Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Neil Ellman- Three Poems

The Great Masturbator

(after the painting by Salvador Dalí, 1929)

Strange
how blindness
would be punishment enough
than turned to this
my grotesque form
soft genitals
like melting wax
loathe what they have done
become
a woman spent
and fed to ants—
there is no consolation
or relief
in self-abuse



Battle Over a Dandelion

(after the painting by Salvador Dalí, 1947)

After deserts forsaken
by flowers
after flowers
forsaken by
autumn nights
after humanity
forsaken by god
over god
forsaking himself
they fight
the horsemen
of the apocalypse
wielding
ironic swords
blasphemous shields
no surrender they shout
no retreat
for their petallous lord
on his barren hill
never to yield
to flower kings—
the war has just begun
the prize a dandelion.



Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged
According to the Laws of Chance)

(after a collage by Hans Arp, 1916-17)


There is a chance
just a chance
one in a million
perhaps
or two
that the laws of chance
are correct
or almost so
squares settling where
there is a chance
they’d come to rest
upright
within a square
just by chance
we can see them
side by side
not even nudging
each other’s edge
or piled by chance
elegantly arrayed
if we’d believe
the laws of chance
could make it so
we would.