I am so sorry

That they've burned down your home

Left you standing upon barren ground

Cast stones through sacred things

They shouldn't have even touched.


I am so sorry

That this ugly world

Uses fear as ammunition

Never paying mind

To how you must feel

When used as the target.


I am so sorry

That people have 'opinions'

About these tragedies

Even turning well-deserved eulogies

Into slippery slopes.


I am so sorry

There were people screaming

Just when you were trying

To rest.


And I am so hopeful

That you will reach such magnificent heights

That they will never understand.

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

The best men and women
in this life are not the
holy
or the righteous. They
are not
found in the
church or temple.
We live in a world
where religious
virtue
is conflated with
bigotry, racism,
and hatred.
Only the godless are truly
good.

A man and his child were
gunned down In my
neighborhood today.
My community did nothing -
leaving the blood-soaked street
as the only reminder of
mankind’s capacity for violence.
l did nothing except
gnash my teeth at the
****** of a small child and
wonder if l lived in the
wrong neighborhood.
l look at myself-
the silence in the mirror
reflects my face
but not my
hypocrisy nor the
agony of my
screaming heart.

The Penguins are playing tonight
I have a belly full of high-quality
whiskey,
a fine cigar between my fingers,
and a pleasant buzz dulling my
constant anxiety.
The announcers play-by-play,
constant and frantic,
blares through my 70-inch television
adding artificial drama, but I like it.
I'm surrounded by my
precarious middle class wealth
while thousands of
slaves suffer and die in Lybia.
But I’m drunk, oblivious, and happy that
my team
just scored

his hipster beard -
mandatory accessory for this
gentrified borough of Pittsburgh -
leads him back and forth
from the kitchen to the tables

he serves more tables than he should
I wait too long for my
overpriced salad
as he drops a plate of greasy wings
in front of a table of oblivious
professionals who
judge him
find him wanting
without ever looking up from their phones

a small bead of sweat accompanies him
when he drops off my check

I pay with a twenty and he brings me back
a ragged five and a one-dollar bill.

I know what he did.  ****.

god ****** hipster server trying to fleece me
playing on social pressure
betting on pocketing that faded fiver
that he did not earn from me

I force him to break that Lincoln
I tip three bucks
because I ****** well won’t let him get the best of me

my indignation is an all-American righteousness
so much so that I forget -

forget I paid four times what the salad was worth
forget he doesn’t see a penny of that profit
forget that he makes less than three bucks an hour
forget that without tips he won’t make rent

I forget all of this in my pride at catching a huckster
who just wants to keep the lights on
one more day

I walked out of my office today at noon
and slid into the stream of pedestrians -
the hipsters stroking their beards,
the pale professionals blinking in the sun,
mothers pushing strollers through the crowd
with more skill than a racecar driver

before I knew it, I walked past my lunch destination
I kept walking - and watching
the people of my town share a sidewalk
without attacking one another

for a moment I was tempted to take a picture
post it on online,
make a socio-political statement;
if people from all walks of life
can share the sidewalk
can we not find common ground?

I left my phone in my pocket - decided against
adding my unnecessary opinion to the
manufactured outrage
that is the sad truth of social media

I smiled at a pretty lady pushing her baby
she smiled back
and we shared a brief human moment
I kept walking

In the late 1990s on the South Side of Pittsburgh
there was a cafe I'd frequent
with large cozy chairs next to picture windows
that looked out onto East Carson Street,
the main drag in that part of town.
From those chairs, I'd read and write and watch
tattooed bikers, artists, skaters,
young ***** with their **** out,
and poor thugs in ***** clothes
posed as weathered statues against brick walls.
They all craved attention, respect,
a solid footing for their place in the world.

Today, I imagine most of those people are
dead or in prisons or barely making it
with several children and dead-end jobs.
That cafe, like so many storefronts,
fell victim to the polite ravages
of suburban malls and the Internet.
Those days are gone to never return.
Still, those people had my attention.
For what it's worth,
they will always have my respect.

"you are
so beautiful,"
I said, and then wept when
the uncertainty flickered in
her eyes

lost in his phone
that businessman
misses the sunset