I'm walking for a coffee rush, enough that
a surge of caffeine will blow this wall
off this writer's block and all these dammed-up
thoughts will spill and issue forth-unimpeded.
I bought coffee,read some poetry-some bad poems
some good, surveyed the area for other customers
a man with a boa constrictor scarf
and a woman glued to her computer, job searching
while her Pomeranian roams the cafe.
This is my habit, I buy coffee, read poems, talk
to strangers at a coffee shop, somehow it works.
This coffee buzz doesn't quite stimulate me
enough, the threshold is short of the spark
and the spark refuses to ignite.
I ask for another coffee. The barista accepts.
I take the coffee and sit
down and read before taking off to see a movie.
As I sit back to my spot.
The barista is taping me on their phone,
laughing with a regular customer.
They assume I'm crazy, because I walked
a mile from the cold in what appears to be  
a fur trapper costume from the 1800s.  
I easily shrug off their laughter, other people laughing
at you only confirms that you're alive.

I walk 2000 feet to the theater. I am a resolved man, no
one's laughter can deter me. I think to myself,
"the greatest struggle for me as an individual is to
forget that other people exist, and realize that, I as an
individual am- I have to convince myself of my own
solipsism, that I have a right to be who I am, how
I present myself, that is my responsibility and my tragedy,
both my madness and my health.

I walk into the theater vibrating
with coffee jitters-am I in the right mind,
the right state to sit through a whole movie
by myself? The movie is great, I feel like I understand
more than I should, some part feels more raw than
the others-I should watch it again. It's message: America is living
beyond its means, some people profit, others
slide past unpunished, the common citizen bears the burden
of Wall Street's obsessive gambling problem.
A familiar story to me, does anyone
intend to pay their debts in America-do I?