PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
The past is not what it’s so often cracked
up to be, and though some choose to flee
the present for the future, it is packed
with problems, hardly what it used to be.
The past and present have together let us
down, and we who can’t live by the letter
of the testamentum that is vetus
can’t find a testament that’s any better.
Presently we’re creatures of the past,
which like the present we will come to curse,
for both of them are dies in which the future’s cast,
and doomed to be, compared with them, far worse.
Inspired by an article by Frank Bruni about commencement speeches (“Buck Up, Graduates!” NYT, May 31, 2009):
It’s a mean season for silver linings, but that hasn’t kept inspiration-minded commencement speakers from reaching for them. And what flows from lecterns coast to coast is some of the most strenuous, creative optimism ever fashioned, as graduates are told not only that the cup is half full but also that the opportunity to replenish such a vast measure of missing liquid doesn’t lurch into view too often. Isn’t that heady? Isn’t that a privilege? Privilege is a word in heavy rotation, as is responsibility. The kinds of exhortations to dream big that some previous generations and classes of graduates heard have been supplanted by pleas to be strong. To be patient. To accept and even feel ennobled by the challenges of the nation’s current juncture. And to know that no matter how grim the road seems, it has no corner on grimness and could in fact be grimmer….
There’s much oratorical flailing out there, as speakers try to figure out how to be upbeat and when to be downbeat — what’s the right ratio, what’s the best recipe. A few of them elect a truth telling so unvarnished it’s as if they’ve swapped the diplomas they’re supposed to give graduates with cyanide capsules. “We are in a recession, and the labor market is weak,” said Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, at the Boston College School of Law. “Many of you may not have gotten the job you wanted; some may have had offers rescinded or the start of employment delayed.” Having thus lifted his audience’s spirits, Mr. Bernanke proceeded to the task of giving them a detailed, fail-safe plan of action. “So,” he added, “my advice to you is to stay optimistic. Things usually have a way of working out.” The writer Christopher Buckley, addressing graduating seniors at Yale University, didn’t bother with that sort of compulsory (and unpersuasive) reassurance. He just annotated the doom and gloom with a joke. “This hasn’t been the most excellent of millenniums,” Mr. Buckley noted. “You entered your teens just around the time of 9/11, and now you’re entering the job market — to use an ironic term for it — during the Great Recession.” “As a French philosopher put it, ‘The trouble with our times is that the future isn’t what it used to be,’ ” he added. “Being French, he probably went on strike after coming up with that.”..
In truth, many speakers have found less circuitous routes to inspiration, alluding to the milestone of a first black president and heralding diversity at the highest levels of government. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke with authority at Barnard about the advances of women. But when she wandered beyond that topic, some of the season’s oratorical desperation crept in. She said that today’s graduates could use tools like Facebook not only “to tell people you’ve gone to get a latte or you’re going to be running late,” but also to unite people to “fight human trafficking or child marriage.” And Twitter, she said, had great diplomatic potential. Tweeting our way to better relations with Iran? It’s not a conventional beacon of hope. But this year, it will have to do.
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/31/09
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
mass extinction
MASS EXTINCTION
One afternoon in Yucatán,
perhaps one night or in the morning,
an asteroid that hit the fan
caused mass extinction without warning,
and the period called Cretaceous
was aborted like the Perm,
and the Ordivician too.
None of these came to full term,
as ours most likely will not do,
judging by the die-off that’s
occurring now to frogs and toads,
and white nose plague that causes bats’
extinction which I fear forebodes
our own. It probably is not
just climate change that threatens this.
The world is often far too hot
and far too cold, and though we’ll miss
the chance of being very cool,
this problem may be less humungous
than one that isn’t minuscule
though microscopic, deadly fungus
killing off amphibians
and bats with white nose in our era
like Taliban, Qaddafi Libyans
and men Al Qaeda trains with terror
to murder, jihadists employed
to keep alive sectarian strife,
and surely as an asteroid
or pathogens, destroy much life.
