Black isn’t a color, she said, and I didn’t want to argue;
but I could have said colors are emotional elements,
not the only ones, mind you, but emotional for sure;
and black for certain is a highly emotional element...
ask anyone who has been in mourning for awhile.

And black isn’t just about sadness and emotional loss.
I like the deep black that’s the color of damp midnight
in a cypress swamp though I’ve only been there once
and even then it was only in a very special dream...
but dreams and wild imaginings definitely are real
because if they’re not real what have you got left...
so trade the memories of stuff that happened once,
things you didn’t want to happen and trade them
at very little cost if any at all for wild wet warm dreams.

Now you take yellow, any yellow, dark, or bright light
and you’ve got emotion exploding all over the place,
so nobody is going to argue about whether it’s a color...
and red, has anybody every doubted the power of red?
And when you mix them together side by side and cheek
by jowl or if you wish cheek by cheek you’ve got stuff
of dreams and memories that spring right back up at you
if you see them together as you cross the street.