of hysteria
we search for our humanity
to which we tend to be inferior.
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When shove comes to push
I pull for Brancusi,
whose muse when asleep
is more than skin-deep,
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She has turned into a lair
the fortress where she once could not
be harmed, and lies within it bare,
while hoping love won’t hurt a lot.
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Thoughts with sense not recognizable,
horses running behind cart,
like squiggles that appear derisible
till they’ve been turned to works of art,
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Perishability provides
an opportunity to relish
the moment. Time won’t wait, and tides
force us to move, so we embellish
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Just thinking of our ethnic dishes
can make digestive juices run
and Jewish holidays such fun––
chopped liver and gefilte fishes.
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Pastel colors for the hoi polloi,
ultramarine and white reserved for saints,
the Virgin, and a most important goy
called Pontius Pilate. Colors of the paint
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If only I could hang upon
the present just as transient butterflies
hang on bright flowers, songs the swan
is said to sing before it swoons and dies
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They say that’s David harp would always wake
the psalmist king at midnight. Like a clock,
it would alarm him from his sleep, and make
him turn to thoughts of God, so writer’s block
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When monks made St. Jerome put on a dress,
they made a monkey out of him, but not his gender.
Vulgar virgins caused him no distress
performing this pre-Vulgate gender-bender.
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