Mankind is threatened in so many
ways I wonder how long it
can last. It seems that Henny-Penny
was right, as we must now admit.
The sky is falling! Her discourse
is true, and we are doomed to die
like frogs and bats, and dinosaurs,
which I forgot, can’t think why,
perhaps because I do not care
for them as much as for the bats
and frogs and those with whom I share
my life, like people and most cats.
Inspired by an article by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker, May 25, 2009 (“The Sixth Extinction? There have been five great die-offs in history. This time the cataclysm is us”), who describes how graduate student Karen Lips observed the mysterious disappearance of large numbers of local golden frogs, in the nineteen-nineties, at several locations in Panama and Costa Rica. Whatever was killing Lips’s frogs moved east, like a wave, across Panama. Of the many species that have existed on earth, more than ninety-nine per cent have disappeared. Yet extinction has been a much contested concept. Throughout the eighteenth century, the prevailing view was that species were fixed. Charles Darwin believed extinction happened only slowly, but he was wrong. Over the past half billion years, there have been at least twenty mass extinctions. Five of these—the so-called Big Five—were so devastating that they’re usually put in their own category. The fifth, the end-Cretaceous event, which occurred sixty-five million years ago, exterminated not just the dinosaurs but seventy-five per cent of all species on earth. Once a mass extinction occurs, it takes millions of years for life to recover, and when it does it’s generally with a new cast of characters. In this way, mass extinctions have played a determining role in evolution’s course. It’s now generally agreed among biologists that another mass extinction is under way. If current trends continue, by the end of this century as many as half of earth’s species will be gone. The writer went frog collecting in Chagres National Park with Edgardo Griffith, the director of EVACC (the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center). About two decades ago, researchers first noticed something odd was happening to amphibians. It’s difficult to say when the current extinction event—sometimes called the sixth extinction— began. Its opening phase appears to have started about fifty thousand years ago, when the first humans migrated across Australia and America. The main culprit in the wavelike series of amphibian crashes is a chytrid fungus, known as Bd. At this point, Bd appears to be unstoppable. Mentions Don Nichols, Allan Pessier, Joyce Longcore, and Rick Speare. In the fossil record, mass extinctions stand out. Mentions Walter Alvarez and the Alvarez hypothesis, which wreaked havoc with the uniformitarian idea of extinction. In 2007, biologist Al Hicks, of the New York State D.E.C., and the National Wildlife Health Center started investigating a series of mysterious bat deaths. Many of the dead bats were discovered with a white substance on their nose, which was cultured and found to be an unidentified fungus. Mentions White-Nose Syndrome (W.N.S.). The writer visited an abandoned mine to study bats with Hicks. One of the puzzles of mass extinction is why, at certain junctures, the resourcefulness of life seems to falter. Just in the last century, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have changed by as much as they normally do in a hundred-thousand-year glacial cycle. In the end, the most deadly aspect of human activity may simply be the pace itself.
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/28/09
One afternoon in Yucatán,
perhaps one night or in the morning,
an asteroid that hit the fan
caused mass extinction without warning,
and the period called Cretaceous
was aborted like the Perm,
and the Ordivician too.
None of these came to full term,
as ours most likely will not do,
judging by the die-off that’s
occurring now to frogs and toads,
and white nose plague that causes bats’
extinction which I fear forebodes
our own. It probably is not
just climate change that threatens this.
The world is often far too hot
and far too cold, and though we’ll miss
the chance of being very cool,
this problem may be less humungous
than one that isn’t minuscule
though microscopic, deadly fungus
killing off amphibians
and bats with white nose in our era
like Taliban, Qaddafi Libyans
and men Al Qaeda trains with terror
to murder, jihadists employed
to keep alive sectarian strife,
and surely as an asteroid
or pathogens, destroy much life.
