Serious men of responsibility
understand the desperation
to stay one step ahead of the game.
While boys in skinny jeans
and pink t-shirts
flutter the hearts of young women,
men take on the grueling labor
no one else will do,
to provide, to survive.
At the end of the day,
serious men sit quiet with a drink,
they reflect on their sins
and they toast their sacrifices.

Samantha with the dark eye shadow
and the generous hips,
she whined when she was hungry,
angry, or dissatisfied in any conceivable way.
A hard **** session allowed me
to exorcise the meteor shower of madness
she regularly rained down upon my world.
Spreading that tight ***** with my ****,
feeling her flesh stretch wide
around my shaft
delivered a true sense of retribution.
Listening to her whimper through a clenched jaw
while she bit down on her bottom lip
brought almost the same satisfaction
as the ****** when I pushed in deep
to fill her with ***.

Fortunately for the both of us,
I knew we were finished
once the whining fueled my desire to flee,
rather than the need to balance
the scales of justice.

Sitting in the diner at 4:00 AM,
it's just me and the waitress,
and the trucker in the back booth
slowly sipping his coffee.
The waitress says she can't wait
until dawn so she can leave.
I don't have the heart to tell her
the trucker and I are desperately hanging on
to the last glimpses of moonlight.

Across the street, spray-painted words
are scrawled across a concrete wall
that read, ‘Live for today
because there is no tomorrow.’
Prophetic truths
that do not lead to tangible improvements
often lose their meaning, their power.
Communities lost and without direction
begin to decay.

During the spring and early summer months one year,
a crazy old man hung around a small parking lot
on Pittsburgh's Southside.
Usually, he mumbled to himself.
Sometimes he shouted incomprehensible
insults and warnings of damnation
to random people that walked by.

The old man always wore a knit skullcap
and a Navy pea coat, as if he were shipping out to sea.
Below the waist, he strutted around in ladies capri pants
with a colorful flower print,
and his hairy feet bulged out of a pair
of red hot stripper pumps.

Apparently, that old man wanted to stay warm
while he played watchman over the city,
but nothing beat the power of ****.

For many years on the Friday after Thanksgiving
my oldest friend and I,
along with about one hundred other heavy readers,
stood on the sidewalk before dawn's first light
in front of a local used bookstore.
While we patiently waited in the freezing cold
for the shop to open, the manager gave us hot coffee
and his appreciation for our mutual passion
of the written word.

Huddled in shivering groups,
we allies of imagination discussed poetry,
comics, novels, and the world’s rich history.
While serious shoppers trampled each other
over big screen televisions and trendy new toys
inside mall electronics stores,
we found comfort, friendship
in our celebration of literature.

In city traffic one fall morning,
a driver of a rusted white sedan,
probably on the way to a job,
sped through a red light
at the top of a hill,
near a school zone.

A woman in pink sweat pants
grabbed the backpack attached to her young son
and yanked him close
as the sedan swerved in the crosswalk
at the last moment
before obliterating them both
on the street.

In bars and in churches
and all over social media,
we question our violent culture.
No one seems to have the answers,
yet we ignore the truth.
We're expected to suspend our humanity,
to **** anyone who crosses our paths
for the privilege to work and earn,
all so we can eat.

The tattoo artist
with the dreadlocks and the comic book t-shirts,
he'd stand in front of his shop
chain smoking and drumming up business
from passersby most nights of the week.
The first few times I walked past
we ignored each other.
Eventually came the head nods,
and then the quick greetings.
The day I stopped
and asked him for a tattoo,
he chuckled and said, ‘It's about time.’
Even though we had never previously spoken,
for one evening inside the tattoo shop,
that artist an I rhapsodized for hours
as old friends.