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.

On the bicycle trail, a middle-aged
woman in spandex biking gear
had her bike flipped upside down.
I dismounted next to her.
“You need a hand?”
She kept her eyes fixed
on her bike wheel. “Why do I need
your help?” Her voice was filled
with contempt. “It’s only a flat.”
I didn’t respond.
Pedaling along the river,
I made the decision
to keep offering assistance.
Someday I’d need it.

-Ron Gavalik

You are the elixir
of overworked men
a companion
for lonely souls
and a boxing ring
for the fighting spirit
Your camaraderie
leads to immediate
regret
but such pain
forces peace
in the new day

I only love you
at night
when loneliness
fuels desire
and
desperation
replaces
rational thought

Your value is reflected
in an empty whiskey bottle
sideways
on the stained carpet

Funny how everything
is eventually
neglected

At the Bernie Sanders rally on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Alabama, a middle-aged woman in the crowd fell to the floor from illness. The entire rally silenced. All 7,000 attendees turned their focus to her welfare. When the medics arrived, the crowd erupted into cheers, a heroes’ welcome. The people then applauded the ill woman once she regained the ability to walk out of the event.

Two weeks prior, at a rally for the authoritarian populist Donald Trump, three white men stomped a black man. He’d worn a t-shirt that read 'Black Lives Matter.'

The clerk behind the coffee counter,
she stares out the window
onto the sunny street, lost in thought.
Her half smile on that young face
is an art exhibit of a daydream
about a possible future.
An old woman at a nearby table,
she stares out the same window.
Her eyes glossed over,
they indicate she's remembering
the good moments long past.
The coffee shop daydreamers
have much in common.

-Ron Gavalik

I came up in Pittsburgh,
the Rust Belt of hard labor
with a deep love of community.
As children, we collected railroad spikes
from the tracks and we cut our shins
on random iron shards in **** hills.
Some of us were union middle-class
and others breathed the gray air of poverty.
That hardly mattered. As we stood atop
foothills that overlooked the city skyline,
soot embedded under our fingernails,
we lived as kings and queens
that oversaw the future.

-Ron Gavalik

There's something peculiar
about witnessing courage
in the face of hatred
True righteousness hits me deep
It flourishes from within
the way epiphanies bloom in scholars
or the way love overwhelms
young students

There's majesty in the underdog
who stands until his knees buckle
who shouts until her voice breaks
fueled only by fortitude
mocked for feeling empathy
hated for living truth

In moments of moral principle
I see peace amidst the chaos
poetry amidst the prose
in the eyes of the young
and in the old
who fight
for justice

At this sushi joint,
she searched for the words
to describe her dinner.
‘It's heaven,’ she said, ‘Yes, heaven.’
Call me a simpleton, but divinity
on Earth is the sweet tinge of bourbon,
the smoke of an acid 60 gauge
that rolls over the tongue,
and the music of Pink Floyd
with the lights off.

-Ron Gavalik

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

Sometimes I think I love best
from afar,
observing impossible conquests
from behind crowds
of maniacs on sidewalks.
Sometimes I love through written notes
to people in far away places.
When up close, reality stops
the imaginings.
I dream of far better love
than I live.

-Ron Gavalik

I loved her face
until her eyes narrowed
in disgust
and her red lips
spewed cringing hate
That's when I knew
beauty does not exist
All we have
is *** and
survival

‪I don't just love you;‬
I love your imperfections,
those hard memories
beneath kind eyes,
when I watch you
gaze out my window
every morning

I held the door open
She looked at the ground
and walked
past me
I didn't feel anger
only the sad truth
We live and breathe
dystopia

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.

Sitting in traditional wooden pews
back in the mid-2000s,
a guest priest from the heart of the Congo
delivered a homily in broken English
about how his country had been torn to shreds
by warlords who control that region's
vast and valuable mineral deposits.

