Neil Ellman - Three Poems

1960-R

(after the painting
by Clyfford Still)

in the end
everything catches on fire
wood stone
burns turns red
wax dolls
drip chaos
(the uncertainty
of the moment)
flashes
of lightning
spark
the end.



April

(after the painting
by Kenneth Noland)

so, sun
shimmering face
circled
majesty
the face of time
not mine
speaking limitless
time
not my own
energy
not
millenia
years instead
i circle you
for a time
as if time
were my own



January 1951

(after the painting by
Clyfford Still)

as if Vesuvius
rained biting flies
darkness at noon
suddenly
the blue sun
eclipsed
what was
no longer is
what is black
is black
is
as in another life



Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey. His poems, many of them ekphrastic, appear in numerous print and online journals, anthologies, broadsides and chapbooks throughout the world.