Too Much Poem by gershon hepner

“What’ll you have? ” “Too much, ” he would say,
not claiming to be a great saint;
more was the siren that he would obey
as soon as his glass had been drained.

Too much is the road that the puritans claim
paves highways that lead straight to hell;
more painfully less takes you there just the same,
no less guilty and no less unwell.

He wasn’t accustomed to pay any heed
to the cries of “Enough” which are such
an annoyance, unless you are driving, indeed,
when even just one is too much.

Too much is what Dylan had, causing his death
before all his songs had been sung,
and yet where he drove us we still smell his breath,
tasting sweet words that fell from his tongue.

It’s not hard to se, when we’re being poetic,
how life when it tempts us ends up being tough,
for when we’re bulimic we have no emetic
when we’ve swallowed too much and we can’t say “Enough”.


In “Under Milk Wood: Dylan Thomas wrote:

“What'll you have? ”
“Too much.”


11/9/97,4/21/98,9/16/09