For three years now in late September, magazine contributor, local poet and story teller Bill Pruitt has kindly offered a poetic birthday gift for our anniversary. Thanks again, Bill!
See Happy 2nd Birthday Talker and “Talker Birthday Jeremiad” from Bill Pruitt and Happy First Birthday! Distinguished poet Bill Pruitt offers “Ode to the Talker”
Bill Pruitt
What You Know If You Read Talker
If you read Talker, you know Talker has been in the Zen Garden
and has leaned against the rock— and you know what that means.
Next thing to enlightenment, am I right? Not saying formal
Dharma transmission or anything, but Dude gets around.
From The Way of Zen
Talker’s been to Magnolia’s where Obama had a grilled cheese
and tomato soup, not on the same day, but he can tell you
where he sat, he talked to the people who talked
to the man, the owner named that lunch The Obama
she told him there were even some folk who suggested
our current President should get equal time. have a lunch
named after him. (Although Garbage Plate
is taken, there are people who say he will get time)
Talker has these history mavens like Payne,
who can discuss with great sagacity
if watching NFL is beyond a moral person’s capacity
and he has his doubts, though he loves the game
(his cachet even greater being a fan and not a hater)
George and Mendon Payne
and Nighan, who can take a certain well-known party of Four—
Abe, Mary, Major Henry Rathbone, fiancee Sara Harris
who were sitting together at the Ford Theater
when Wilkes walked in and delivered his Doom of Triple Death
(directly and indirectly causing the deaths of Lincoln, himself
and Sara Harris eighteen years later, when she died from
a gunshot from her husband driven crazy from that day
Wilkes stabbed him in the arm as he tried to stop him,
the failure of which caused him social opprobrium
and resulting descent into paranoia)— still with me?—
Michael J. Nighan
Nighan pinpoints these same two couples
on a train headed to D.C. for inauguration,
passing through Albany where Wilkes was staying
at the Stanwyx, who could have looked up
from his whiskey to see the train go by
while drunkenly slamming Emancipation
But that’s nothing — Talker himself was there when
the Millerites went up Cobbs Hill in 1844, to await
the End of the World, wearing white and having
given away their stuff and, and he was there when they
came back down, so bummed they called it
the Great Disappointment, Talker made it to the Current Era
where Dean Tucker ghost-busted him, and I’m happy to say
Talker is back with us,
Dean Tucker ghost-busting David Kramer [Photo: A Millerite] From In search of Talker on Cobb’s Hill for “The Day of Wrath”
even snapping Rick of Rick’s Recycled Books selling hots
at Cobbs Hill baseball games, somehow catching him
when he’s not in his store leading you to the copy
of Tristram Shandy you asked for at the bottom of a pile
of paperbacks stacked on the floor, and Talker was there
buying a dog from Rick instead of a book, happy anniversary, Talker!
Rick of Rick’s Books on Monroe Avenue. From Adding a SOTA baseball game and the Air Horn guy to the Cobb’s Hill series
SEE ALSO
Happy 2nd Birthday Talker and “Talker Birthday Jeremiad” from Bill Pruitt
Happy First Birthday! Distinguished poet Bill Pruitt offers “Ode to the Talker”
