Don'T Drink The Water Poem by gershon hepner

Don’t go to New Jersey,
to visit your daughter;
don’t ask me for mercy
if you drink the water.

It’s dangerous to go there
on business or dates;
far safer to stay where
you’re still in the States.

If you’re on a path
and you come to a fork,
the best aftermath
you can choose is New York,

for if by mistake
you’re in LA, I warn ya
the earth may well quake,
hell, it’s in California.

Holland, the tunnel,
George Washington Bridge,
both act as a funnel
to Palisades’ ridge.

Dutch dikes aren’t for femmes,
like Beatles for Mersey,
and Old Father Thames
doesn’t care much for Jersey.

Inspired by an episode of “The Flight of the Conchords” in which Brett has the misfortune of shacking up with a girl called Keitha who comes from Australia, a country whose citizens good New Zealanders do not date. Keitha ends up by ripping off Brett and Jermaine, and absconding with all their possessions to New Jersey, a place where Brett and Jermaine cannot follow since their manager warns them that it is dangerous to drink the water there because in their opinion it is not part of “the States”.

The penultimate verse is a refacimento, added after Linda pointed out that the reference to dykes and femmes could be made relevant if I brought in New Amsterdam. The addition constitutes what William Safire in the NYT Magazine on February 15 calls refacimento, which he defines as “the radical refashioning of a work of art, often by computer”.

2/15/09