If I was a rock star when I was 17, if I made the cover of Rollingstone, if I toured the world in a big shiny bus, it’d be a messed up world with flowers in the air and buttons in your hair. I walked down the street today with my hands in my pockets and “It’s a Beautiful Day” streamin’ through my head like cerebral radio. I saw the steeple of Hamline University rising above the old brick apartments on the corner and I wondered if the green copper steeple just floated there northeast of the corner of Minnehaha and Snelling like a wild dream. The sun shone like it hasn’t shone in a season or two and I saw the grass, the pale, dead, yellow grass trying to breathe in the fresh spring air again. I laughed and jaywalked across the street to buy a pop. The lady at the cashier said it’s so nice all the people are out on their bikes and stuff. I said it’s a beautiful day and she didn’t answer and I couldn’t figure out if she was talking to me or the guy next to the ATM who couldn’t seem to remember his PIN number. 5309. That’s what he should have tried.

Poetry is flowing words on a page that you can’t understand no matter how hard you try until suddenly they flow from your fingertips and you think you have a slippery little grasp on the world at hand. That’s why I hate poetry.

So I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked home along the sidewalk, smiling at the gayly painted house for sale, it’s blue-green paint with yellow trim making it look like a candyland home. And I smiled, looked back at the hip coffee shop with the crazy mural wall and the upstairs apartment and I wondered who lives there and if they knew I wanted to capture the world in the lens of camera or the catch of a phrase.

And they all said goodnight.