The Battle Hymn of Scott Silsbe and Chuck Kinder

I’ve had enough beer, not enough dinner,
the sandwich ring is my best friend.
Silsbe comes over and says
“Did you see this? Come see this!”
his voice excited reverence.
We head to the wall bookshelves around the fireplace.
He points to pictures: Raymond Carver, James Crumley,
Richard Hugo, Harry Crews, others.
Big shit-eating grins on their faces,
life preservers for a white water trip
other scattered events, every picture bleary-eyed
drunk on the good old outlaw days.
Days when cocaine and whiskey were breakfast.
Days when being fucked up was never a bad thing.

Tonight we celebrated the last of the outlaws,
the recent strokes thinned his voice, he didn’t read.
Others flanked him, paid him homage, gave him voice.
At seventy-two, he drops two books, takes the money and runs.
Florida, the retirement of past generations.
I don’t know how brother, but Christ you outlived them all.

In the kitchen, I listen to a guy tell the story of the suicide he witnessed today.
Everyone is avoiding him, tired of the story.
A man leaping off a parking garage in Mt Lebanon
isn’t anything special, it’s a futile voice lost in another futile place,
and these are all futile places, there is no soul.
It may be crass, since I know he’s repeating the story
to judge his own emotion,
reeling it in, stretching it out, kneading his feelings, trying to cancel his trauma.
I say to him, why would you care, he was dead already.
Sometimes people just know when they're dead,
when they realize it, why stop them from fulfilling the feeling?

He says I make a good point.
At least he stops talking to me.
He goes over, tells Chuck the story
Chuck listens, too tired to hold court.

I wander the ground floor 
take time to talk to the cat
look at art on the walls.
In the office I scan paperbacks
Silsbe finds me again.
He asks what I think of this
by his face he’s barely containing his excitement,
even though he’s been here many times before.

I tell him the house is beautiful.
I ask him if he thinks any of this is sad.
Here’s a writer who got what he wanted
he was published, he taught, he was tenured
he lived by words, built prestige, filled his life with stories.
somehow found a way to leave his house beautiful.
It seems to me that he’s the last of dying breed.
The last generation who the myth of a dream could still rest with.
Isn’t it sad that as writers we’ll never get that experience.
We’ll struggle, our own futile voices lost
in a land that has forgotten its art
in a land that has lost its soul.
He says back, with so much optimism
“At least we got to stand near it.”