As the priest spoke in gentle passion,
a sea of sympathetic white faces listened
to him describe the rapes and murders,
the poverty and oppression.
One middle-aged woman in a yellow dress near the front
quietly sobbed at the reminder of true suffering,
a torture greater than mere death.

Out of a sense of courtesy
or possible humble generosity,
the priest did not disclose the minerals
that had brought on such gluttonous violence
were the very elements that make our electronics
flash and glow as perpetual escapes.

Instead, the priest requested
we pray with him
for future mystical solutions
to immediate physical problems.

As we filed out of the church
the older woman who'd wept
discussed driving to the local mall.
Apparently, there'd been a sale on mobile phones.
The crisp spring breeze had dried our tears,
and the power of the almighty dollar
wiped away our curiosity
and our short-term memories.

If you let the ******* get you down,
you deserve to be down.
It's that simple.
While the mad howl
into the void
of restless summer nights,
bad *******
sip cool drinks
in confident silence.

Bad *******
laugh when others weep,
feast when others hunger,
they **** long and deep
the angels others crave.

Bad ******* die
far more often,
worn from the continual fight,
broken by the drama
of never-ending
women.

In rebirth,
bad ******* learn
to wring out every last drop
of a whiskey flawed life.
Then and only then
do blood red skies,
that musky scent of wet ****,
or these typed words
have any real meaning
or significance.

Her kink was to watch
as I stroked one out in the car
in suburban parking lots.
One night, a guy in a ball cap
walked by. That poor man
was her unwitting accomplice
to ecstasy, but he just shook his head
as he strolled into the pharmacy.
I figured stroking was easier
at home on my own,
but that's the ****
we do to see
her smile.

-Ron Gavalik

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.

In our youths
Sundays were dreaded
We mourned the death
of weekends
Now, on Sundays
we reflect, quiet
on the continual
struggle

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.

There's something liberating
about watching old men
with gray beards and hats
read intently from thick books
while the world unfolds around them.
Their families are gone,
along with the desire to chase
fast women and fast cash.
These aged men of leisure,
they are the survivors
of war and capitalism,
religion and disease.
Nothing surprises these old men
in their final days of wisdom,
and so, it’s quite simple.
They read in peace.

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

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.

Sometimes we crush a bug
in self-defense.
Other times we crush bugs
in annoyance.
However, there are times
when we go out of the way
to step upon a lesser life form.
Such ******* arouses
a sadistic pleasure
we cannot savor or even admit
in civilized society.

–Ron Gavalik

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.

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

After a tough week at the job,
a coworker slid on her coat.
"It's a Long Island Iced Tea kinda night,"
she said in a flat tone,
and with a straight face.
"Whatever gets the job done,"
I said, hoping she’d smile
at our brief liberation.
Instead, she stared through me,
as if I'd spoken some great truth.
She then walked out of the building
without saying goodbye.

-Ron Gavalik

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

That bartender poured my bourbon
and took an interest in my life.
'What's wrong, pal?
You can tell me.
I have all the answers.'
'Great,' I said. 'I don't know
any of the questions.'
For the rest of the night,
he left me with my typer
and silently refilled
the bourbon.

-Ron Gavalik

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.

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?

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

Back in the small town,
we hung around the gas station
in the afternoons and at night.
We drank cartons of iced tea
and laughed about nothing.
We watched others live
the lives we wanted,
but weren't quite ready
to begin.

—Ron Gavalik

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.

The last generation
asked for success.
Our generation
asked to be left alone.
This generation
asks only to mitigate
the pain.

–Ron Gavalik

Sins are often forgotten.
Brain molecules are overwritten,
cell pathways erased,
as good conquers evil.
The righteous actions that ignite enlightenment
and solace for the sins we can't remember
are also eventually forgotten,
because evil also devours virtue
in what priests and monks refer to
as an ancient and everlasting battle.

