Superficiality I Sing Poem by gershon hepner

In the upper range of superficiality I sing,
a counter-tenor high above the bass
whose voice proclaims that of profundity he is the king,
regarding what is superficial base.
I skim the surfaces of reason not in order to
discover depths that deeper minds might plumb,
although I’m not a Lord High Executioner I do
like spending time with bimbos like Yum-Yum.
Beauty can displace a person both in time and space,
and superficially can make me pout
with pleasure, which is never a disgrace
so long as I give women something they can sigh about.


Dave Kerr writes about Tyrone Power (“Tyrone Power, Giving Women Something to Sigh About, ” NYT, July 29,2008) :

Power was most convincing when he was playing in the upper registers of superficiality…The emotion he projected most strongly, in his pre-war films at least, was a boundless sense of self-enjoyment, of an impish, uncomplicated ability to have fun, a skill that served him well in the swash-bucklers that remain his best remembered movies, from “The Mark of Zorro” to “Prince of Foxes” (1949) ….Displaced in time, he also seems displaced in his own body; his beauty has become a kind of prison.

7/29/08