Mankind is threatened in so many
ways I wonder how long it
can last. It seems that Henny-Penny
was right, as we must now admit.
The sky is falling! Her discourse
is true, and we are doomed to die
like frogs and bats, and dinosaurs,
which I forgot, can’t think why,
perhaps because I do not care
for them as much as for the bats
and frogs and those with whom I share
my life, like people and most cats.
Inspired by an article by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker, May 25, 2009 (“The Sixth Extinction? There have been five great die-offs in history. This time the cataclysm is us”), who describes how graduate student Karen Lips observed the mysterious disappearance of large numbers of local golden frogs, in the nineteen-nineties, at several locations in Panama and Costa Rica. Whatever was killing Lips’s frogs moved east, like a wave, across Panama. Of the many species that have existed on earth, more than ninety-nine per cent have disappeared. Yet extinction has been a much contested concept. Throughout the eighteenth century, the prevailing view was that species were fixed. Charles Darwin believed extinction happened only slowly, but he was wrong. Over the past half billion years, there have been at least twenty mass extinctions. Five of these—the so-called Big Five—were so devastating that they’re usually put in their own category. The fifth, the end-Cretaceous event, which occurred sixty-five million years ago, exterminated not just the dinosaurs but seventy-five per cent of all species on earth. Once a mass extinction occurs, it takes millions of years for life to recover, and when it does it’s generally with a new cast of characters. In this way, mass extinctions have played a determining role in evolution’s course. It’s now generally agreed among biologists that another mass extinction is under way. If current trends continue, by the end of this century as many as half of earth’s species will be gone. The writer went frog collecting in Chagres National Park with Edgardo Griffith, the director of EVACC (the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center). About two decades ago, researchers first noticed something odd was happening to amphibians. It’s difficult to say when the current extinction event—sometimes called the sixth extinction— began. Its opening phase appears to have started about fifty thousand years ago, when the first humans migrated across Australia and America. The main culprit in the wavelike series of amphibian crashes is a chytrid fungus, known as Bd. At this point, Bd appears to be unstoppable. Mentions Don Nichols, Allan Pessier, Joyce Longcore, and Rick Speare. In the fossil record, mass extinctions stand out. Mentions Walter Alvarez and the Alvarez hypothesis, which wreaked havoc with the uniformitarian idea of extinction. In 2007, biologist Al Hicks, of the New York State D.E.C., and the National Wildlife Health Center started investigating a series of mysterious bat deaths. Many of the dead bats were discovered with a white substance on their nose, which was cultured and found to be an unidentified fungus. Mentions White-Nose Syndrome (W.N.S.). The writer visited an abandoned mine to study bats with Hicks. One of the puzzles of mass extinction is why, at certain junctures, the resourcefulness of life seems to falter. Just in the last century, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have changed by as much as they normally do in a hundred-thousand-year glacial cycle. In the end, the most deadly aspect of human activity may simply be the pace itself.
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/28/09
creatures of the flame
CREATURES OF THE FLAME
We all are creatures of the flame,
Promethei, who’ve learned to tame
the fires on our hearths, and cook.
Cool, culinary was the hook
that brought us all together to
prepare a carnophilic stew,
to which we added veggies which
when raw don’t satisfy the itch
to eat, and cannot generate
the energy to masticate
and then digest the healthy herb,
but cooked with meat can taste superb,
unleashing flavors when they’re heated,
producing gas before excreted
if they’re cruciferous––the price
that may be worth the sacrifice.
Flames taught us to respect the cook,
who may, if gourmet, write a book
that if a New York Times best seller
can teach you about Salmonella,
which people get when they reheat
their unrefrigerated meat,
while if he’s merely a consumer
of food, and has a sense of humor,
may write a poem about food,
and treat it as beatitude,
like cheesemakers once blessed by Brian
before the temple burnt in Zion,
long after food was spoiled by dames
whom guys told, “You must watch the flames
while we go find ourselves some beer,”
and ruined on the flames the deer
that had received the benison
that hunters give to venison,
because they were not supervised
as dames must be, or be despised
if they’re allowed to spoil the food
that, when well cooked, God said was good.
