a shake weight table steak
powdered sugar cigarette
break burning in alcohol
and corn flakes

a big ******* cluster-****
of broken noses and carefully
crafted poses posting pictures
of processed hipster's and blisters,
****-stirrers and culture twisters
jockeying for a spot
all melting in the ***

quiz show **** beads and
fleshlight teenage dreams
soaking through entitled
suburban screens choking
on plastic screams

chocolate dipped cancer fingers

city bus exhaust lingers

prescription bottle salvation bringers

and underneath it all the bible
belt girdles the gurgling masses
of glazed diabetes and frosted
faith pooling in the belly of
America

a fat flabby mess of
snake oil boiling
in stomach acid
and pesticide

"welcome, honey! grab a seat
anywhere you'd like --I'll be
right with you!"

tizzop is the lover of
a single mother  

years ago tizzop
knocked at our door
nighttime the remains of
day splattered across the floor

when you think of tizzop:

think of your last
déjà vu and what you
felt
think of early immigration:
the german belt

tizzop: a combination of
people lovin/people hatin'
pride of a nation yet
last letter standing in a
poem without ending

long time ago tizzop
knocked at our door
nighttime the remains of
day splattered across the floor

tizzop hungry; he asked for
food while slowly taking his hat off
to my mom; she delighted since she
saw into the eyes of a warrior acting
quite politely

then tizzop fainted and fell on
the floor obviously he was starving
mom fried some chicken

later at the table tizzop gobbled
bonez'n'skin;
the more i looked at tizzop's
traits the way he moved his
cheeks and chewed his food
i sensed that we were  
kin

nobody talked: familiar
silence filled the room

the more i looked at tizzop's
bossy smile and his
black teeth i was
reminded of something

like the déjà vu of a  
déjà vu

strong connection between
tizzop and me: he
stayed at our place and soon became

my brother
little by little mom turned him
into her lover

wanted to **** him but
didn't
**** it this poem gotz to be
hidden

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

A bottle beneath her cab in a pick-up truck
or the fifth caught here behind the wheel
If pride wouldn't don a cat about this vision wholly refined again
and like a goat with a kid tied this climb atop the land
and she found with her chickens in this ford or a pig there
to book the dance with them all backstage
and now her life was still full of assuage even so she sings
the finer things in life here with that ***** in his belt.

i wish that you'd wear your seatbelt
because i want you and no one else
i wish we were both sedated
because then there would be no reason
to say we couldnt make it
and the car is empty now,
and i can't seem to figure it out -
because now my heart is in my throat
because i don't remember a word
that you spoke
because the music skimmed the air
and i hang on to every note -
now the melody is diguised
in those little lies
while the love we shared slowly died...
so,
i wish that i didn't wear my seatbelt
because now i want to be anyone
but myself

Ode to the belt
And how nice it never felt
Ode to the fist
That knew just how to make my stomach twist
Ode to the bruises
Which left no excuses
Ode to my jaw
For that punch it never quite saw
Ode to my ears
All those nights when I could hear my brothers' tears
Ode to my dad
And every time he's ever gotten mad
Ode to the world
And every obstacle its hurled
Ode to ode
And how well it never quite bode