Some people live out their lives in solitude.
We see them in quiet jobs,
alone in libraries and coffee shops.
They patiently wait out the battle
for the day when the struggle ends
and they finally know tranquility

Others choose action,
to play their roles as instruments, weapons,
sometimes for the forces of good
and sometimes for the forces of evil.
I’ve chosen to add my flavor of mayhem to the world,
inspired in forgotten nightmares
and during quiet car rides home
after the job has drained the last drops
of energy and self-respect.

Without the battle
humanity certainly would be boring.
Unfortunately for all of us
nothing is quite so dull
as serenity.

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.

Today depression visited
a quiet despair one feels
from grave injustice

Driving home
the world fell silent
On one street corner
stood a man of color
in ***** work pants
He frowned behind a gray beard
his eyes distant

He and I shared a truth
that while the poor wept
those who represent hatred
celebrated
again

Drunk on the orange light of dusk.
High on drink in a thick glass.
Cocooned in cigar smoke that hovers,
it carries the scent of a sweet menace.
The best part is knowing your ***** hang
out of sweaty boxers on the back stoop
while the neighbor lady stares
out the window, ashamed
of the visual **** of her orderly life.
At that moment, you realize, that's it baby.
The concert of life has reached its crescendo.
A spontaneous smile begins to form,
as you also begin to understand,
that's all you ever wanted
in the first place.

-Ron Gavalik

The writer’s job
is to build the words,
not perform for applause
or join cheap cliques.
The printed word, baby,
that’s the nervous anticipation
for the 300 pound *****
who ***** the best ****.
Words are the hit of whiskey
after the sun drops
below the buildings.

-Ron Gavalik

sometimes
sidewalks appear
as graveyards
full of open mouths
and closed eyes
beauty goes unnoticed
and love
unfulfilled

–Ron Gavalik

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

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.

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.’

Many years ago,
while taking an early spring walk
near the University of Pittsburgh,
I noticed a deep crack in the sidewalk,
and within the crevice
someone had wedged a lego action figure.
I'd considered removing the toy
as a keepsake of the first day outside
after a brutal winter,
but instead I allowed it to remain
as a small part of the urban landscape.
For several years, I took early spring walks
along the same part of the city,
and every year the lego man,
a little more weathered,
greeted me as an old acquaintance.
Eventually, the city replaced the sidewalk,
and like so many loose friendships,
based on convenience and circumstance,
the lego man was gone.

All I ever wanted
was to be left alone.
The more I ran,
the faster the cockroaches pursued
with their false friendships
and self-serving greed.

A man grows tired, sagged,
and his body slows,
his mind withers,
as death approaches.
This is not from old age,
but from thousands of stabs
delivered by forked tongues
of friends and enemies,
and his women.

As the spirit escapes
and runs
from the madness,
its the soul which finally
has the last laugh
in the darkness,
alone

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.

This leather bag and I,
we've tasted a bit of the world
on dirt trails and city sidewalks,
inside cars, buses, and planes.
This leather bag and I have done battle together.
We've struck intellectual blows in classrooms,
and we've celebrated success in board rooms.
The bag and I even laugh about that time
it blocked a drunk's fist aimed at my kidneys.
Few people believe in the loyalty of a bag.
They seek devotion, love from other people,
only to suffer great disappointment.
This leather bag and I,
we're the best of friends.
That's how it is
and that's how it will always be.

An elaborate nightmare about fascists
running amok on nameless American streets
dominated a long sleep
after an endless week of servitude at the job.

In the nightmare, socialists in a nameless American town
battled torch-bearing white men without souls
in bland polo shirts and khakis.
A pervasive aroma of wood-fired smoke,
beer, and diesel fumes cut us off from the natural world
as the Neo-Nazis and their allies surrounded us.

In the throes of the crippling effects of dread and fear
the few of us, brothers and sisters of love and compassion,
the very young and the very old,
pushed forward to fight as warrior poets,
in remembrance of our grandparents,
for our children,
and for ourselves.

In the dream's periphery, blank faces of cowards
I've known for life looked on from sidewalks.
They refused to fight,
and instead they cracked sarcastic jokes
about both sides.