Stoned at Fenway
Game 162 at
Fenway…1997
Boston, 20 games out
of first place
Mo Vaughn swinging
for the fences
and swinging for a new contract
he never received.
The 3000 fans that bothered to
show up knew that
this might be the last
time seeing Vaughn in
a Red Sox Uniform.
Platt and I are sitting
in the last row of the
right field bleachers…
Smoking character—tying to
figure out how they’ll be in 1998.
Asking Rudy Pemberton if he would
like a hit…
Mo strikes out in the bottom of the eight.
One more toke from the joint in honor
of the Hit Dog’s last at bat.
As we leave to go to
The Cask and Flagon, Platt sums
up the whole day in four words.
“He’s no Ted Williams.”
Faded so Tight
But I’m One—
Pete Townsend
Aghast, anxiety
ridden…Unable to
take the shackles off
my ankles—torment
tempered within
private prison screams.
Defined by jaded DSM-V
textbooks.
I might be one, I might
also be two, or three
or the tenth million customer
who failed to walk away.
Could not walk away…
And god knows I tried…
Odd, stranded frown pasted on
my face…
Legs too thin, gut too
fat.
Loser plastered on my
being…
But, as I fail escaping the chains of
calamity—I still cannot recognize a
cause of destruction…
A stare into dankness…
Detained
within
myself…
I Forgot to Read the News, Oh Boy
The non-perfect hunter
on a pussy search
Among the lost mirrors
of beatdowns and low
rent scams…
I told myself not to drunkenly stagger
as I walked down slut row,
looking for submission from
a low rent champ.
She spittled out of her mouth…
Ten bucks for a blowjob…
90 pounds tops…
Begging for some dough
for another fix.
Towering over her…I began
to rain, wanting to feel her
agony of waking up on
a clustered sidewalk…
All I could muster is some slurred,
drunken pity…
Asking her before I broke down…
“Are you a reason that coke is bad?”
BIO: Dan Provost’s poetry has been published both online and in print for a number of years. He is the author of eleven books, his latest three Under the Influence of Nothingness released by Kung Fu Treachery Press, Rattle of a Realizer published by Whiskey City Press and One of theCrowd Always Bleeds from Alien Buddha Press are available via Amazon and Barnes and Noble. He also had a chapbook published in 2020, The Curse, by Roaring Junior Press and another work, The Green Room—available in early 2021 by Analog Submission Press. Provost has been nominated twice for the Best of the Net and has read his work throughout the United States. He lives in Berlin, New Hampshire with his wife Laura, and dog Bella.
