Neil Ellman

Hairy Moon

(Hrafnhildur Arnardottir, sculpture)

When you sleep

it hovers above your bed

a Medusa’s head

of venomous snakes

wailing a Banshee song

of Otherworlds and Death

with eyes that turn

your flesh to stone

and bones to dust

and dust that forms

a Basilisk.

But when you wake

it’s only a hairy moon

sailing over a canvas sea

a childish dream

not like the make-believe

you dreamed

when you believed

you were asleep.

Half Beast Half Rainbow

(Hrafnhildur Arnardottir, sculpture)

The beast that rises from the nightmare world

below the edge of here

where colors grow feathers and scales

talons and scissor-teeth

to claw their way from there

across the sky

to the somewhere where the rainbow ends

goes home to feed and fade and die.

Imaginary Friends

(Hrafnhildur Arnardottir, sculpture)

We have nothing in common

(as if the common were a good)

except that they are imagined

and are my friends.

None of them have names

like “John” or “Hildegard”

but they answer to the call

of “Wraith” and “Beelzebub”—

or not at all.

They have hair

like snakes or rope or vines

tentacle limbs and bulbous eyes—

or none of those at all.

They fly like Phoenixes

or swim like the Leviathan

they crawl under rocks—

some not moving at all.

With nothing in common

except our souls

I imagine them as I am

or wish to be, or perhaps

they have imagined me.