Letter From a Classic Archetypal Dope, January 4, 1960 - Part One

Part One Now as I account for myself I know the fight is over You made me feel if I was worth saving I was worth having And I knew as the man flattered to grow He also learned the crafts of clinging on to his sleazy self When we have to account for ourselves When we have to take stock of the unaccountable When we have but ourselves to account for When all but you and I alone are left standing Amid the crowds that hover at our presence in your eye Amid the lashing lolling tongues Amid the squelching claws of distrust And the deriding press of after thought What are my lean-throated words What are my bleating pleas of what When we have to account for ourselves In the awakening stillness of other judgment worlds What account do we have for ourselves But the rabid thirst of a search When we may have met in this or that town But in this land and in this continent This world This incarnation This temporal crevice You in the fresh burst of discovery I in the aftermath of debunking rediscovery Time was then held alike that summer Growing only to fruition in our recognition My senses were growingly numb from blunt use burning when the electric fondling dared enter and worry the concealed corners I saw you then Not as the strapping dash of bubbliness Nor as the plaitted innocence of schooling youth Trundling the scenes of covertly revisited crimes Forming with others the dutiful mannered habits Nor as the tall preening blot of shyness at the hedge of a group picture Fronting a personality Dicing friendship Simulating elder precepts Feeling your maidenhood pulsate in reveries Testing its beat upon hidden hay heaps Nor as the pure shaft of consciousness Thrusting into the wake of frightfulness I saw you Only as a parcel come to me in mortal need In a prelatic bestowment of fruits and tins The salt and pepper of spicy tables I saw you come to me in disguise well wrapped and well meant I saw you come to me That low day of my life As a parcel bound in the selfless vines of veins As the blood of transfusion As the hope of persistent verse It was one big inconsumable heart that arrived Unnamed and unasked for And I stood and stared Stared and stood No longer in unbelief I did not live from victuals coursing through I lived and thrived from gorging one Insuperable unknown heart (Continued in Part Two)