Glorified Demise
by Dan Provost
I see him every day in Dunkin Donuts.
Scribbling wildly in a torn notebook.
The cover is hanging on by its last ring.
Coffee stains are his notes on the last page…
He is alone.
Always alone.
Sometimes, I see him slowly shuffle to the library
A huge backpack acting as a demented cross.
Whatever he’s carrying, it is very heavy,
because he must stop every twenty feet to adjust
his fat,
swipe the beads of sweat from his brow—then
carries on, to sit in the corner of the library and continue
to write at a frantic pace.
He has one magazine, an old Professional Wrestling Illustrated.
I saw him one day reading an article about the old tag-team, the Fabulous Freebirds.
A hundred times he must have read this article
Maybe a million.
Once, as I was heading to my truck, I saw him in the park sleeping.
His snoring was so loud that passer bys looked at each other, embarrassed
of his existence.
After all, he’s not that old…he must eat or drink well because his gut looks like Falstaff’s.
But he is homeless.
And he reads one old Wrestling magazine.
And he writes about his slow demise towards death obsessively.
No wonder it’s a strain to carry that backpack.
Writing a life story about sweating, commenting on Ric Flair’s
wardrobe and composing lonely sonnets must take up a lot of paper.
