North Beach Offering

I will accept this one day. I won't have a choice.

The way I spent my time in San Francisco not finding

the Saint John Coltrane Church,

but staring for hours into the hatched face of Paul Klee's

Stachel, der Clown. I took coffee in Vesuvio's

and Irish beers there too,

while across the alley every phoneme

of every word riding my bloodstream

gathered dust and gestured to the chapped hands

of men older even than my father.

We offered what we could to North Beach

and dined with one hundred librarians,

butter caked on their croissants

and the little white plates of the cafe

were chipped pedestals

where the late afternoon discarded

the sun.

-- Kristofer Collins

Listening to James Taylor at 40

This is a different kind of degenerate art.

Like pouring an entire beer into your own lap

it settles the blood, and just as you'd never

want to spend the night with a mope

at the Monroeville Mall food court you'd never

mistake Frank O'Hara for Franco Harris.

It's like ordering cocktails under the grand stairs

of the William Penn

or taking the river walk to work

while a boatload of highschoolers

drowns in the Allegheny.

Not as much fun as it should be,

but more fun than you'd think.

-- Kristofer Collins

Scott Silsbe Likes Hamburgers

He dreams of them.
I know he does.
When he walks into Tessaros
and looks at all the seafood options
he sees the woman at the bar
wipe the grease off her face with a
white cloth napkin,
he sees the chef
work the hard wood fire
the flames leaping
the smell in his nose
and he wants one
but it's been years,
decades really,
another lifetime
of eating meat
and it does destroy
the planet
it really isn't
the coal power plants
or the SUVs
it's the cows farting
in the fields before
their terrible slaughter.

He get the tuna.
Dolphins
died in their nets
shouting to their children
they love them
and we both believe
in love but the Navy destroyers
make all the animals deaf.

I get the blue cheese
bacon burger. It's
our contribution
to the end of the world.

bob pajich