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Sunday 27 January 2013

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.


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