Translating Silence

Your eyes murmur and hold out a hand

For something not lost but missing nonetheless

An anticipated voice loitering in hunted stillness

You search cupboards full of imperceptible lapses

Seek mirrors that hush innumerable syllables

Mute intonations haunting neatly folded shadows

Your muttering eyes reach and faster than light

Startled inflections freeze and feign death

An eminently breathless pause that welcomes

Whose impending presence?  What name now

Falls from your lips? No irremediable distances

No extinguished vistas untouched by passion

Long since beyond these windows of lassitude

Here in the blue twilight of your quiet rooms

And to Have Felt Age Creep Over the Naked Body

An underground amazement blazes

Mildly out from me indifferent sparks

Shoot moderately far enough away

For me to shine a light on for me to cast 

A rather ominous even frightened glow 

At the darkest and dirtiest perfumes

You wear O when you come around

See how I run amok and fling my arms 

Wide and wild a gale-tossed but giddy

Little sacrificial god! Who shall we amaze 

Tonight with pyrotechnic atmospherics?

We are coarse exiles of our scorched

Fragrances O we who say we see the earth

Assert itself entangled in so many silly stars

Veiled Messages in the Most Unlikely Moments

Subterranean desire of the firefly’s rhythm

Trembling impulse of the golden orb spider

Vague aspirations of the moonlit magnolia

Inexplicable joy of morning fog in the sorghum

Forgotten remorse of the dry arroyo

Emotional burstings of late summer wind

Modest insistence of beach grass on its knees

Measurable hesitations of high-desert snow

Gossamer enthusiasms of power lines at sunset
Subdued destiny of backyard burclover

Stone dignity of the forlorn and feral cemetery

After-dinner intonations of the distant city’s voice

Stunning intelligence of a beautiful woman

Giddy banalities of my wing-clipped poetry

Glamor Shots of Your Mom

I’d like to tell you about this dream
I’ve had three times but don’t
Tell your mom

So much like a current of air
Gliding barefoot down a dark hallway
Like something quietly unfolding
Satin wings or maybe the last
Letter sent by the USPO

Ever since I sleep on my feet
Three nights down this lonely alley 
I come back to life precisely
Where the empty voices died

You know where I mean

Now I’m swirling
Tornadoes around in my mouth
Now I’m waving
Two red flags of rebellion

And in this dream I’d like to tell
The moon to obey me and adore me
The moon's been a real bitch
Lately and the moon’s lit cigarette
Perfumes me such that I’m infused
All smoke-musky in the morning

Just don’t tell your mom