gershon hepner - slowed-down life

Writing is a slowed-down life
in which you overtake the past
with keystrokes sharper than a knife,
but you can catch up very fast,
not revisioning what you
already have produced, admiring
past opuses. You must break though through
reflecting mirrors by aspiring
to concepts that aren’t recreated
and with old insights reconceived,
distrusting thoughts illuminated
by what should now be disbelieved.
forgetting what you must forget,
and losing what you need to lose,
with nothing saved on that diskette
your memory regards as muse,
if sharp admirers read your work
and love the spilling of the beans,
and, smelling your fresh coffee, perk
and tell you what they think it means,
for when that happens you obtain
a second lease on life, and speed
though barriers of sound, a plane
that booms, a supersonic read.

The Vorlage of this poem is:

Writing is a slowed-down life
in which you overtake the past
with keystrokes sharper than a knife,
but you can catch up very fast,
forgetting what you must forget,
and losing what you need to lose,
with nothing saved on that diskette
your memory regards as muse,
if sharp admirers read your work
and love the spilling of the beans,
and, smelling your fresh coffee, perk
and tell you what they think it means,
for when that happens you obtain
a second lease on life, and speed
though barriers of sound, a plane
that booms, a supersonic read.



Hugo Williams in the TLS, October 28,2005 (“Freelance”) writes:

Writing is a slowed-down life, artificial old age. You long to escape into the present, but have to stay in the past. If we forget what we need to forget, we also lose what we need to lose.

11/13/05,5/19/07

gershon hepner

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/slowed-down-life/