Bourgeois Inspiration
INSPIRATION
It isn’t where my motivation
comes from, but how it survives.
Don’t ask me about inspiration––
it breaks out sometimes, just like hives.
Inspired by a 2007 painting by the 95-year old Louise Bourgeois on which she writes: “It’s not so much where my motivation comes from but how it survives.”
1/23/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Turtle Teachers
TURTLE TEACHERS
Having laid her eggs upon a distant beach,
the turtle hurries quickly to the friendly ocean;
she cannot navigate the land, like those who teach,
producing mirror images for self-promotion.
A turtle may spend no more than an hour on a beach where she lays her eggs and then abandon her eggs, returning to the ocean.
3/30/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Prankster
Acting sometimes like a prankster,
I’m agnostically an angster,
but when I am feeling angsty
console myself with hanky-panksty.
Hardly schoolish though I’m scholared,
pennywise, pound foolish dollared,
not by Jesus saved, or Moses,
angst pranks me towards agnosis.
Written on my flight from LA to London, en route for Vienna.
7/10/07
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Romantic Symphony
Bruckner’s symphony, called the Romantic,
drives those who like brief works quite frantic,
but those who like long ones
are surely the wrong ones
to ask not to be sycophantic.
Composed while listening to a broadcast of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, called the Romantic, by the NY Philharmonic conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi.
1/3/10
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Left-handed Blows
Don’t rely on competence, for strength
come from unlearned blows that are left-handed;
until you learn to improvise at length
you short the truth and cannot understand it.
Inspired by a saying of Walter Benjamin: “These are days when no one should rely on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.”
5/21/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Post-orgasmic Isolation
Here’s advice for women who
complain their lovers leave them when
they’ve come, and look for someone new,
leaving them to long for men
who stay with them until it’s time
to go to sleep or take a shower.
If they obey the rules I rhyme
they should rejoice with pussypower.
Post-orgasmic isolation
is prevented if you can
make in advance a reservation
for a supplemental man.
4/21/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Lost Only Once
What’s lost only once, and once lost, lost forever?
The answer’s not hard, and you needn’t be clever
to know when it’s stiff you can’t bend from the waist:
It’s the bone that’s removed when your hip joint’s replaced.
Inspired by Christopher Marlowe, who wrote:
Jewels being lost are found againe, this never,
T'is lost but once, and once lost, lost for ever.'
10/30/05
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Rape Of Europa
Zeus finds Europa playing with her hand––
handmaidens some say, pulling wool
over eyes of people who demand
that she be modest. As a bull,
Zeus comes to her, and she spreads wide her legs,
experiencing rapture she has not
experienced with her hand and begs
for more. They call this rape. What rot!
Inspired by Titian's “Rape of Europa” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
11/26/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Ben Franklin
Not a hero to revere,
like Washington or Paul Revere,
he made the French join in our spat
with George III, a diplomat.
The world prefers the men who fight
to those with intellect, who write.
The myths that we most love to tell
describe the men who made life hell
for those we hate, and don't delight
in helping us to fly our kite.
I only know one leader, Nero,
who died, he thought, an artist hero.
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Betwen Profundity And Meaning
Like the Pisa Tower leaning,
I hope to never hit the ground
while unprotected by the meaning-
less attempts I make to seem profound.
Irrelevant as buttresses
on buildings concrete reinforces,
my thoughts compete now in rat races
that can’t be won by champion horses.
Mutable, sublime, obsessive,
I contradict myself, a teaser
of those who find the straight oppressive,
preferring pendulums in Pisa.
3/27/06
poem by Gershon Hepner
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