Day 236 at the Wildwood Lounge. By Dan Provost

The fallen rain

has played havoc

with some 30-cent

kid’s new pink hair

cut—which I guess

has caused him to sink

into a five-dollar depression

because he slowly

walks into the Wildwood

Lounge appearing very nervous

and unsure of himself.

Nobody here cares—they all have more than some cheap despair to live with, an

addiction to the bottle is enough to focus on while treading unholy water.

A teenybopper novella where Junior is upset over some decimated fashion statement is

not enough to turn the heads of these hardened people.

Hope is an ideal that has been destroyed eons ago amongst veteran, grizzled, rigid

patrons—who continue to write blank checks with faceless stares into emptiness.

Even the hard rain outside fails to faze them.

And no young rebel who is having a bad hair day will cause them to acknowledge

anything outside their abode of four walls, a bar and circa 1968 wooden stools.

Dan Provost has been published throughout the small press for many years.  He is the author of nine books and lives in Berlin, New Hampshire with his wife Laura