And on that day I decided I wasn't going to go home Or at least not yet And so I got in my car and drove the opposite direction and surrounded myself with books and not with the silence and solitude my house offers when no one is home Where I sit and force myself to believe that there is nothing to do But on that day I didn't go home And the days after that I went on walks around neighborhoods with music drowning out all else like I was in Nirvana walking down streets nodding to old men on porches and watching trees sway in gentle breezes And a few nights later I sat on an old swing in my back yard And it was in that moment that I thought of you Allen Allen Ginsberg big beat poet with Buddhist beard and round belly always smiling always there to help a friend whether it's money for Corso or a walk with Kerouac by all the locomotive sunflower days in California Or Tangiers sipping on mint tea Or ghats in India Lost notebooks in Russia or was it Cuba Oh Allen I think of you now on this summer night Allen you would have turned 91 today isn't that crazy The world has only gotten crazier since you left it and there are times I wish you were here because, though I never knew you, you seemed to have a lot of the answers Like "you'll die when you die there's no use worrying about it" And Allen wherever you are now I hope you are with Naomi and Peter and Neal and all the other angels you loved so deeply Allen I wish I could love with half the strength you could I wish I could see the world through your eyes or at the very least through your eyeglasses But tonight I will have to make do with the jazz that's coming through my headphones And the gentle summer breeze through my bedroom window