Inspired by Dwight Garner’s review of Richard Wrangham’s book, “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” (“Why Are Humans Different From All Other Apes? It’s the Cooking, Stupid,” NYT, May 27, 2009):
Human beings are not obviously equipped to be nature’s gladiators. We have no claws, no armor. That we eat meat seems surprising, because we are not made for chewing it uncooked in the wild. Our jaws are weak; our teeth are blunt; our mouths are small. That thing below our noses? It truly is a pie hole. To attend to these facts, for some people, is to plead for vegetarianism or for a raw-food diet. We should forage and eat the way our long-ago ancestors surely did. For Richard Wrangham, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard and the author of “Catching Fire,” however, these facts and others demonstrate something quite different. They help prove that we are, as he vividly puts it, “the cooking apes, the creatures of the flame.” The title of Mr. Wrangham’s new book — “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” — sounds a bit touchy-feely. Perhaps, you think, he has written a meditation on hearth and fellow feeling and s’mores. He has not. “Catching Fire” is a plain-spoken and thoroughly gripping scientific essay that presents nothing less than a new theory of human evolution, one he calls “the cooking hypothesis,” one that Darwin (among others) simply missed.
Apes began to morph into humans, and the species Homo erectus emerged some two million years ago, Mr. Wrangham argues, for one fundamental reason: We learned to tame fire and heat our food. “Cooked food does many familiar things,” he observes. “It makes our food safer, creates rich and delicious tastes and reduces spoilage. Heating can allow us to open, cut or mash tough foods. But none of these advantages is as important as a little-appreciated aspect: cooking increases the amount of energy our bodies obtain from food.” He continues: “The extra energy gave the first cooks biological advantages. They survived and reproduced better than before. Their genes spread. Their bodies responded by biologically adapting to cooked food, shaped by natural selection to take maximum advantage of the new diet. There were changes in anatomy, physiology, ecology, life history, psychology and society.” Put simply, Mr. Wrangham writes that eating cooked food — whether meat or plants or both —made digestion easier, and thus our guts could grow smaller. The energy that we formerly spent on digestion (and digestion requires far more energy than you might imagine) was freed up, enabling our brains, which also consume enormous amounts of energy, to grow larger. The warmth provided by fire enabled us to shed our body hair, so we could run farther and hunt more without overheating. Because we stopped eating on the spot as we foraged and instead gathered around a fire, we had to learn to socialize, and our temperaments grew calmer.
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/27/09
We all are creatures of the flame,
Promethei, who’ve learned to tame
the fires on our hearths, and cook.
Cool, culinary was the hook
that brought us all together to
prepare a carnophilic stew,
to which we added veggies which
when raw don’t satisfy the itch
to eat, and cannot generate
the energy to masticate
and then digest the healthy herb,
but cooked with meat can taste superb,
unleashing flavors when they’re heated,
producing gas before excreted
if they’re cruciferous––the price
that may be worth the sacrifice.
Flames taught us to respect the cook,
who may, if gourmet, write a book
that if a New York Times best seller
can teach you about Salmonella,
which people get when they reheat
their unrefrigerated meat,
while if he’s merely a consumer
of food, and has a sense of humor,
may write a poem about food,
and treat it as beatitude,
like cheesemakers once blessed by Brian
before the temple burnt in Zion,
long after food was spoiled by dames
whom guys told, “You must watch the flames
while we go find ourselves some beer,”
and ruined on the flames the deer
that had received the benison
that hunters give to venison,
because they were not supervised
as dames must be, or be despised
if they’re allowed to spoil the food
that, when well cooked, God said was good.
