NEIL ELLMAN - POEMS

Neil Ellman is a poet from New Jersey.  He has published more than 1,350 poems in print and online journals, anthologies and twelve chapbooks throughout the world.  He has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net.

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                                          I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life
                            Everywhere, with Everyone, One to
                               One, Always, Forever, Now
                         (after the construction by Damien Hirst,)
 
 
In the imperfect symmetry
between our lives
I want it to be forever now
a child at one with everywhere
the center of the universe
all times, all places, all at once
in brotherhood with stars and trees
in concert with
the music of the sea and sky
I want to be as face-to-face     
with destiny
as heaven is to earth
now and forever in our time
now forever now
in this moment of our lives.
 
 
 
                                        In Lovely Blueness
 
                                               (after the painting by Sam Francis)
 
 
I walk in the loveliness of your blue
in the blueness of your love
I cry blue tears, hear nothing but
the blueness of your voice
the way hydrangeas bloom
and glaciers crawl on azure hands
I know how lovely you can be
when blueness is your eyes
and all around you blue unfolds
the blueness of your light
reflected in your soul.
 
 
                               The Three Earthquakes
 
                         (after the painting by Max Ernst)
 
 
One came after the other
then another
three shocks in succession
from the shiver
of a blade of grass
on a windless day
to the fall of the towers
at Ilium and New York
dynasties crumbling
after their time had come.
 
Earth shook     flesh trembled
rivers of blood overflowed
their banks       three times
a fissure opened   
to swallow the future
and the past    three times
the air filled with debris.  
 
A fourth would never come
they said
the ground would never
shake again
never the end of days--
and then the aftershock.
 
 
 
                                           Monument  
 
                    (after the painting by Hedda Sterne)
 
 
No monument for me.
No memorial.
No statue please, no triumphal arch.
No cenotaph or obelisk.
No cartouche with my name inscribed
as a falcon-god.
No Abbey-grave for passersby
to tread upon.
 
Let the pigeons light
on someone else’s tomb
and the steeple-choughs
defecate on another’s bust.
 
Form no constellation in my shape
and leave me to the slag of history
where I belong.
Please, not even a plaque
where I was born.