Phillip Ellis Poems

Will you forget that flesh in which I’ve dwelt,
which was my poem, although it was born before?
Will you forget this flesh, this head, this pelt,
this frame of bone: this form I so deplore?
...

No joy shapes you,
no joy buoys you over seas
and waves, that seek to seize
and bear away, over disease
...

Memories I have, bell-birds
ringing in the heat of the day
and a secluded spot, words
unable to drive away
...

Ten years gone, an ache remains,
a photo pinned upon the wall
barely leached by ten years of rains.
...

On a dreamlike summer evening,
I searched for the tablet
on which I'd write
my name, reaching
...

The waves are lovely and luminous tonight,
and the setting moons sink below
the sea's horizon. It seems, somehow,
strange that far and foreign I was born,
...

Backyard lychees,
juice running down my chin,
smouldering piles of leaves
murmuring in the wind,
...

I have lived in the night when the demons all roam,
and have made in the middle of evil my home,
I have roamed with both witches and ghouls in the night
and have supped with the Devil beneath the moonlight.
...

No yachts, here, passing,
a hundred, more or less,
or like a golden undertow,
the suckle of the ocean wave
...

As night's departing breath fades swiftly away,
even the frightened fellahins rejoice
whilst desert-dwelling ghouls lift angered voice,
for, as the desert-haunters hate the day
...