Once a week, when I was about five or six years old,
my grandmother took me with her
to visit a few of the local bars
in her poor rust belt town outside of Pittsburgh.
Through the haze of cigarette smoke
and the scent of old memories and gin,
she’d quickly catch up with friends
and sign the book in each joint,
which entered her into 50/50 raffles.

‘Hey, Dolly’s here!’ the old souls would call out.
The drunkards and spinsters cracked smiles
across their aged faces
in familiar enthusiasm,
a sincerity only possible among people
who’ve known each 50 years.

As grandma nursed a beer or club soda,
the bartenders eagerly fed me cherries
while I spun on barstools and giggled in delight.
In every joint we visited,
there was always at least one guy,
handsome in their day, yet still charming,
they’d give Dolly special attention.
‘You look as beautiful as ever,’
was a common remark.
Grandma always smiled,
for a moment forgetting
about her wrinkles and false teeth.
‘You’re nuts,’ she’d say. ‘Go boil your head.’
The men chuckled, always,
and then they’d ask after my grandfather,
the man they respected,
the man who’d won Dolly’s heart
in that long lost era.

More than twenty years later,
during grandma’s final months in the hospice,
she made a confession.
‘I’ve always loved your pap,’ she said,
‘but a lot of men found me beautiful.’
‘I know.’
‘Women need to hear it sometimes.
Remember that.’

I always have.

Quiet men of ability,
but of limited intellect,
they go to their jobs
and they laugh with their children.
These men of dignity, of character,
they suffer a world
that has proven difficult
to manage, or even comprehend.
Ridiculed as rapists and enemies,
these men retreat to powerful trucks
and bedroom vaults
that contain the many weapons
they believe to be
their saving grace.

As the old hamburger joint
burned to the ground,
dozens of people looked on
from neighboring parking lots.
Some witnesses were attracted
to the excitement of the event
and the sirens of emergency services.
Others were hypnotized by the fire's
violent licks that danced upon the roof.
A minority of us used the moment
to imagine, to dream
of what the future would hold
for the community.

Saturday evenings at sunset
the young lie in wait
as vampires,
ready to feast on fresh flesh
the night offers in sacrifice.
No one is safe
from the pleasures and perils
of rabid desires.

I've heard feminists say
working class men have too much power.
That kind of naievety was once cute,
but now as working men are criminalized
and gunned down in the streets,
that kind of toxic hatred
has grown dangerous.
The problem isn't that working men
have too much power,
it's that they have no power at all,
and they are slowly being enslaved
in ******* jobs, in prisons,
and in endless financial debts.
Working men have been robbed
of their power, their dignity,
and their ability to care
for the communities
that now decay
in ruins.

Women of honor,
of heartfelt determination,
love with streaming tears.
They fight and they bleed
with passion
for their children,
their men, their communities.

Women of honor
laugh in drunken splendor
so hard and so often
during the good times
that for a brief moment,
the men forget there are bad times.

These beautiful creatures,
these women of majesty,
they deserve the best poetry
injected into their souls.

Life for a 22 year old man
takes on new meaning when he
bolts out of the housing projects
in the middle of the night
while pulling up his pants
and buckling his belt.
To this day, I'm still not sure
which part was more thrilling,
the hook up with a **** stranger
or the three bad *****
that screamed "Get him!"
as they chased me to the beater car
that I prayed would start.