Charles Tarlton

Some Call It Love

"i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)"
~ e. e. cummings

She said love was a word of no signification, that the lover simulates feelings for the beloved, distorts the eye’s vision, not to mention touch. The lover loves the image, like a paper doll, a cutout.

I arrived early carrying roses and tulips wrapped in green tissue, fumbling with the little card in its absurd little envelope. She took the flowers as one might reach for the mail from the postman’s hand. “Oh, are these really for me?”

in the lists of love
black armored horses clank
knights haul their lances
accidents count most when love’s
the wrong angle of the spear

having gazed into
the yellowest daisy, where
its petals focus
our attention centrally
on delicate radii

coming together
made the flower, sent the seed
and then abundance
detonated in a sunburst
of gold, of sexual gold