New Poems from A.D. Winans

 

A. D. Winans is a native San Francisco poet and writer. In 1958 he returned home from Panama and became part of the North Beach Beat era. He is the author of over sixty books of poetry and prose, including North Beach Poems, North Beach Revisited, San Francisco Poems, and The Holy Grail: The Charles Bukowski Second Coming Revolution. He edited and published Second Coming Press for 17 years, during which time he produced the 1980 Poets and Music Festival, honoring the poet Josephine Miles and Blues legend John Lee Hooker. Colin Wilson, Studs Terkel, James Purdy, Peter Coyote, Jack Hirschman, Jack Micheline, and Charles Bukowski have praised his work. His poetry and prose has been published in over 2,000 literary magazines and anthologies, including The American Poetry Review, City Lights Journal, Poetry Australia, the New York Quarterly, Beat Scene, Beatitude, Rattle, and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. In 2002 a song poem of his was performed at Tully Hall, NYC. In 2006 he was awarded a PEN Josephine Miles award for excellence in literature. In 2009 PEN Oakland presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he received a Kathy Acker Award in poetry and publishing. In 2010 Bottle of Smoke Press (BOS Press) published a book of his Selected Poems.

ADVICE FROM AN AGING POET

Live for the moment

the past is a ghost riding an empty train

sing like a hammer sings to a nail

tread softly thru the night where dreams

lay like land mines

ready to explode on the tattooed dawn

run barefoot with children in the park

listen to the sound of their breath

drown in the innocence of their eyes

ignore your enemies 

false prophets drowning in quicksand

wrap your head in a song bag

lock your ego in the clothes closet

wear the eyes of an owl

write words soft as chalk

not like academic careful poets

in love with the business of poetry

wed to the immaculate chain of money

strip the flesh to the marrow

be a one-person quire

light up the sky like a million fireflies

kiss the face of the stars

GOING BACK IN TIME

I was looking at my scrapbook the other night while

listening to an old Dylan record

and there I was in my youth traveling from

California to Arizona and places further North

heading in so many directions

it was like being lost in the trick mirrors of the Fun House

at Play Land at the beach

and there were the young women then young girls

with free-flowing spirits

who gave their minds and bodies

at the slightest invitation

and nights too laying alone in bed in tangled sleep

feeling like a deer caught in barbed wire

or sitting hunched-over cold and disheveled

at the downtown Greyhound Bus Station

fighting off the eyes of leering men

who preferred boys to girls

now eighty-five and counting

I realize I was there and back so fast

like a train running out of track

returning home carrying my life in a knapsack

the days the months the years hung out to dry

like your mother's washing on a frail clothesline

THE TRUE POET 

the true poet knows

words are second to action

weaker than blood spilled

on the battleground 

of human rights and dignity

the true poet carries

the blood of the people in his veins

he does not speak in a rambling dialect

but in short sentences

he does not require a dictionary

to be understood

the true poet is steeped 

in ancient tradition

he does not play politics

he is politics

the true poet is a tree with

far-reaching branches

he is the crust

on a loaf of bread

he is the dream within

a dream

he is the mother giving

a newborn baby

the milk of life

he is the thunder in a storm

his words a bolt of lightning

that lights up the sky

he does not beg applause

or make love to the microphone

he carries humility 

like a mother holds her baby

in a warm embrace

he lives on the edge

his eyes are his tongue

his tongue his strength

he is a gardener planting seeds

in mind gardens

he is the first ray of sun 

that breaks through the morning fog

his words walk the streets

run a marathon sleep with him

make love to him

the true poet does not die

but lives on through eternity

waits like cosmic dust

to be reborn again