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.

Sitting in the late night bar,
I fingered a bottle cap while
another tragic love story
streamed through my head.
The light from a beer sign
reflected off the whiskey glass
to form a shimmering horizon
that gently cradled the cap.
Thats when I realized
sunrises can happen
whenever and wherever
we need them.

—Ron Gavalik

When I had joy,
I didn't know it.
When the joy left,
that's when I knew.
I've been trying
to get the joy back.
That work is a struggle.
There's sweat and strife.
Still, I'm optimistic.
The joy will return.

–Ron Gavalik

The kid with the beard and the ***** apron,
he's just trying to make it.
His shoes have small tears on the sides,
from the way water saturates and weakens the material.
He’s got this way of gliding from table to table,
the same way a dancer owns a stage.
He slides plates of salt-ridden tacos currently in vogue
to a roomful of overfed, undersexed office drones

A woman in a skirt and flip-flops rolls her eyes at a salad.
A ******* in a blazer flicks a ****** under the table.
Still, there's a twinkle in the kid’s eyes,
like he's on the make.
If the right circumstances unfold
he’d snag a loose twenty
from a wallet or a purse.

This is the server's life,
always under the thumb,
hated and stressed,
but always laughing
at the end
of each shift.

Strangers often ask what I do.
"Writer," I usually say, but that
**** isn’t the truth. If what we do
is defined by how we spend
the bulk of our time, then what I do
is sit in a soft chair with a stain
on the back cushion. I stare
out the window at the hillside.
Sometimes I ponder and reminisce.
Other times I don’t.

-Ron Gavalik

"Running out the clock"
is maybe the most common term
in American working life.
Trapped, financially imprisoned
between four walls of servitude
on a late Friday afternoon,
we wait impatiently
for our parole from the crimes
our owners regularly commit.

A guy in a suit at the bar
cracked an unfunny joke.
It was the kind of joke
only office drones understand
or find amusing.
His buddy spit out his whiskey
from the involuntary chuckle.
The guy said, ‘Hey, man,
you’re wasting perfectly good scotch.’
I thought the joke was a waste
of perfectly good words.

-Ron Gavalik

The bosses always tell us
not to take their decisions personal.
When they hold the pay raises
we need for gas and shoes,
that cash stolen from our families
becomes quite personal.
When we gotta wait two more weeks
to pay the electric bill,
or when we pretend canned pasta
tastes like chicken with sauce,
that's ******* personal.
When the knife or the gun
feels just right in our hands,
that's personal too.

After the most abhorrent violence,
during times of misery and sorrow,
a wise man will sit in a dark room
and reflect on his truths.
In rage, he will curl his fingers
into the tightest fists.
In sadness, he will weep
for all that has been lost.
In his chair, the wise man will drink
his whiskey, and then he will stand up
and fight back against the hate.

-Ron Gavalik

At the coffee shop, a young black man in glasses
asked if he could plug his laptop
into the same outlet that charged my typer.
While he pulled the cord out of his backpack,
I asked if he had homework.

‘No," he said. "I'm looking for a job.’
‘What kind of job?’
‘Any job,’ he said
and let out a desperate kind of snort
usually only heard from older men,
humiliated by the world,
beaten down by life.

‘****'s tough out there, kid.’
‘I know the platitudes,’ he said.
He then stuck his nose into the screen.
I walked up to the counter for a refill,
to give the boy a little space.

The new generation,
they know how to use words
like platitude, but they can’t earn
enough for a home and internet
to avoid the men who use them
in place of real solutions.

On a construction site
as the sun rose over the hill,
I watched as my fellow applicants
humbly and quietly lined up
for meaningless labor jobs.
Those men, I figured,
they have fat wives
and beautiful marriages.
I couldn't bring myself
to stand behind them,
and so I walked off.

-Ron Gavalik

Cracks in sidewalks
are dark pockets in the Earth
that contain forgotten histories
of workers and parents,
students and dreamers.
Every time we step over a crack,
a charge of energy from the past
enters our souls.
That energy informs us,
our perspectives,
our judgement,
our wisdom.

–Ron Gavalik

if we abandoned
the pursuit of quick cash
and instead
fortified dignity
with the rusted remnants
of ancestors
workers would know
justice
they would feel
joy

–Ron Gavalik

The best part of democracy
is taking the opposite position
of the lynch mob
on a public issue of the day.
The more they cry foul,
the more stubborn others become.
This behavior reminds the mob
popular rage
and the lust of desire
should never supersede
our freedom.

I’m a *****
who sells himself
for the privilege of food.
Existing in your world
of surface beauty
and splendor,
that’s the only payday
I’ve ever known.

–Ron Gavalik

When I was young,
only the courageous
women colored their hair
pink or green.
They risked job security
and they ignored
the conformed standards.
That strength of spirit
turned me on
far more than **** or legs.
That hair is now mainstream,
so I pretend courage
is mainstream.

–Ron Gavalik

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

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.

"All of my stories
are true," I said.
"Even the lies?"
"Especially the lies."
She looked at the floor
in tortured disappointment
"Truth," I said, "is like treasure,
the value of which is in the eye
of the beholder."

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.

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

An older woman at the bar,
danced alone near the jukebox.
Eyes closed, she swayed her hips
to some kind of old school jazz.
Cigarette smoke hovered around her
on the makeshift dance floor.
The smoke contoured to her body,
it clung to her reckless past.
The chain-smoking drunkards
hollered and giggled as cowards.
One of them would **** her
before the night ended.
All I could do was watch
and write this poem
in my mind.

