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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Ron Gavalik

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

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.’

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

A sparrow landed in a city park
near a black cat sprawled out in the grass.
The bird began to chirp, chirp, chirp,
in the way drunkards ramble in bars.
Clearly irritated, the cat crouched low,
its ears back, ready to pounce.
After about a minute, the cat relaxed.
It must have figured killing the bird
would ruin the mellow mood of the day.
A moment later, the bird took off
and vanished in the trees.
The cat flopped itself
back into the grass.

-Ron Gavalik

Bourbon whiskey
and dark chocolate
are tender injections
of love
for the people
who are not
in love

–Ron Gavalik

The poet
regularly battles the mob
and displays those scars
carved into his heart.
The poet
is despised in his time
and admired
by the generations
he never meets.

–Ron Gavalik

There’s a psychopath
at every job, a guy ready
to talk your ear off about socks
or a woman who admits
she has a fetish for hairy *****.
I met them in restaurants,
on construction sites,
and in bland offices.
As time went on,
the psychos disappeared.
I mentioned this to a coworker.
He stared at me cold,
the way I once looked at a guy
who went on and on
about his ****** addiction.

-Ron Gavalik

A young writer
sat in my regular chair
inside the bookstore cafe.
He banged at the keys of his typer,
angry and without mercy.
Once he drained his coffee cup
the writer kept ******* at the rim
for a few remaining drops.
After staring blankly at the wall
for several minutes, the writer packed up
his supplies into a ratty backpack,
and walked out of the joint.
Finally, I figured, my chair had enough
of the games. It felt my presence
nearby and thus decided
we had sins to paint.

-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

Inside the café, a cute artist
with blackened fingertips
sketched in her notebook.
A handsome boy took the next table
and waited patiently for a chat.
Sketching with a fervor,
oblivious to her surroundings,
that artist and I shared a truth.
Imagination is often preferable
to the daily realities
****** upon us.

–Ron Gavalik

Sometimes I'm the boy
who stood helpless
on my grandmother's porch
looking down the hill
upon Hell's fire
and the black plumes
that pushed men
into early graves

–Ron Gavalik

A terrible lover is similar
to a terrible piece of chicken.
You can choke it down
as expected, or cast
the remnants away
and move on.
Neither option is ideal,
but only one
is grounded in truth.

—Ron Gavalik

...from behind the counter,
she smiled at me in a deeper way.
Her eyes told stories
about ecstasy and the prison
of family life.
So, I went back to the table,
drank the coffee,
and I tried to exorcise
the temptations
through words.
The typer has always been
my most loyal lover.

–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

When a drop of sweat
from your chin lands between
a lover's *******, some women
will recoil in disgust.
Others will moan and get off
on your labor to deliver pleasure.
The dame who digs a little sweat
during the younger years
will mop it from your forehead
in the nursing home.

-Ron Gavalik

If you can't spit fire,
swallow hard,
and then slide out of the way.
Words and time
are far too valuable
to be wasted
by the amateurs
of life.

–Ron Gavalik

As a writer and poet who absorbs the world and then bleeds out truth, I'm finding it harder and harder to break through the political propaganda that television, radio, and web media has conjured to dominate and control so many minds. I can work around the programming by introducing abstract moral truths, but the moment I reference modern cultural, my work goes ignored.

I feel myself losing touch with a society that I’ve taken for granted my entire writing life. In a gluttonous feast of sensational media
that has proven nearly impossible to extricate ourselves,
we allow the power of profiteers and con-artists
to stream content into our minds that programs us
to accept unprecedented levels of violence.
We celebrate military-style police powers
to remove our freedoms of expression,
the rights to own property at reasonable expense,
and our most basic rights to life under a banner of liberty.
In an **** of hatred and greed, a large swath of society
has proven comfortable with exterminating
or imprisoning human beings for the color of their skin
or the origin of their birth in private-for-profit prisons.
Yes, I definitely feel we are lost in a spiral of human descent,
where there is no end, only torment and death.

-Ron Gavalik

Nothing feels so empty as easy satisfaction
that requires little effort or sacrifice.
As filthy Johns in search of ******,
we salivate over and consume
the blood and the passion
of the artists who offer their beauty
in the hopes of small rewards.
In a gluttonous feast, we take
what we want, and without
offering one cup of coffee
or even a slice of bread.

-Ron Gavalik

On Sundays, I drink
more coffee and more whiskey.
Reflections on the previous week
provide for accurate predictions
about the week ahead.
Books and snacks go down easily.
Attaining clear focus
helps the writer observe society
to build the words
that raise spirits
and raze evil.

–Ron Gavalik

The guy who wore a scarf at the bar,
he chose not to write
because he's ‘no Hemingway.’
I told him no one stops me.
Memories of Ginsberg, Frost, Thomas,
and even Bukowski's drunken ghost
make me feel at home in my words.
That didn't change the guy's mind,
so I told him to drink up
and do something else.

-Ron Gavalik

I’m trying  <!DOCTYPE html>
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now, and I’m just trying ;14px;font
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of the weeds.

-Ron </head> Gavalik </body>

A dead Christmas tree
was set out with a neighbor's trash.
It lay sideways, stripped
of half its needles.
A brown cat sniffed
one of its branches,
but then sauntered away.
All relationships eventually
lose their charm.

-Ron Gavalik

You have more power
than you realize
The problem is
you're more worried
about gossip
and hatred of neighbors
Therefore you stay apart
and never come together
That power is lost

–Ron Gavalik

Sometimes the sadness
comes like a sucker punch
to the back of the head.
The assailant disappears
into the crowded street,
and we are stuck
nursing a painful wound,
never really knowing
its reason or cause.

-Ron Gavalik

The value of food
is completely unknown
until the hunger sets in.
I can say the same
for love.

–Ron Gavalik

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

The night went on
as the madness kept coming.
There was nothing
I could do
to stop it.
Eyes closed,
I prayed long and hard
for the dawn.

—Ron Gavalik

At dusk, under gray skies,
whiskey thoughts wander
in the lust of lost hopes.
Memories surface
of forgotten love
and the memorable rage
of injustice.
We are the chaos.
We are the solution.
We are the beginning
and the end.

–Ron Gavalik

Today, my Jewish brothers and sisters
in the greatest city on Earth
were gunned down by a man
poisoned with hatred,
that bitter hit of political rage.
Tonight, imperfect souls will gather
to hug and weep and scream.
As we gaze upon so many fierce tears,
I pray we absolutely never
go quietly into that goodnight.

-Ron Gavalik