Survival of the fittest
is a lonely road
reserved for honored
champions
The weak and greedy
they choose deception
to overcome
challenges

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.’

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

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.

If you knew how much
I want you, you might
run away from my arms
as from a trap.

But mine is not the desire
of possession, ownership
or of "making you mine."

I want us to be
partners in passion;
eyes trading glances,
lips trading kisses,
hands trading caresses.

I want us to be lovers
who share each other
freely and equally,
as the sun and moon
share the same sky
and through their sharing
make it more beautiful.

Two souls intertwined
in a magikal embrace,
testing the limits
of time and space.

  ~mce

The water cycle
Of my soul
Goes something like this

Pain collects,

Joy evaporates

Hopelessness condensates

And sadness preciptitates

On and on and on
This is the water cycle
Of my soul

The mysterious pregnancy
of the present moment.
Call it hazard, randomness
whatever you like.

Contained in that moment,
all the possibilities of life.
The locus of existence.
Whatever you do could
change everything.

You are 21 and sitting in a bar.
You walk out the door and turn right.
One life looms. Hazard.
You walk out the door and turn left.
A different life. Hazard.
You stay at the bar;
someone sits down beside you.
A third life opens up. Hazard.

Forget choice. You didn't choose,
you just unthinkingly did.
Yet so many possibilities
in that innocent instant.
Mythic, timeless, un-contemporary.
Powerful as a Black Hole.

We speak of good choices,
bad choices, as if we control
our lives absolutely.

Wrong. Worse than wrong: absurd.
Ego. You believe yourself a god?

First comes the random hazardous moment,
numinous and fecund with an unknown power.

Choice only follows that moment.
You choose within the arena of hazard.

Only then, thumbs up or down.

Forgive me, love.

My affection for you
cannot be conveyed
in words or poems.

It is a well that
must be drunk from
by your own lips.

It needs the language
of fingers and kisses
and skin and sighes.

When we reach
the moment
when we can speak
the tactile tongue
of love face to face,
you will know just
who I am and why
I need you in my life.

Until then, these
poor words must suffice.

Take them, a part of me,
and all I can give
in this moment.

I noticed when you stopped loving me.
Your smile became faint,
You no longer held me in your sleep.
Your attention wasn't given to me.
I shook hands with the distance you created between us.
Your phone became more important than the girl lying next to you,
Trying to adore you.
I was she.
You made time for everything but me,
Except for when you wanted to **** me,
You'd call me.
I noticed your changes and I let them be.
You don't love me,
You don't love me,
in my head i repeat.

Over the first half of this dreadful decade, I've been played by women quicker than I can drain the comparable bottles of liquor.
******, fed, and left to fend off a debilitating mental disease dubbed depression, all alone, once again.
So I wander cracked sidewalks and pockmarked streets, in a vain search for meaning, or even something as simple as companionship.
But to no avail, I trudge back home, head swimming, body lost to the waves, another failed attempt at soothing my emotional hangover.