It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down. And your eyes and the moon swept the valley.

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.

Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths.

Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks, waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets.

Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.

What if someone gave a war & Nobody came? / Life would ring the bells of Ecstasy and Forever be Itself again.