Pittsburgh Lament

The sound of a switch engine
working the stockyards at night
is like a lullaby humming in my ears.
My taste is for carbon and oil.
The burnt scent of an overheated clutch
is a heady perfume, as magnetic
as the musk of a woman’s desire.
The feel of polished ceramics
caressed by a calloused hand,
is sensuous, arousing,
like stroking the velvety tiny fuzz
along the nape of a woman’s neck.
My eye seeks the symmetry
of bolted parts, disparate shapes joined
like petal, pistil and stamen,
into beauty.

These are lost now,
merely echoes.
Instead, some foreign hand trembles
with the torque of a wrench,
his heart beating in rhythm with
the whirr of generators,
his nostrils flaring with the pungent odor
of lubricated metal and friction.

There are metal shavings in my blood
and my soul withers, unrequited,
another man with a strange accent
making love to what once was,
what still should be, my job.

The title to this one is difficult. I first called it "NAFTA." The current title, "Pittsburgh Lament" is to pay homage to my origins and my father's generation. It's one of those "middle of the night" affairs - the memory of living next to a railroad stockyard, the sounds and smells of my youth, keeping me awake far into the foggy dawn last night.

Crybaby

Stop pushing me.
I have problems of my own
and your inability to face up to yours
doesn’t give you the right to push me.
See, your job sucks, I know,
and your wife (girlfriend, sometime lover)
is as true as my cat –
right, anybody that feeds this female
gets a lap cuddle for the night –
sure and the friend you thought true
proves false, hell, we’ve all seen that –
come up with something at least different
if not meaningful,
something I haven’t seen, felt, lived,
that will say, shit yeah, this deserves
sympathy.
Stop crying to me.
Stop pushing
or I WILL push back
and I don’t’ think you’re fragile ego
could handle that!

Masochist of Love

She left her mark,
the ghost of her love
flitting between the trampled garden,
shattered crockery
and broken bedpost.
Sometimes, the weaker side of his soul
longs for her
when the songbirds at dawn
sing with the hollow echo of loneliness.
Memories of their wild abandoned
love-making fill his being,
swelling his heart,
deluding him with false hope,
until they pour out and evaporate
where her betrayal had cut him
like an assassin’s knife.
She left her mark,
but he considers calling her,
again.

Pick Up Line

(an old piece of erotica!)

We should love!
My mind approves and
blood courses in anticipation
swelling my penis until it stands
throbbing, a fountain of yielding iron,
a pipe that gushes creamy hot babies
into the incubating cup of your vagina!

Am I bold to say this to you?
Is it wrong to proclaim my desire?