Within my audible range

Language shall not matter, I will come to you

Without words, without even the first torn layer of silence.

I’ll come with my consciousness pinned back flat against my skull

Each nerve alert to catch the slightest nuance.

Every tune that plays wordless just beyond the range

Of my hearing, at inaudible frequencies -

I will tear my life open along its perforated line

To receive all the rhythms, and all of the melodies.

Your notice of my half lives flapping in the wind

Spilling over my hands shall not matter, or whether you note

My fingers straining to keep their hold intact,

Or the stifled rings of songs deep inside my throat.

Nothing of these will matter, only the consuming effort

The slow rendering of a life into a listening organ.

I will figure out your lyrics, language will not matter,

Only that when you start, it shouldn’t escape my attention.

You may set lyrics to your tunes, you may strum them voiceless

Or put aside your curved guitar, and your taut drum.

You may choose to look at the forest and hold its colours in your eyes

And swollen whispers under your tongue, and I’ll still get the sum -

What it is that you wish to sing, with or without lyrics.

And language will not matter, nor silence, nor a word;

And my paltry human abilities, my senses and their limits

And the weird definitions of what can, or cannot, be heard.