On barstools, people drone on endlessly
about meditation and yoga and hot yoga
or cold jogging, and bicycling in special pants.
‘It gives you a high,’ they say.
‘You’re on top of the world,’ they scream.
The saps push their new religions
with the gusto of car salesmen.
When it’s a woman, I politely listen
between mouthfuls of whiskey and ginger ale.
When it’s a man, I shut him down
early in his ramble. I tell him to
grow a pair.

Curvaceous women with long hair
and ***** that easily get wet,
bourbon that melts the top layer of ice,
pocketing a few bucks after sinking the 8 ball,
those are the legal addictions,
I tell punks
that give a man small escapes,
the sins he commits to feel whole.
A man who knows the desperation
of fulfilling temptations always
works harder to stay one step ahead
of the game.

Those are the addictions,
I tell men in designer clothes,
that **** us
slowly
when we least expect
our demise.

I only think about you
at night
when consciousness
surrenders to regret
Madness then swims free
in a polluted oil
of memories
we call sin

Only **** the ones
you love
and only love the ones
who never ****
you over
That's our way, baby
the way of the world
the way of life

We are the hunted
the hated
who run in packs
separate but equal
rarely together
but with similar purpose
a singular goal
to make it
through life

We are despised
for our existence
Some are fat, yet starved
Others are slutty and ravenous
Every day is a struggle
We **** and feast
fight and pray
and too often
we lose

Love is fleeting
never predictable
It's the knowledge, you see
We are but temporary
lovers, workers, friends
That truth brings about
the sadness
the madness
the end

Go to sleep
Dream the dreams
only you can dream
alone
We will meet again
when our world faces
the other side
of the Milky Way

As the **** of a 12-dollar cigar
touches the tip of the tongue,
the nervous system shoots a signal to the brain,
to process the sweet tinge
of delicious poison
that hits the back of the throat.
Slow suicide, baby,
really doesn't get any smoother.

Human bodies may desire health,
but it’s the mind that struggles
and tests mortality
as the heart races
for the best ****.

Hipsters and their vapor pipes,
their overpriced organic groceries,
coke binges and ****** addictions,
gym memberships and spinning classes,
they’re socialized to believe life
goes on forever.
They behave as if death
is a kind of curse.

We can run from sins,
wash our souls in the rain
of fresh lovers in new cities.
Sins, however, collect.
They grow in strength.
All we have in the end,
is the sweet tinge of satisfaction
that comes from killing oneself
in style.

From an early age before preschool,
there was one Pittsburgh man inside a box
who showed us how to find one’s bliss,
he set the tone to lead a happy life.
While I sat on the sofa, pillow hugged tight,
the Pittsburgh man in a box taught me
the virtue of kindness and curiosity.
He taught me make believe.

When I grew up, life’s temptations
pushed aside his lessons.
I traded the Pittsburgh man in a box
for the gluttonous abuses
of flesh and *****, soul-murdering hatred,
and the pursuit of greed.

One early morning, around 8am
I crawled out of bed,
careful not to disturb the woman
whose name had been lost in a fog of whiskey.
I walked into the living room,
switched on the TV, and there he stood,
the Pittsburgh man inside a box.
His gentle manner, his big imagination
revealed a simple truth:
I’d chosen the wrong path.

One day at the job, the sad news came.
The Pittsburgh man in a box had died.
He contracted stomach cancer.
That night the TV played his old shows.
I sat on the sofa, pillow hugged tight,
and said goodbye.

Saturday sidewalks are filled by the youthful,
the boys with young muscles and hard heads,
the girls with soft skin under short skirts.
They wander sidewalks in search of escape.
Each of them dance with lust,
drink hard,
and inject madness
into their veins.

On Sunday mornings,
after the splendor of uninhibited release,
the young weep in regret of poor choices,
their air saturated in reality.

Sidewalks then belong to the wise
who wake from a good rest.
These men and women drink roasted coffee,
reflect on a transcendent spirituality,
read great poetry,
and meet friends to discuss
the roots of democracy.

Every year, the unchanging concrete slabs
of sidewalks appear slightly different.
They reflect our perspectives.
Sidewalks that once led to freedom,
now lead to enlightenment.
In future years,
these same sidewalks
will lead to rest.

You don't know me.
I’m warning you now,
don't even consider knowing me
or pretend to know me.
I've beaten lesser men
and poisoned the hearts
of lesser women
for trying to know me.

