Poems inspired by "Dark Matter"

Local extemporaneous poet BRASH visited the gallery during the closing celebration for our recent show, "Dark Matter," and created two poems inspired by Ellyn Weiss's work.

Alchemistry
To Ellyn Weiss’ Lost Continent


The luminous bowl
That is the skull
Scoops the elixir of thought
From the synaptic clot
Of emotion,
Transmutes its graygold matter
Of alchemic fits and starts
Into the wordless patter
Of the heart’s Impatient motion.

© October 17/21, 2009, BRASH


Dreams
To Ellyn Weiss’ Cladocera


At night the brain
Uncouples itself from its mooring
Follows its own bright train
Through the wilderness, seeking, touring,
A restless conductor’s scoring.

At night the brain derails
From crisply ordered thought
To follow the wisp of trails
Unbound, unbordered, hot
With organic combustion wrought.

At night the brain cracks
Free of relentless time’s elapse,
Leaves the faintest spoor of tracks
On the crackled surface that maps
The sharpest etchings of synapse.

Oh to leave behind the shoddy
Hovel of durance mater, — why but for a night? —
To ever escape this grim and earthen body
For the burn of passages deep and bright
Dark and pure as anthracite.

© October 17/21, 2009, BRASH