Two Poems by Neil Ellman

Rope and People

(after the painting by Joan Miró)

Born at the end

of an umbilical rope

connecting life to life

then bound to life

tied in bundles and knots

questions unanswered

puzzles unresolved

finally hanged from rope

taut at last

legs reaching for the truth

life unraveled

at the end

of a hangman’s noose.

Convergence

(after the painting by Jackson Pollock)

Before we disappear

through windowless walls

trap doors, crags and crevices

in the warp and wrap of time

blind-spinning, drifting

motion with neither direction

nor intent

neither argument nor ascent

we converge like thirsty souls

around a waterhole

at the confluence of now and then

waiting, waiting for a sign

never to come, we gather,

grow old and disappear.

Twice nominated for Best of the Net, Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey.  More than 600 of his poems, many of which are ekphrastic and based on works of modern and contemporary art, appear in numerous print and online journals, anthologies, broadsides and chapbooks throughout the world.