In the back of my Honda Element
a single mom of two licked the tip of my ****.
The scent of her strawberry lip gloss filled the car.
Every few seconds she'd look up at me
and smile at my ridiculous ****** expressions.
"You think I'm a ****," she said
while pressing the **** against her cheek.
"***** are courageous," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"You live the life you choose.
Other cowards live as they're told.
That makes you unique, baby. Strong."
She stared past me out the rear window
until I went mostly limp.
She then wrapped her mouth around the top half
and worked on me deep and with passion.
Sensations coursed through my body I didn't know existed,
a level of ecstasy I would never experience again.

Soft chairs watch over us.
They give us a place
to mourn, laugh, ****.
Chairs gently cradle us
without guile or judgement,
as the best of friends.
The crevices and folds
formed in the material of chairs
record and keep our secrets,
our histories.
Without soft chairs
we are nothing.

In a building recess
between a whiskey bar and a vape shop
an old man sat on a rolled blanket.
He held a simple sign on a torn sheet of cardboard
that read "HONGRY."
The old man's face contained hundreds of deep crevices,
a lifetime of memories permanently imprinted,
much like the etchings found on old vinyl records..

A young man in a while golf shirt
Stumbled out of the whiskey bar.
He stopped in front of the old *** to regain his balance.
"Get a job," he said in slurred contempt.
"Do something with your life."

The old man stared through the drunkard,
In total silence,
the old man's worn face filled the sidewalk with the music
of his wisdom, his pain, his experiences.
The drunkard stumbled along,
deaf to that solemn gift of truth.

Rage is all the rage,
except when the rage
is directed at me.
That's when rage transforms
into terror,
and terror is combated
with violence
and rage.

Outside one of Pittsburgh's many suburban malls
a middle-aged woman wearing a colorful hijab
held the hand of a little boy of about eight
as they walked past the entrance of a department store.
Three teenage boys leaned against a nearby wall.
One teenager wore a printed t-shirt of a confederate flag.
All three of the teenagers pointed at the woman.
They laughed with a roar of contempt
that exerted dominance over the sidewalk.
The little boy hugged that woman's leg.
He sobbed into the material of her long dress.
The teenager wrapped in the confederate flag,
he put his hands behind his head
and leaned back against the wall
in victory.

Coffee on Monday morning
carries a richer aroma
and a sweeter flavor
than the same brew
in the same cup
any other day of the week.
If our minds, our experiences
define so many of our tastes,
consider the satisfying joy a handshake
brings to a lonely old hermit.
Imagine the luscious splendor
of a long walk during a summer drizzle
after the endless confinements
of hospitals, doctors, and the funeral home
when she departed this realm.

During mass on Sunday mornings
we would recite the Act of Contrition,
a prayer to request forgiveness of sins.
In humble voices, we asked for absolution
from God and from each other,
before the priest blessed the eucharist.
Most of our sins were encouraged in a world on fire,
but we owned up to them every week.
Hatred of our brothers and sisters,
the best drugs and the juiciest hookers,
these were our only escapes
from the bosses, the bills, the tax collectors.

Sin was how we stopped the perpetual slide
into total madness,
and the Act of Contrition,
that was how we kept our sins
from eating us alive.