SINS
OF ARNOLD STREET
BY
DAN PROVOST
Some of these poems have appeared in Spent Meat, 24’th Street Irregular Press (Poems for all), The Swamp,
The Stump, Entropic Desires, Underground Voices Half Drunk Muse, and other
poetry E-Zines and small print mags.
Some have not appeared at all.
INTRODUCTION:
Arnold Street is located in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. I’m sure Woonsocket is not proud of the fact that Arnold Street even exist, it is a place where dive bars, prostitutes, drug users, and those who are losing the battle with the bottle hang out and live. For five years, I lived a mile from the bowels of Arnold Street and went there frequently. Watching the whores making a living, talking to the alcoholics and the unemployed, and witnessing the Heroin users shoot up in the bathroom. Most of them loved me, since I had a job and some money—they would always hit me up for a drink and I usually obliged…then I would go home and write.
Which is where many of these poems came from.
POEMS:
Robust flavor from
the Whiskey shot and a hearty laugh for the yellow toothed few who
care to run the gauntlet with callused hand and flabby gut.
Their time has run out so many years ago…And now
seeing the craggy reflection upon the bar,
Raw, uninhibited
wrinkled skin.
They will praise their vices with unabashed glee.
Each and every day.
II.)
I will turn down the road and join them.
Them…the isolated merry—drooling on the pale stench that covers their clothes.
Burned semen scattered along the sidewalk—as the well-wishers and dollar-droppers flee and scurry…
Away from Arnold Street.
Away from the depths of depravity.
But not me…I will sing the death tune and rise among the swill—and pray I will live long enough,
To chant another day…
Another day apparently alive…
Liars are free
to roam the earth
At a snail’s pace.
While they greet
onlookers and well-wishers
with venom.
Playing the game
in their undersized shirts
Bragging how the
world will be theirs
With their own version
of confident aggression.
Style, with the
plastic profile.
The meek are prisoners
of their own devices.
While they cower
in the corner
Seeking faceless
pity in the midst
Of rancid guzzlers
and cold-cut queenies.
Passion avoids them
at every turn.
Trying to escape
nineways sidewards…
Here I am, not armed with bullets, nor filled with answers that will end hostilities with Iraq or solve the battles that exist behind my neighbor’s wall.
Just a sad man, holding onto false truths within a Jack Daniels bottle—looking out a window,
feeling like a monarch of one…
When the words won’t come—facing the fire seems like an insurmountable chore.
When the persona crashes, living the life seems too tiresome.
When the vision melts—every fear conquers each step…
When the head falls into the hands of despair, surmising death seems all too true.
So I stare into a monsoon of uncertainty,
crying about existence.
And like the Eveready Rabbit, “it” keeps going, and going, and going.
Enter sin through my urine stained bathroom—Like the world gives a fuck about hygiene anymore.
Enter sin through the front steps of Church, God don’t give a damn nowadays.
Enter sin through Manson, Gotti, Gacy, and all those other ass-holes that are now seen as cult heroes to misguided youth.
Enter sin through the tortured eyes of the poor and the hungry, we can all look away and drink Martini’s.
Enter sin…Look in the windows of the bars and see the drunks gleam with evil…their choice has been noted.
Enter sin through my sex organs, my porn tapes, Rob Zombie CD’s, and eight day unshaved face—Images are never deceiving.
Enter sin around the world, around the block, and around the dead.
Enter sin, Enter sin, Enter sin.
Exit humanity…
Nothing else matters
but the clothes on your back and
a chance to sense that somewhere…someone
is enjoying the same sunrise as you are…
I write these words at a frantic pace so I
do not give myself an opportunity to think…All
around me is unified panic—stares that foreshadow
a blinding rage that builds and builds…until murmurs
of death become screams from the precipice.
Then I slowly dust off the remains of last night’s
escape and look toward the east,
Same sun…same life…different demise.
Severance pay for living is never collected when the widow lays her husband in the garbage along with the rest of the dead letters that wither with
time…
No Guardian Insurance man will be sending a check, nor will a Hearst full of flowers drive down Main Street with lighted autos in tow.
It is the alone who die, shriveled inside a closet like abode—who will never hear the horns of a celebratory band. No, a story of failure is still only taken at face value in an obituary buried on page 37 in the Woonsocket Call.
The young will still ride their scooters the first warm day of spring and never consider the day when time will be spent forever in the dark…The old will trim the one small hedge in the yard--then lie down; wondering why they still have a five year old calendar hanging in the broom closet.
Then more will die—some eulogized, some left to the rats.
Some old, some young, some never loved, others adored…
Some thought of daily, others never mentioned again.
I am dreaming from the groin,
waiting for a sexual dynamo
to take me in her arms and
destroy me.
I was hoping to jump
on a train and ride
to Alaska with the hobos,
pretending I’m Jack Kerouac.
I was wishing that Ronnie Van Zant
would come back to life and ram
his words down the pencil-pushers
throat.
I exist second by second, influenced by lyrics and poems from
those whom preceded me.
Cherished women that refused to conform to society’s norm.
Eventually, I will fall into a six-foot hole, with
only my words and skeletal smile remaining,
never to be remembered—only adding to a gruesome landscape.
I estimate I have about 8,200 days left on this banal planet,
Better to walk with the whispers of the hunters still haunting me—those daring accepted who wish to put a bullet into my psyche.
I will still drink and drive and smoke one-hitters while walking down Main Street USA.
Stop me—I dare you.
Pent-up emotions often leave people to hurt, to maim, and to strike out at the serpent.
Good.
I want to watch someone explode radically, tell the world to fuck off and carry the work cargo off the docks and dump the remains into the water.
Join the hate race…feel the disillusionment of the hoody walkers with the hairy face and empty pockets.
For one day, one hour, join them—then go back to the rest of your 8000 mornings of coffee and croutons.
If you want.
It’s always with the idea you have discovered some new perspective about an everyday
occurrence that leads you to the nearest typewriter to pump out a new poem.
It might be the way a women walks into the shoe store, or the way two guys
are bitching about their job over lunch.
It could be in the third person, or the first person.
It could be a sonnet, iambic pentameter, or just creative eruption that forces
you to type, think…
Drink…Smoke…Spike the vein…
See…Observe…
You just know that the construction of words is your persona.
Your muse…your living…
Your wait for death and dying…
And as you fall to the floor…composing that last word of heart-felt terror which intertwines your total existence,
Tears welling…blinding screams into the fallen fire.
You come to the realization that you will never see the end of final madness…
At least not in your lifetime.
I drank 12 beers yesterday and
thought about life while
staring up a telephone pole.
And while I fought to maintain
my equilibrium.
I wondered what would happen if
I climbed that damn pole and
screamed at the top of my lungs
“God is Dead”
Nietzsche would cringe.
Priest would blush.
Mom would bail me out.