Ephram Pratt Learns from Silence
Incandescent
were the colors
in the black rainbow
when viewed
from the quark
filling an empty space
in an adjunct
kaleidoscope,
the one with
ornamentation
limited to
the essence of silence,
to numbers so large
physicians
of the night
enrolled in courses
to shelter themselves
from voices
emitted by elemental
invisible helices.
Ephram Pratt Endorses a Vagrant Intensity
The daily rule
of obliterating silence
has become
just as expected,
an exercise in
opening and closing,
joining sentences
to word sandwiches
enticed into
a vigilant antipathy,
toward beginnings
and endings,
just a touch of
incendiary loquaciousness
as witnessed by
passersby and
those with voices
reaching into sadness,
into sounds heard
only by a vagrant intensity.
Ephram Pratt Flies Directly into the Wind
Eased into reality
by a fog
centered in
a valley of discontent,
he takes his hands
out of his sleeves
and fixes them into
a swam of swallows
dining in a strand
of discordant reeds
along the river,
silence
hanging discontentedly
from the cacophony
wrapped into
the hives of his navel
bruised and enveloped
like a basket
of swallows
protruding from
a valley of
effervescent eunuchs
