Slaves in the realm of love are the only truly free men.
Ibn Ammar, Seville, Arab Andalusia
And I’ll love you like the sun loves California.
Beth Hart, My California
it demands a new vocabulary for
it is the fifth season
it is deciduous
it is like those flowers in the desert
that bloom once in a blue moon after long
nights of rain and fade away in the face of
solar slaughter leaving behind
the singing sand dunes
to tell of them
to tell of us
i
read book
after book
after book
and yet
i
can not find the words
to tell of you
to tell of me
to tell of us.
what us?
(she said)
what words?
there are only
twelve keys
seven seas
and
four seasons
yes
(i said)
yes
and yet…
and yet.
like an addict Gilbert begged the gods
“let me fall in love one last time”
he said and
i get it.
it can be hard to live so long
in the grey to live so long
that you yearn for the colours
because you’ve — almost, almost —
forgotten what blue looks like
what you look like
these are words on paper
these are pixels on a screen
one of these days they’ll upload you
to the web and stream you to the stars
you’ll materialise on the other side
a little tired, a little bewildered
but pretty much the same except for
what was it?
it’s right on the tip of your tongue
it’s all that they couldn’t put into
ones and zeroes because
there’s no language
there’s no lexicon
(yet)
to tell of you
to tell of me
to tell of us