Inspired by Dwight Garner’s review of Richard Wrangham’s book, “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” (“Why Are Humans Different From All Other Apes? It’s the Cooking, Stupid,” NYT, May 27, 2009):
Human beings are not obviously equipped to be nature’s gladiators. We have no claws, no armor. That we eat meat seems surprising, because we are not made for chewing it uncooked in the wild. Our jaws are weak; our teeth are blunt; our mouths are small. That thing below our noses? It truly is a pie hole. To attend to these facts, for some people, is to plead for vegetarianism or for a raw-food diet. We should forage and eat the way our long-ago ancestors surely did. For Richard Wrangham, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard and the author of “Catching Fire,” however, these facts and others demonstrate something quite different. They help prove that we are, as he vividly puts it, “the cooking apes, the creatures of the flame.” The title of Mr. Wrangham’s new book — “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” — sounds a bit touchy-feely. Perhaps, you think, he has written a meditation on hearth and fellow feeling and s’mores. He has not. “Catching Fire” is a plain-spoken and thoroughly gripping scientific essay that presents nothing less than a new theory of human evolution, one he calls “the cooking hypothesis,” one that Darwin (among others) simply missed.
Apes began to morph into humans, and the species Homo erectus emerged some two million years ago, Mr. Wrangham argues, for one fundamental reason: We learned to tame fire and heat our food. “Cooked food does many familiar things,” he observes. “It makes our food safer, creates rich and delicious tastes and reduces spoilage. Heating can allow us to open, cut or mash tough foods. But none of these advantages is as important as a little-appreciated aspect: cooking increases the amount of energy our bodies obtain from food.” He continues: “The extra energy gave the first cooks biological advantages. They survived and reproduced better than before. Their genes spread. Their bodies responded by biologically adapting to cooked food, shaped by natural selection to take maximum advantage of the new diet. There were changes in anatomy, physiology, ecology, life history, psychology and society.” Put simply, Mr. Wrangham writes that eating cooked food — whether meat or plants or both —made digestion easier, and thus our guts could grow smaller. The energy that we formerly spent on digestion (and digestion requires far more energy than you might imagine) was freed up, enabling our brains, which also consume enormous amounts of energy, to grow larger. The warmth provided by fire enabled us to shed our body hair, so we could run farther and hunt more without overheating. Because we stopped eating on the spot as we foraged and instead gathered around a fire, we had to learn to socialize, and our temperaments grew calmer.
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/27/09
Monday, May 25, 2009
memory's kingdom
MEMORY’S KINGDOM
In memory’s kingdom we try to forget
the downsides of life and the sadness and sorrows
that when we recall them induce and upset
the cart that transports us to happy tomorrows.
We may spend a day in solemn memorial
of what happened once and still makes us downcast,
and read in a poem or brief editorial
events that transport us from present to past,
but quickly move back then to pastures much greener
than those where great tragedies once had occurred.
Forgetting’s not classified as misdemeanor,
and memories may feel more blessed when they’re blurred.
Written on Memorial Day, May 25, 2009, and inspired by Marc Porter-Zasada’s article “Random Access Memory” which he wrote inspired by a visit to the Veterans’ graveyard in Westwoood:
Random Access Memory
By Marc Porter Zasada
It’s a few days before Memorial Day, right here in the Kingdom of Forgetting, and the Urban Man has gone down to the veteran’s cemetery. Yes, the cemetery. Wait...don’t tune out just yet, my swift and belovèd Angelenos, zipping down the 405 to the next big thing; or just now heading home on the 10 with that nice full-day-at-the-beach feeling; or better yet rushing to apple martinis at your friend’s excellent after-the-barbeque bash...
You only have to do this once a year.
In fact, you don’t have to do it at all, since I have pulled off the 405 to serve as your very own ambassador to the L.A. National Cemetery, right near the Wilshire exit. Maybe you’ve seen it: that glimpse of many white headstones appearing briefly below the crowd of Westwood office towers as you head north.
