Monotonous Poem by gershon hepner

Before you tied a knot on us
my life was as monotonous
as for a passenger-less cabbie,
or a without-a-congregation rabbi.

For what it’s worth, throughout the land
you’re known as femme fatale. Your hand
I asked, you gave, but had you not,
my life would always be monot.

Otherwise it would have been
a penny black without a queen,
mononotous, and hardly worth a
rare stamp that’s worth far more than Eartha.

In biology, monotony
is what I feel when I do botany, .
but doing your zoology
is great for my ecology.

T.S. Eliot won’t write
a book for you, but you’re the site
I search for in my web, monot-
onous you guarantee it’s not.

Traffic may not stop for me,
but without monotony,
you cause my heart to stop for you:
I wish that I could shop for you.

Though my heart’s not broken, I
am broke, that’s why I cannot buy
a gift for you, but give you this,
fifth light of Hanukkah with kiss.

Monotony will stay away
as long as you’re with me each day.
I feel for you quite gluttonous,
dessert that’s un-monotonous.

Inspired by a song Eartha Kitt used to sing. She died today, December 25,2008. Rob Hoerberger writes in the NYT:

Ms. Kitt’s career-long persona, that of the seen-it-all sybarite, was set when she performed in Paris cabarets in her early 20s, singing songs that became her signatures like “C’est Si Bon” and “Love for Sale.” Returning to New York, she was cast on Broadway in “New Faces of 1952” and added another jewel to her vocal crown, “Monotonous” (“Traffic has been known to stop for me/Prices even rise and dropp for me/Harry S. Truman plays bop for me/Monotonous, monotone-ous”) . Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times in May 1952, “Eartha Kitt not only looks incendiary, but she can make a song burst into flame.”

12/25/08