Gerard (Gerry) Sarnat is the great-great grandson of Jacob Ben Isaac Gesundheit, the High Rabbi of Warsaw, and shtetl lowlifes, Nahum Z. and Yente Liebe Sarnatzky.
A virginal poet at the tender age of sixty-four, Gerard Sarnat first wrote about caring for the homeless and happenings in the lands of Abraham and Burning Man from the Judean Desert of his heritage to the Black Rock Desert’s annual pagan arts festival.
Since 2008 Gerry has been published in over sixty journals and anthologies. He has received awards inside and outside the US. In 2009 Sarnat began editing literary journals. In 2010 the California Institute of Arts and Letters published his first book HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man. It’s currently available in bookstores as well as online including Amazon. Gerard has done workshops in Israel, readings in Southern and Northern California, and radio interviews that are available as NPR and iTunes podcasts.
Sarnat is Harvard and Stanford educated, a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He has been a professor at Stanford Medical School, and CEO/chief medical officer for national healthcare companies. Gerry has set up and staffed clinics for the disenfranchised, served on international non-profit boards and chaired community organizations. Gerard Sarnat is a father of three, grandpa to two, and has been married forty-plus years.
Unlucky
Sperm Club
"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."
— Winston Churchill
Like everyone else I met a girl.
Now dreaming of Jeannie’s strawberry curls —
she shakes her hair out, nibbles my neck, I her porcelain ear.
Splash of Scotch, both of us lean in.
The last time I saw Jean —
dark woods, fingers shoved away, rosebud groping
showing classical restraint, a few fondlings and smooches,
tryst ventured no further — little Ashkenazi kid
studied indoors too much didn’t shave yet, with a flower-like goy
one of the schoolgirls I don’t get near — you can bet I wanted
her — held it in ‘til virgin oil steamed over.
Word finally came from the friend of a friend —
lung cancer won over bone china.
Rear-view mirror, mourning the consummation
more than celebrating the courtship,
first gone of those I almost entered — oh my, number one love.
The bitch is we yearned to smoke in bed but never did.
"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."
— Winston Churchill
Like everyone else I met a girl.
Now dreaming of Jeannie’s strawberry curls —
she shakes her hair out, nibbles my neck, I her porcelain ear.
Splash of Scotch, both of us lean in.
The last time I saw Jean —
dark woods, fingers shoved away, rosebud groping
showing classical restraint, a few fondlings and smooches,
tryst ventured no further — little Ashkenazi kid
studied indoors too much didn’t shave yet, with a flower-like goy
one of the schoolgirls I don’t get near — you can bet I wanted
her — held it in ‘til virgin oil steamed over.
Word finally came from the friend of a friend —
lung cancer won over bone china.
Rear-view mirror, mourning the consummation
more than celebrating the courtship,
first gone of those I almost entered — oh my, number one love.
The bitch is we yearned to smoke in bed but never did.
© 2012
Gerard Sarnat
Gerard Samat was a Featured Poet who read his poetry at the October 2012 Second Sunday Poetry Series
Gerard Samat was a Featured Poet who read his poetry at the October 2012 Second Sunday Poetry Series