I went last Thursday to avoid the rush. And sure enough, again this year as I parked among the low rolling hills, I was the only visitor I could see: For a time just me and 86,000 sleeping vets.
I’m sorry to say it wasn’t peaceful. The 405 runs right alongside on an elevated grade, so it’s never peaceful here. I figure even the dead are aware of us roaring ceaselessly into the future.
What do I do on these annual visits? I read a few headstones, here and there, out loud. That’s all. That’s it. I exercise a sort of Random Access Memory by reciting from what you might call the original memory sticks:
Charles O. Wesby, Colonel, 158th Infantry, Spanish American War. Walter T. Rowland, PFC, World War II. Bertrand R. Butler, PFC, Vietnam—I see that Bertrand died at age 18.
Here’s a crowd of fresh flowers and a bouquet of happy birthday balloons around the grave of Daniel Patrick Cagle, SPC, U.S. Army, killed during Operation Iraqi Freedom: born May 20, 1985, died May 23, 2007. Daniel had just made it to age 22. Obviously his family visited this grave just the day before, on his birthday, when they set up little figurines of pirates and Homer Simpson and other small toys, I suppose from his childhood. Birthday candles were stuck in the earth, reading “D-A-N.”
Okay, sorry, now I really am depressing you. I know that images should be more fleeting in the Kingdom of Forgetting, that the names should come more quickly, one after the other. I mean, what would happen if people here paused too long to recall not merely lost lovers and misplaced friends, but lost soldiers and far-off wars? And what if they actually remembered the 7 p.m. news when the 8 p.m. news rolled around? Here in the Kingdom of Forgetting, shouldn’t it always be the moment just after the last update?
It’s not like that in a cemetery, where one headstone does not disappear when you read the next. Here’s Robert Thomas Ayers the third, Sergeant, U.S. Army, Iraqi Freedom, died 2007 at the age of 23. And further on, Steven Vega, SPC U.S. Army, Iraqi Freedom, born 1984, died 2008. “Truly one of a kind,” it says on his marker.
Someone has placed fresh blooms and coins on the headstone of Jin Su Ong, PFC, U.S. Army, Iraqi Freedom, born 1987, died January 4, 2009. Me I add a coin, since I forgot to bring flowers.
Then the Urban Man looks at his watch, and finds he’s late for his next appointment. He glances up at the 405 and feels the tug of the current. Still, as he rushes toward his car, he tries to get in just two or three more names:
Paul Thornton, Apprentice Seaman, 1954. Richard Duncan, U.S. Navy, Vietnam. Edgar Lopez, Marine, born 1977, died in Iraq August 28, 2004, Killed in Action, awarded the Purple Heart.
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/24/09
In memory’s kingdom we try to forget
the downsides of life and the sadness and sorrows
that when we recall them induce and upset
the cart that transports us to happy tomorrows.
We may spend a day in solemn memorial
of what happened once and still makes us downcast,
and read in a poem or brief editorial
events that transport us from present to past,
but quickly move back then to pastures much greener
than those where great tragedies once had occurred.
Forgetting’s not classified as misdemeanor,
and memories may feel more blessed when they’re blurred.
Written on Memorial Day, May 25, 2009, and inspired by Marc Porter-Zasada’s article “Random Access Memory” which he wrote inspired by a visit to the Veterans’ graveyard in Westwoood:
Random Access Memory
By Marc Porter Zasada
It’s a few days before Memorial Day, right here in the Kingdom of Forgetting, and the Urban Man has gone down to the veteran’s cemetery. Yes, the cemetery. Wait...don’t tune out just yet, my swift and belovèd Angelenos, zipping down the 405 to the next big thing; or just now heading home on the 10 with that nice full-day-at-the-beach feeling; or better yet rushing to apple martinis at your friend’s excellent after-the-barbeque bash...
You only have to do this once a year.
In fact, you don’t have to do it at all, since I have pulled off the 405 to serve as your very own ambassador to the L.A. National Cemetery, right near the Wilshire exit. Maybe you’ve seen it: that glimpse of many white headstones appearing briefly below the crowd of Westwood office towers as you head north.