-Ron Gavalik

A young woman stands on the sidewalk
in front of a vape shop.
Her long red hair is the dream
of desperate men
that flutters in the cool spring breeze.
She fiddles with her smartphone,
her thumb quickly scrolls screens
in an attempt to fight boredom.
She's waiting, waiting, waiting
for her next adventure,
but those skin tight yoga pants
and her filthy sneakers tell me
she has a long wait.

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 ****.

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

Many Twitter profiles
have statements that read:
“My tweets do not speak for my employer.”
I suggest revising those statements to read:
“My employer does not speak for me.”
After all, who is the master
of your 80 years on this Earth?
I'm rooting for you.

–Ron Gavalik

There are moments,
frozen capsules of time
burned into our brains.
Those memories feel
as if they'll outlive us.
Then there are the moments
that are forever lost,
and when a lover or friend
tells the story years later,
we quietly mourn
that memory's death.

-Ron Gavalik

Walking home from dinner
I learned a robot was granted citizenship
in Saudi Arabia.
That's the moment I realized
humanity had reached its pinnacle
during the ****** revolution
of the 1960s.
Thirty of forty years from now,
we will sit quietly in nursing homes,
and we will wonder
what the **** happened
that humanity allowed itself
to be replaced.

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

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.

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.

The lack of ****** desire
for a woman kills any chance
at forming a romantic relationship.
Too much ****** desire
prematurely destroys
all romantic relationships.
Con artists write self-help books
and launch expensive dating sites
to convince us they possess
the magic formula for success in love.
In truth, if we **** and love each other
without the shackles of pre-defined
relationship statuses, political parties,
or other false marketing demographics,
happiness becomes a simple achievement.

I was born in a room
on a triangle of land and soot
between three rivers.
Just like the rivers,
I’ve been running
toward the fire
and from the smoke
all my days.
I’ll let you know
when I make it.

–Ron Gavalik

As a child, I valued the loyalty
of friendships and family above all other
human endeavors.
That commitment led to consistent doses of disappointment.
In my adult years, those harsh lessons
have taught me the simple truth,
that comrades and cousins,
romantic partners and parents,
they carry the rich aroma of the best coffee.
Much like coffee, they help us
through our days, and give us a savory
expectation to greet each new morning.
Also much like coffee,
the mugs that contain those relationships
eventually run dry.
We can scramble to refill the meanings
behind each valued connection,
but we're often better off switching
to a lonely glass of whiskey.

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

At night, The fresh sweat
that rolls down succulent *******,
the *****, bourbon, and wine
that pours down guilty throats,
and good tobacco smoke
that hovers below the lights,
all of it carries the scent
of animal passions
released into the wild.

In the morning, those same smells
grow old, stale, out of favor.
Betrayal replaces desire
as ***** replaces the splendor of *****.
The reality of regret
that stares at us through bloodshot eyes
forever replaces another slice
of innocence.

I've grown so tired
of hating you,
but I’ve hated you so long,
it's all I know.
After the foul odor of death fades,
fresh air will replace
that which we cannot change.
Staring out the window,
my chest tightens from dread.
The pollution we’ve spewed
may have scorched the soil
where new trees must grow.

–Ron Gavalik

No matter how many showers
I take in the evenings
or in the afternoons,
I can't seem to wash away
that musky scent
from my thighs and fingers.
It's not always possible
to know how long the smell
of deception will linger.

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.

At 6:00, I drank
to remember,
to swim in the nectar
of consequences secreted
over a lifetime.
At midnight, I drank
to forget.

—Ron Gavalik

Opening your soul to the public
is to swim naked in the sewer
with scores of salivating rats.
The poseurs spill their low-calorie
compliments. The haters,
they drop the most sincere insults.
Depressed, angry, mad,
I walked into the kitchen.
Standing barefoot on the cracked tiles,
Hemingway finally made sense.
A bottle of cheap whiskey
next to the coffee maker,
it had a mouthful left to go.
I figured it would see me through
and that's what it did.

-Ron Gavalik

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.

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

Upon the soot-barren landscape
where serpents slither
in misery,
there are champions
of struggle
among the few trees
that defiantly grow
through the pollution.
We must only close our eyes
and open our minds
to sense them.

I stood in a pool of ****
in front of the ******
after watching a beautiful film
about a man who gets the girl.
Irrational tears clouded my vision
and blocked the putrid scents
of real life.
My body wanted me
to live in that story
a little longer.
That was nice.

–Ron Gavalik

Out for a walk one saturday morning
I passed an antique store..
In the window sat a cat
with an all white fluffy coat.
The cat appeared hardened,
probably from a life of confinement,
and from the daily onslaught of customers
that insist on petting its furry back.

I stopped at the window
and that cat gave me a good once over.
He and I were compatriots in a mad world,
both of us shamed for our truths,
both of us loved in convenient moments.
After a minute, I moved on
to grab a coffee and a cigar,
secure in the knowlege
I'd made a new friend.

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.

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.

In a world of wage servants
we are drugged, propagandized.
That's how the keep us
docile, in line.
Sometimes a servant refuses
to take his meds.
His spoken truth burns down
the facade, for a brief moment,
until he is silenced.

On the sidewalk, in the spring rain,
she scowled at me hard,
the way a lion eyes its prey.
She stood motionless, silent, soaked.
The rain, or tears, rolled down her cheeks
and dripped from her chin.
An invisible rage radiated from her aura
that struck instant fear in the current of passersby
who rushed around her on that gray day.

My soul had been murdered before,
and so I figured, why not again.
Under the awning of that coffeehouse,
all I could do was not give a ****.
I lit my acid cigar and puffed
until the smoke clouded my vision.
That day, I would die or I would live.
Either way, there was no sense trying to control
events or time, when the inevitable rebirth
was certain, and would change everything.

The reasons for the standoff
and its conclusion are unimportant,
mere details we've all lived
and forgotten.