There Is No Killing What Can’t Be Killed by Neil Ellman

Sculpture, by Huma Bhabha. Contemporary.

There Is No Killing What Can’t Be Killed
 
Pull off a butterfly’s wings
and crush its body in your hand;
poison the water and the air
with plastic bottles and pesticides,
but there is no killing what can’s be killed.
 
Watch at your leisure the picador’s lance
and the matador’s taunts and final thrust;
drink the water from a tainted well
filled to the brim with arsenic and lead,
but there is no killing what can’t be killed.
 
Slay the dragons
shoot geese from blinds
lay the pipelines
and fracture the earth
but there is no killing what can’t be killed.
 
Neil Ellman

Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published more than 1,200 poems, most of which are ekphrastic and based on works of modern art, in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world.  His latest chapbook, Mind Over Matta (Flutter Press), is based on the works of the Chilean abstract-surrealist, Roberto Matta Echaurren.