Surreal Poem by gershon hepner

One called his painting “Honey’s sweeter
than Blood, ” a title maybe neater
than “Prodigal Sons Don’t Return, ”
but from such titles you can’t learn
what’s happening, no point to parley
with mystifiers, who like Dali,
or even more surreal, Yves Tanguy,
will make a Philistine a donkey
should he view and fathom fathom
these artists’ deep, surreal chasm.

Napoleon in the Wilderness
is how I feel, I must confess.
The Eye of Silence with which I
the vision of Max Ernst espy
leaves me with pleasure most bewildered
as meaning from my mind is filtered,
and I survey the oily essence,
the artist’s all-or-nothing presence,
and wonder how I would appear
if I were in his biosphere.

Painstaking painters like these jot
their ideas down in paint, then blot
them, thereby blurring every meaning
to which they’d cryptically been leaning.
You can’t find them as Rodin’s Thinker,
but might perhaps as Cocktail Drinker.
Is there a point in looking for
a figure that’s behind the door
of your perception? Should what’s hidden
considered as to eyes forbidden?

All artists must, surreal, subsist
like God, and like Him not exist,
perhaps. I would explain their why and when,
except that I forgot my pen;
besides, I can’t afford the paper
for exegesis of each caper.
I’ll makes some notes on my computer
for exiles whose locality
is close to surreality.


(Written while viewing an exhibition of German exiles at the LA County Museum./3/6/97,9/15/97,6/5/07)