gershon hepner Poems

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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Lusting after sensuous lips,
landing on soft shoulders
as welcoming as heaving hips,
I become much bolder
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While you’re lying on a couch,
hiking skirt so you can to bare
your most delicious derrière,
I head for you, not Hedda Gabler,
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Far better than the sun that shines
each day in California, where
I've fallen for its food and wines
idyllically in western air,
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