I went last Thursday to avoid the rush. And sure enough, again this year as I parked among the low rolling hills, I was the only visitor I could see: For a time just me and 86,000 sleeping vets.
I’m sorry to say it wasn’t peaceful. The 405 runs right alongside on an elevated grade, so it’s never peaceful here. I figure even the dead are aware of us roaring ceaselessly into the future.
What do I do on these annual visits? I read a few headstones, here and there, out loud. That’s all. That’s it. I exercise a sort of Random Access Memory by reciting from what you might call the original memory sticks:
Charles O. Wesby, Colonel, 158th Infantry, Spanish American War. Walter T. Rowland, PFC, World War II. Bertrand R. Butler, PFC, Vietnam—I see that Bertrand died at age 18.
Here’s a crowd of fresh flowers and a bouquet of happy birthday balloons around the grave of Daniel Patrick Cagle, SPC, U.S. Army, killed during Operation Iraqi Freedom: born May 20, 1985, died May 23, 2007. Daniel had just made it to age 22. Obviously his family visited this grave just the day before, on his birthday, when they set up little figurines of pirates and Homer Simpson and other small toys, I suppose from his childhood. Birthday candles were stuck in the earth, reading “D-A-N.”
Okay, sorry, now I really am depressing you. I know that images should be more fleeting in the Kingdom of Forgetting, that the names should come more quickly, one after the other. I mean, what would happen if people here paused too long to recall not merely lost lovers and misplaced friends, but lost soldiers and far-off wars? And what if they actually remembered the 7 p.m. news when the 8 p.m. news rolled around? Here in the Kingdom of Forgetting, shouldn’t it always be the moment just after the last update?
It’s not like that in a cemetery, where one headstone does not disappear when you read the next. Here’s Robert Thomas Ayers the third, Sergeant, U.S. Army, Iraqi Freedom, died 2007 at the age of 23. And further on, Steven Vega, SPC U.S. Army, Iraqi Freedom, born 1984, died 2008. “Truly one of a kind,” it says on his marker.
Someone has placed fresh blooms and coins on the headstone of Jin Su Ong, PFC, U.S. Army, Iraqi Freedom, born 1987, died January 4, 2009. Me I add a coin, since I forgot to bring flowers.
Then the Urban Man looks at his watch, and finds he’s late for his next appointment. He glances up at the 405 and feels the tug of the current. Still, as he rushes toward his car, he tries to get in just two or three more names:
Paul Thornton, Apprentice Seaman, 1954. Richard Duncan, U.S. Navy, Vietnam. Edgar Lopez, Marine, born 1977, died in Iraq August 28, 2004, Killed in Action, awarded the Purple Heart.
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/24/09
Sunday, May 24, 2009
woman on a quilt
WOMAN ON A QUILT
Louche and somewhat overweight,
lazy, lying on a quilt,
maybe waiting for a date,
smoking without signs of guilt,
bluer than the quilt her mood,
and the spirit not quite fresh,
while the arms and shoulders nude
promise pleasure of the flesh,
as do both her outstretched legs
and fleshy thighs that striped pants cover.
She is ready, never begs
for either male or female lover,
secure, because she’s read in books
which lie beside her feet that life
can offer more than that, and looks
unwilling to become a wife.
Inspired by Suzanne Valadon’s “La chamber bleue,” which is part of an exhibition, “elles@centrepompidou,” that features hundreds of works by female artists only, reviewed by Suzanne Muchnic in the LA Times on May 24, 2009.
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/24/09
Louche and somewhat overweight,
lazy, lying on a quilt,
maybe waiting for a date,
smoking without signs of guilt,
bluer than the quilt her mood,
and the spirit not quite fresh,
while the arms and shoulders nude
promise pleasure of the flesh,
as do both her outstretched legs
and fleshy thighs that striped pants cover.
