Rhyming Couple Poem by gershon hepner

How can a poet speak
in tongues to others while fellating?
He has to turn his cheek,
and, rhyming, couple while he’s mating.

Inspired by an article by Dwight Garner in the NYT, December 24,2008, reviewing “My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer” (“Sometimes Love Lives Alongside Loneliness”) :

A political anarchist, Mr. Spicer left the Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley, after refusing to sign a loyalty oath, and he was a member of early gay liberation groups. He made recordings of his poetry (now lost) with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. With five visual artists, he opened the Six Gallery, where Allen Ginsberg first performed “Howl.” (Some of Mr. Spicer’s own work was read that night.) He had other contacts with Ginsberg. The editors write, in an unintentionally hilarious biographical entry for 1959: “At a drunken party in Berkeley, Allen Ginsberg attempts to fellate Spicer in public in the name of love, peace, and understanding; gets rejected.” Mr. Spicer also presided over a popular event called Blabbermouth Night, at which, the editors write,

12/24/08