Jack and I have this habit of drinking too many cups of coffee sometimes. “I just love coffee,” Jack says—yeah, yeah—no kiddin’. There are other things to love besides coffee. Jack’s got a girl named Darla—which is a great damn name and for some reason she’s the only one I know—maybe that makes it greater. He loves her, she loves him—it’s a real strawberry twilight situation. Anyway there are other things to love besides coffee. There’s music. Have you ever heard Stan Getz play saxophone, or Bill Evans play keys? I once sauntered around a town called Ann Arbor in Michigan for two weeks, doing nothing but listening to Bill Evans play Some Other Time. And there was a great, creaky wooden, endlessly unfolding used book shop there with damn near everything. A good coffee shop down an alley too with a shop across from it that sold the loveliest locket-necklaces you ever saw. Well, there was even more than that too but I won’t bug ya with it. My point is that there’s more to love besides coffee. Like there’s poetic girls with buzz-cuts who give no one the time of day, and there’s blueberry stains on my notebook page, and the wind outside that you watch from inside, you only know is there because it moves other things like branches and grass and a flag in the distance and city trash. People’s souls are like that, you know them by the things they move. What moves you? What a question. What a question to ask somebody. If you haven’t asked somebody that question you’re not really living among the human race. What are you living among? What moves you? And for that matter people don’t dance enough. Lord send me a gal that won’t stand for cement feet! And for that matter send me one that’ll be patient with me. I’ve gotta learn to dance. I’ve never ridden a horse either—can you believe I didn’t dance at my sister’s wedding? I tried but that overcast-killer came on over me. That dance-floor was for hearts of red that beat blood—I guess mine was blue and pumped ink. Maybe that’s why I sit and write. It’s my only way of dancing. It was a windy reception. They said their vows outside in the wind. Him you could hear, but when she spoke the wind overtook her. It was perfectly appropriate. The feminine went with the feminine, and the union was half-concealed. That which is sacred is always half-hidden. That’s why you can see people’s bodies but you can’t see their souls. If you wanna know the soul you have to be open to being moved by it. You have to take the deepest breath you’re capable of, tilt your head back and say “okay great big world, let’s have your soul.” Now tell me what moved you. I was just thinkin’ about a cat the size of a horse that a person could ride. And now I’m looking up at those puffs of clouds in the light earth blue and I’m almost convinced they came from me. I smell french-toast. I smell cinnamon-roll. Breathtaking things—these are strange-beautiful things that you cannot handle upon introduction. I could eat maybe two entire boxes of pizza right now and live it and probably be righteously bummed out upon waking. I’ll stick to sipping this last bit of coffee. Would you mind if I wrote some poetry? Skip it if you don’t like it, sometimes I think it’s all I’ve got in me. I’ll come back around. Lucky come love me Lucky you’re pretty Lucky your stars Are the music of cities Lucky my death ‘Cause Lucky my life Lucky is the one Who imagines what might Lucky my breath And Lucky today Lucky is tomorrow Well on its way Lucky the lights And lucky the dark Lucky is everything Reaching my heart Lucky I tire Lucky I wake Lucky consciousness Behind my face Lucky arrive And Lucky depart Lucky are the sorrows And joys of art Lucky alone Lucky together Lucky come love me Regardless of weather