She is ready, never begs
for either male or female lover,
secure, because she’s read in books
which lie beside her feet that life
can offer more than that, and looks
unwilling to become a wife.
Inspired by Suzanne Valadon’s “La chamber bleue,” which is part of an exhibition, “elles@centrepompidou,” that features hundreds of works by female artists only, reviewed by Suzanne Muchnic in the LA Times on May 24, 2009.
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/24/09
Friday, May 22, 2009
arrested love
ARRESTED LOVE
Love is hard to stop, but loss of lovers
who’re separated like two pieces of a melon
undermines arrested love when, under covers
of other beds, a fallen lover fails, faux felon.
Inspired by Ted Hughes’s poem “Lovesong,” presumably inspired by the love and death of Sylvia Plath:
He loved her and she loved himHis kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried toHe had no other appetiteShe bit him she gnawed him she suckedShe wanted him complete inside herSafe and Sure forever and everTheir little cries fluttered into the curtainsHer eyes wanted nothing to get awayHer looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbowsHe gripped her hard so that lifeShould not drag her from that momentHe wanted all future to ceaseHe wanted to topple with his arms round herOr everlasting or whatever there wasHer embrace was an immense pressTo print him into her bonesHis smiles were the garrets of a fairy placeWhere the real world would never comeHer smiles were spider bitesSo he would lie still till she felt hungryHis word were occupying armiesHer laughs were an assasin's attemptsHis looks were bullets daggers of revengeHer glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secretsHis whispers were whips and jackbootsHer kisses were lawyers steadily writingHis caresses were the last hooks of a castaway Her love-tricks were the grinding of locksAnd their deep cries crawled over the floorsLike an animal dragging a great trapHis promises were the surgeon's gagHer promises took the top off his skullShe would get a brooch made of itHis vows pulled out all her sinews He showed her how to make a love-knotAt the back of her secret drawerTheir screams stuck in the wallTheir heads fell apart into sleep like the two halvesOf a lopped melon, but love is hard to stopIn their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legsIn their dreams their brains took each other hostageIn the morning they wore each other's face
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/22/09
Love is hard to stop, but loss of lovers
who’re separated like two pieces of a melon
undermines arrested love when, under covers
of other beds, a fallen lover fails, faux felon.
Inspired by Ted Hughes’s poem “Lovesong,” presumably inspired by the love and death of Sylvia Plath:
He loved her and she loved himHis kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried toHe had no other appetiteShe bit him she gnawed him she suckedShe wanted him complete inside herSafe and Sure forever and everTheir little cries fluttered into the curtainsHer eyes wanted nothing to get awayHer looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbowsHe gripped her hard so that lifeShould not drag her from that momentHe wanted all future to ceaseHe wanted to topple with his arms round herOr everlasting or whatever there wasHer embrace was an immense pressTo print him into her bonesHis smiles were the garrets of a fairy placeWhere the real world would never comeHer smiles were spider bitesSo he would lie still till she felt hungryHis word were occupying armiesHer laughs were an assasin's attemptsHis looks were bullets daggers of revengeHer glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secretsHis whispers were whips and jackbootsHer kisses were lawyers steadily writingHis caresses were the last hooks of a castaway Her love-tricks were the grinding of locksAnd their deep cries crawled over the floorsLike an animal dragging a great trapHis promises were the surgeon's gagHer promises took the top off his skullShe would get a brooch made of itHis vows pulled out all her sinews He showed her how to make a love-knotAt the back of her secret drawerTheir screams stuck in the wallTheir heads fell apart into sleep like the two halvesOf a lopped melon, but love is hard to stopIn their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legsIn their dreams their brains took each other hostageIn the morning they wore each other's face
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/22/09
Thursday, May 21, 2009
lwft-handed blows
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.”
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/21/09
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.”
© 2009 Gershon Hepner 5/21/09
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
