Up there
the moon has eaten its fill
of the night's blue yogurt darkness
licking its round way
across the top of this fifty-two flavor sky

I drive south on Highway One
following this half golden mongoloid surfer
slipping through the crashing wavy clouds
that never reach the shore

where just beyond the Pelican Yacht Club
a pink Toucan dances a slow
billboard fandango beneath that moon
swaying, stopping, swaying, stopping
pulling me toward the A1A

I am a stranger to this coast
this vitamin C spaceland
is my escape from the scraped and frozen arteries
of New York, Chicago and Washington
the flooded chic valleys of California
north and south
the uncertain blistery sun
and blustery winds of Texas
all the lousy weather places
I could be instead of here

But even here I have to follow the moon
to find a suitable cafe
or some place where art has replaced violence
in the preparation of a meal
where espresso
means more than an Italian grimace
during the second reel
of Fellini's unfilmed autobiography

But just beyond the pier where only
fishermen can park after dark
I passed a small restaurant seemingly constructed
from orange crates and neon
nestled on the corner
like a sulking gull

I started to drive away
but saw an open back door
a couple sitting at a table
in a quiet pool of candle light
no sense of jukebox rhythm pounding
in their under-the-table playing-footsie-ankles

I mean, this was a bar, right?
but here was this thin slice of seedless romance
right here on the coast of Florida
beneath a sparking moon
and so I pulled into the parking lot
and saw another foot
dancing horizontally in the open door
and above that foot
a sign that said
SEA BREEZE ART CAFE

So I grabbed my backpack
and it turned out that that foot
in the doorway belonged to a brown-haired
smile bigger than all the south
"Welcome to our Art Cafe,"
she said with a New York accent
bringing me a vegetarian menu

and sometime between walking through the door
and hearing those words
I realized that somehow in the last two years
spent spinning publishing tales in New York
and lunching with Hollywood schmoozers
traversing the country
by plane and car and train
looking for the book
that would break America's heart

I had forgotten
that the best stories are written
word by word
paragraph by paragraph
in some place that dares to call itself
an Art Cafe
where a black-haired girl
who's escaped from New York
meets people at the door
with a "I'm really on vacation smile"

So this is where the new writing begins
wringing milk from succulent words
stirring in warm chocolate
and ladling frothy adjectives
into a tall paper glass
to create a liquid confection
darker than ink
silkier than that dream
that takes a hand deep into a woman's bluejeans
popping the metal buttons
like a soft warm six pack
slumbering deep in the gut
of a plumber poet
investigating the sweet irrigation
of that same woman's leg splitting rain forest
shaved closer
than a baby's head pushing out toward
the pink light
of a brand new tomorrow

Or maybe this the real first line
of a brand new poetry
that spits a black snail trail
across a parchment walk
with flowery singers
lining the margins
while a gnarled hand gripping a ball point pen
rises out of the creative steam
to etch the reader's throat
with subtle tattoos
that on their own
constrict breath
and pulse a pale dream
from sleeping hearts
that beat
and beat
and beat
until it stops
right there at the end
where patriots and felons
line the long staircase
to iambic pentameter judgment

and somewhere
sometime
somehow

God again forgets
to mail that letter
with the student believer's check
to pay the rent
on this green room in the round dormitory
where we all live and learn
and wait in silence for our grade