I am aggressively alone in distant observation,
away from unpredictable friends
who often transform
into entirely predictable enemies.

Alone is my simple form of silent tranquility
with my thoughts and my words
and my unfulfilled dreams.
The silhouette of a single Canadian goose
stands majestically on the shore
of the summer river
below the orange city skyline at dusk,
or the smell
of your old leather jacket
and a soft kiss
that partially wakes me
before you leave in the early morning
to never return.

I’m the degenerate you love to hate,
the unclean sinner who won’t tow the line.
You ridicule my independence at dinner parties,
among similarly dressed cronies,
the institutionalized prisoners
of prestige.

Hate us all, the degenerates.
Scorn the indie musician on the sidewalk.
He colors the dull march of the khakis.
Despise the painter in welfare housing.
She strokes thick lines of anguish
upon uncomfortable canvases.
Taunt the quiet poet at the end of the bar.
He writes raw truth on napkins gone ignored.

Loathe the degenerates you secretly *****
when fashionable friends aren’t looking.
Eyes fixed upon your contemptuous smirk,
I am unable to cast judgment upon you.
Another degenerate spreads her tattooed thighs
without any hope of acceptance.
She only wishes to feel for a moment
the intoxicating sensation of
temporary love.

The degenerate’s ****** is the richest syrup
that briefly covers your vanilla routines.
Debauchery provides you a moment
to feel freedom within slums,
the pleasures of darkness,
the uninhibited passions of a life
without approval.

A young man with tattoos
walked in to the café.
He examined two chairs
at the empty table
in front of me.
He cupped his chin with one hand.
He silently compared the older chair
with the torn, dilapidated seat cushion
to the newer chair that still had a black metallic shine.
He picked up the beaten chair
and carried it to the table behind me
to join his friends.

That’s how we define ourselves,
our class, our place in the world.
Some people believe they deserve
the best seat in the house.
Others believe themselves second class,
commoners whose insecurities run rampant.
We do it to ourselves.

No matter which seat we take,
every one of us
knows love and hate.
We all fight and struggle.
We are all unique.
We are all the same.

In the mid-1990s I worked as a bartender
on the second floor of a local hotdog joint
near the University of Pittsburgh.
I poured beers and mixed simple drinks
for working class drunks.
The felons always had a game or a magic trick
they’d use to milk rubes for a free gin and tonic.
College students mostly stayed away,
but the ones who stumbled in ordered drafts,
paid for by daddy’s allowance
or the petty drug rackets they ran on campus.
In the summer, the best ***** came around,
**** pushed out of their tops,
*** cheeks crept below their skirts.
They knew how to find action
every single night.

Except one overweight girl named Susie
from the all girl’s school down the road.
She’d come to the bar alone,
her lips caked with dark red lipstick.
Like many students, Susie wanted to be older.
She’d order ***** martinis,
drink quietly, and she’d patiently wait
for one of the older drunks to make a move.
It never happened.

Sometimes Susie complained to me
about other girls at her college,
that they were aggressive lesbians.
All of them wanted to eat her ******.
‘Those ******* are as bad as the men,’ she’d say.
But then she’d laugh it off.
‘I really love ****,’ she told me.
‘I think about **** and *** all the time.’

One night Susie owed the bar $27.50.
She always tried to flirt her way past the tab.
I never let her get away with it.
‘Do you like me?’ she said.
I laid down my trademark response,
‘You’re the best.’
‘No, do you really like me?’
I figured she deserved a real compliment.
‘You have the sexiest lips here.’

She climbed off the barstool
and walked to the backdoor, the fire escape.
She then curled her finger at me to join her.
Outside on the small rusted iron landing,
above the roach-filled dumpster,
Susie crouched between my legs.
Both of us worked to unbuckle my belt.
A swarm of hands pulled down my jeans.
I looked up at the few stars between buildings
as those red lips and soft tongue became my drug,
a back alley escape from a ******* life.
When I unloaded, she refused to let go.
She swallowed it all. $27.50 paid in full,
plus tip.

That’s how we went for a while.
I gave Susie small escapes from lesbians.
Susie gave me small escapes from life.
Eventually, she stopped coming around.
I figured she graduated.
Perhaps her classmates finally got their wish.
Either way, I never saw her again.

