Descended From An Ape Poem by gershon hepner

God, who can’t be recognized,
appears in an angelic form
to bible heroes most surprised
to learn that he is not the norm
that they’d expected, seeming human,
while cherubic in disguise,
which is a paradox few Jewmen
would figure out that God defies.
Leaving Esau, who was hairy,
Jacob, who was rather smooth,
awoke and said: “This is no fairy
story.” But perhaps the truth
behind the awesome vision of
the ziggurat called Heaven’s Gate
proves not that there’s a God above,
but that our pupils will dilate
while we, sleepwalking in the dark,
download high visions of our mind,
which we remember as a spark
when, waking, brightness makes us blind.

The spirits that today intrude
into our world seem always blurred,
and only elevate our mood
if we adapt to the absurd,
as when the exiled Jacob dreamed
of angels climbing and descending
ladders to a place that seemed
towards the gate of heaven bending.
Much later, when returning from
his uncle’s house, he claimed he’d seen
God face to face, a Peeping Tom
for whom God was a king––or queen,
indeed, if we believe Astarte
was once Jehovah’s partner with
whom God in ancient times would party,
mind-blowing matrimonial myth!
Anthropomorphic, God appears
in bible stories in a shape
resembling theomorphic peers
called Man, descended from an ape.

6/28/03,5/7/07