for Alan Acacia
Spit your head in a bucket if you think you don’t move me. I’d jump from the highest belly, I would, if you thought I didn’t hear you. I’d curse the lowest footprint. I’d question my lower lip, I would, if I couldn’t decide my ankle, and answer what I’d forgotten. Wave aside your fingers, if you can’t see the myths I’ve made. I’d run frightened into my feet, I would, if I hadn’t forgotten the rules. The game is long and tired, the game is look and question. I’ve played the game so hard before, the rules all fell to feeling. When you ask me where I’m going, where’s the homeplate of my feeling, I see my myth is in the running, my being footprints my meaning. And when I try to open up what has been gut and darkness, you must realize there’s bone there, and accept the blood and muscle of my emotion.
October 1971