After too many years of mom’s psychiatric issues,
whose pendulum of unpredictable emotions swung
between fits of violent rage and victimized hatred,
I gave up the struggle many of us
try and fail to endure.
Some people who love the insane
fall into the pit of personal torment,
an anxiety or depression of inner madness.
Others choose eye for an eye revenge.
Headlines of such retaliation steam over social media:
‘Wife Murders Husband Over Cold Turkey Complaint’
I made the completely selfish choice of maternal divorce,
to spend Christmas with a neighbor friend
who had endured much of the same abuses
and learned the same lessons years earlier.

Ana and I spent several merry Christmases
at one of those all you can eat seafood buffet joints.
The restaurant was simply a massive room.
A trough ran the 100 feet length of the back wall,
where the cattle lined up to feed.

Each year, we looked forward to our glorious feast,
not for the quality of the food, but the friendship
and the king crab legs neither of us could afford
any other time of the year.

We’d trade laughs and stories of the year.
We reminisced about friends and family passed on.
For 2 or 3 hours on a cold winter’s night,
there was no poverty, no family, no hardship,
no greed, no fuss…only laughs.
Except for the year I asked myself,
‘What would Jesus do?’

Standing in the long, sweaty buffet line,
a mumbling buzzed about a **** up front
taking too many crab legs.
Even though the restaurant claimed unlimited portions,
in reality, the kitchen workers played a good game,
only filling the large metal bin every 30 minutes.
The unwritten rule among buffet veterans
is to take 5 or 6 crab legs and leave some
for the others behind you.
The poor must look out for each other
because we all **** well know
rich ******* only care about themselves.

After a couple minutes of the crowd grumbling,
a heavyset woman in a moo-moo screamed,
‘Look at that guy! Look at his plate!’
The slicked-hair office drone the moo-moo pointed to
confidently strode past the hungry patrons
in his business casual golf shirt and khakis.
In one hand, he balanced a plate stacked
with at least 20 crab legs.
His other hand carried a cereal-sized bowl of butter.
The apparent jeers of shame from my fellow wretches,
whose bellies would go empty for another half hour
didn’t affect this guy’s silent march,
his corporate attitude to loot, to conquer.

I stepped out of line in the guy’s path.
‘What the are you doing?’ I said.
‘It’s a free country.’
He tried to squeeze around me, pressing his hip
against the orange chicken buffet station.
I moved to block him again.
‘Free for you, but no one else, huh?’
‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘Just move.’

His empirical entitlement inspired me to perform
a little Christmas justice.
With both hands, I lunged for the man’s plate
and wrapped both hands around all but four crab legs.
‘What the hell, buddy?’ he shouted.
The guy had become a moneychanger in our temple.
‘Do something,’ I said.
A woman in line looked at me, her eyes wide, startled.
I handed her a crab leg.
The coward ran his mouth in an emasculated mumble,
but skulked back to his table.
I then walked down the line,
handing each of my fellow diners a single crab leg.
Old men formed expressions of confusion,
Young mothers and fathers laughed.
Children pointed their single crab legs to the ceiling
in a show of solidarity to the cause,
victory against a great evil.

A short Asian man approached me in line.
‘You must leave,’ he said in broken English.
‘But I paid for the buffet.’
‘No troublemakers. You go.’

I’d become a scourge to the Roman power structure,
an immoral bandit of Nazareth.
Being bad never felt so good.
After all, one can remove the boy from madness,
but without intense psychiatric treatment,
one rarely removes madness from the boy.
Ana wasn’t happy that we missed our annual feast.
I drove us home quietly content.
Another Christmas celebrated.

Sipping midnight whiskey behind the typer,
staring at a blank spot on the wall,
fingers frozen to the keyboard in mid-sentence,
another wave of anguish
floods the mind.

The spot on the wall is a sounding board
to rail against enemies
and debate ideas,
and howl the cries of a madman
who will forever ponder
damaged souls left
in his wake.

