Spinozablue

An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Neil Ellman

Summer’s Eve

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June brings us poetry by Neil Ellman and a short story by Donal Mahoney. Summer is around the corner. Will there be dancing in the streets?

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And the Show Went On, by Alan Riding. 2011

Reading a fascinating book about Occupied Paris. Alan Riding’s And the Show Went On. About 110 pages into it. He tells the story of heroism and collaboration in France, the Resistance, the complicit Vichy government, the attempt to flee the horrors of the Third Reich.

For me, World War II was always the last just war. Before it and since that time, wars have been overwhelmingly unnecessary, wars of choice, wars of conquest and the protection of markets.…

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Neil Ellman: A Rose is a Phantom of a Rose

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Some Roses and Their Phantoms

(after the painting by Dorothea Tanning)

 

 

When roses die their petals shed
like skin peeled from a snake
with nothing left but the phantom-coils
of yesterday’s blooms they shrivel
and spool, curl into shapeless knots
to live among the dead      
where the ghosts of roses go
to hide and be alone
with thoughts of might have been
springs that would never come.  

 — by Neil Ellman

 

 

 

Copyright © 2013, by Neil Ellman. All Rights Reserved

 

Twice nominated for Best of the Net, as well as for the Rhysling Award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association, Neil Ellman writes from New Jersey.  …

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Recent Additions & Musings . . .

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Spinozablue welcomes the fine Haiku of Virginie Colline, and the poetic works of Dan Corjescu and Neil Ellmann.

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The Cemetery of Humility

As long as we are alive, nothing is complete. We define this or that aspect of art, music, religion, life itself, and we kill it. In some way, small to great. Yes, poetry can lift art; art poetry. But neither can define or limit or stifle the other. There is always more. Much more. And the best critics know this. The most attentive, aware, tuned-in admirers of all the arts know this.

Nothing is written in stone, literally and metaphorically.…

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New Poetry by Neil Ellman

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Academy

(after the painting by Cy Twombly)

 

Scrawls on the hide
of a whale
almost words
more than scrawls
almost more than words
a kind of history
of victories & defeats
         rough encounters
         in dangerous seas
         mad love               
crawling syllables
ampersands
asterisks
slashes
         coherent by half
         call out
         wounded
         its migration done
it crawls to land
to teach its young.

 

 Invasion of the Night

(after the painting by Roberto Matta)

 
Time, times, and a half
the wicked judged
you and I
our bodies
chased and caught
invaded by the night
and crushed
upon a darkling sky
as stars burn out
flames from a lick
chaos in a jar
an absence of civility
and light
in our final hour.…

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