Yin

•

Coffeehouse Extemporé in Minneapolis,
         summer 1967 ("of love")—
                   I'm on my
                            first trip, the acid
                   has transposed my ordinary
        perception into the key of magic.
I rub my back against
          the red wallpaper's
                     flocked fleur de lis,
                                am loved by it.
                     My friends have drifted off
         and I am running
as colors run
           into whatever
                     I encounter,
                              a beautiful hippie girl
                    with black Italian hair,
          she's sitting on a stool,
her back against the counter,
            usually eats brown rice
                      but tonight pizza with
                                pepperoni. "Want some?" She
                      waves the slice toward me.
            Bitten shreds wriggle languidly.
It's this
           and the white polka dots
                     on her short skin, which are
                                rotating together,
                     gyrating her forward-thrust
           pelvis in unmistakable
fuck-rhythms
            that cause me to stammer
                        my single-syllable
                                   reply, a stone
                        of negation
             dropping
into an endlessly echoing,
          bottomlessly falling-
                    away well.
                             "Too yin for you?"
                    Oh most
         definitely
too yin
           —whatever that
                      is)—woman's
                                 lap, Grandest
                      of Canyons,
           radiating the mystery
of generation,
           yawning before me
                     suddenly
                               so dizzying—