Sins committed once belonged to others.
Then I learned how to inflict pain
in my own style.
Now, regrets languish
in *****-soaked reflections.
They stir quiet torment,
a just retribution
for honest men

Hiding behind text messages
we believe immunizes the heart
is a forced loneliness
a perpetual confinement
in a dark room, with low music
which only breeds madness

In such famine, the body desires touch
the soul craves fellowship
the mind requires intellectualism
laughs between true friends
and shared tears
of kindred spirits

Once we can no longer bear starvation
comes the gluttonous feast
As wretched hogs at a trough
any form of attention is consumed
to fill the growing chasm of
worthlessness

Blinded by false admiration on backlit screens
the body, the soul, and the mind savors
cheap flattery of dark temptations
Vulgarity drools thick as blood from blackened lips
The sweet tinge of grief
that bitter hit of hatred
spirals descent into the dark void
that forever hides the light

Once upon a time
I sinned with actions
Now, I sin with words
words that embody
regretful memories
the quiet desperation
of a tarnished soul

Laying in bed alone, again,
in gray boxers and a whiskey stained t-shirt,
half drunk at 3 AM.
The few rational thoughts still rattling around
are pushed aside by creeping madness,
clobbered by the disillusionment of worthlessness
and death.

Closing my eyes brings anxiety.
Fifty-foot brick walls erupt from the ground.
The walls tower over the bed.
The walls imprison me
from the beautiful, ignorantly blissful people.
THEY do not enjoy reminders of their racism,
their hatred, their greed.
When the inevitable arrives,
THEY will barely remember
the fat nobody, the over-read slob,
the abrasive writer, with no cash and
no woman.

In this sick fantasy,
two simple-minded jerks spew a few flippant lines
and that’ll be all she wrote.

‘Ever hear from Gavalik?’
‘Who?’
‘Big guy. Writer or something.’
‘I think he's dead.’
‘Really? These are some good mozzarella sticks.’
‘THEY really are.’

Survival of the fittest
is a lonely road
reserved for honored
champions
The weak and greedy
they choose deception
to overcome
challenges

Bartending loses charm
when you mop puke
and haul garbage
down a fire
escape
A man has time to think
as he brushes
roaches
from his pants

You can keep
the hiked-up ****
Give me the woman
who knows how to eat
knows how to love
and has lived through
pain
She’s the only one
for me

Everybody wants the train wreck
the car crash
the big fire
No one knows why
It's simple
We must feel
the consequences
of life
or lose it

A man sits diagonally in front of me
to my left in the diner
Over his shoulder, I see
he’s navigating Facebook
on a cheap laptop
Behind him, I’m writing this poem
Every 13 seconds a notification rings
He has a Facebook message
The notifications are messages from a woman
She types heart shapes in place of words
It is the standard online flirtation
that has replaced real relationships
He is quite popular
as he eats toast with purple jelly
and sits alone

People once came to diners
to chain smoke cigarettes
and drink pots of coffee
and think
and talk
and read poetry
We didn’t have much
but we had each other
Now we’re individuals
who sit in silence
alone

Some of us get chat notifications
Some of us write poems
All of us still get the coffee
and the toast
with purple jelly

Some people say
the universe will
soon end.
But, would any father
give his children a book
and take it away
before they’ve read
every page?

Sometimes before bed
I pray in a rush
as a chore
On those nights
I sleep in torture
and awake groggy
wondering why
I didn’t seek
true peace

Living among family
is a constant barrage
of chaos
love
and guilt.
We hope and search
for tranquility
only to discover
it does not
exist.

While writing, a college girl
walked out of a nearby can.
‘You were in there a while,’ I said.
‘You’re not funny.’
‘Yes I am.’
‘*******.’

Our group filled
summer weekends
with fishing or camping.
Weekends are now
lonely.
People dissipate as smoke.
All that remains
are memories.

The ignorant
who oppose
political discourse
are not enlightened.
The American experience
is an ongoing
debate.
Freedom is a continual
fight.

I needed cash for diapers.
The boss smelled
my desperation.
‘Muck out the floor drains.’
They stunk of *****.
No one else did it,
only me.

‘***?’
‘No.’
‘Please?’
‘No.’
‘Please?’
‘No.’
‘Please?’
‘Ugh.’
‘Pl­ease?’
‘No.’
‘Please?’
‘No.’
‘Please?’
‘No.’
‘Please?’
‘No.’
‘Now­?’
‘Ok.’

Champions ignore temptations
of ****** and tramps
Warriors push past
crooks with legs
and stay on the path to
win the love of
the best
woman

Working a job
is about performing tasks
that earn the boss
more money
than he’ll ever pay.
Our choices are simple:
conform
starve or
rebel.