Special Brownie, Special Friends
(for Scott Silsbe)
Time slows down this morning
fifteen minutes feels like forty-five
as I tingle & get lost
in what passes for thought
I bow your way Mr. Silsbe
my gift bearing buddy
from the east side of town
you travel, we talk
you bring kindness & good things
we celebrate
now I bring you this poem.
Scott Silsbe
Like Bart, Scott is a poet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dave Newman said his poems "read like someone dropped Frank O'Hara into one of Pittsburgh's great dive bars and told him to sing like a jukebox playing folk songs and punk rock." For instance:
ReplyDeleteWhat a Sad Christmas
Christopher’s Bar is all full up and Liquor World is closed already.
So I wander down the avenue looking for someplace to take me in,
clutching a Brautigan in my coat in case I need some conversation.
I used to keep a plastic cooler in the back of my beat-up old Volvo.
Sometimes I’d put a case of beer on ice in there, sometimes a sixer
and a nice bottle of bourbon. I like my bourbon with one lone rock.
But I don’t have the Volvo anymore. Traded it for a book of poems
and watched it ride off down the highway to the city of lost angels.
I know it’s just “the city of angels”, but that’s not how I think of it.
What does it matter? It doesn’t. I do get down like this sometimes.
Only to remind myself how good I have it. I have my failing health.
I have a little bit of money. I have the love of a woman on occasion.
One night in Kalamazoo, I was just cruising and I stopped to knock
on the door of a girl I knew through a writing class at the university.
She used to write these fun stories about doing drugs at dance clubs.
When she opened her door, I said, “Let’s go drinking and driving!”
She laughed and said alright. We wound up at this Valentine diner
up on M-140, just outside of South Haven, called Ma’s Coffee Pot.
We didn’t even end up doing any drinking. Just had coffee and pie
and talked a while. She was a good talker and she had a nice laugh.
She made me feel less lonely. Even on the dark and quiet ride home.
Two of our best local poets in a town full of them. Bart, Scott and Pittsburgh.
ReplyDeleteThanks Don
ReplyDelete