A.D. Winans
A.D. Winans is a graduate of San Francisco State. His poetry, prose and photography have appeared internationally in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including American Poetry Review (article on Bob Kaufman), Rattle, Confrontation, Poetry Now, City Lights Journal, Poetry Australia, the New York Quarterly, and the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. In 2004 a song poem of his was performed at Tully Hall. In 2006 he was awarded a PEN Josephine Miles award for literary excellence. In 2007 Presa Press published a book of his selected poems.
The following works are copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Words
There’s still meat to these bones
Squeezed like pulp from a ripe orange
Steroid injection metaphors
Grow like a malignant tumor
Deep inside the gut where
No cancer can reach them
These words that scream out for
A necklace of poems
Like a street hawker transcending
A cold winter
No longer a hungry beggar
No longer a lost sailor
In a leaking life raft
Floating aimlessly at sea
Wed to these words
Like a nurse holding on to the hand
Of a dying man
71 Going On 72
I like wild women who drink straight shots
And lick their lips when flirting
I like demure women
Who look like librarians
And wear long dresses that touch the floor
But I’ve retired from the game
Although not entirely of my own choosing
Forced to sit on the sidelines
And eyeball the show
As I watch a young woman walk by
With her jiggling butt
My cock rises to half-mast
A false promise lost in skipped heart beats that plays tricks with my shadow
Trailing behind like an old junkyard dog
Walking behind his master
Hoping for table scraps
Death on the Mind
He’s 93
And says he has
Death on his mind
I tell him to close the curtains
Pull down the blinds
But he has death on his mind
The same death that has your name
My name on every card in the deck
Even the Joker is dressed in black
Daring you to turn your back
But today I hold her at bay
Sitting here drinking a cold beer
Watching the Giants beat New England
In the Super Bowl
Even death can’t top that
Jazz and Blues later in the night
A poem rattling about inside my head
A warm welcoming bed
Death holds the trump card
But today I have won a small battle
Fuck you lady (or Sir) death
And your bad breath
Today you lose the
Poesy wins
The Sound on the Stairs
People are coming up the stairs
They are coming from here
there
and everywhere
I have not been out of the house
for a long time, but I know it’s winter
by the heavy boots their voices wear
Angry Hermits
angry hermits sit in fertile trees
beating on ancient warrior drums
like mad men attacking the evening air
while down below societal bloodhounds
thrash through knee-high grass
sniffing for hungry clues
to their existence
Winter Poem
Chill of winter in the air
Misty fog giving way
To a light rain
Cars spewing deadly exhaust fumes
Windshield wipers flapping like the
Wings of birds in migration
Stone faces hidden behind steering wheels
Give no quarter yield only to the
Red traffic stoplights
Pedestrians looking like mannequins
Turn into penguins scurrying
Across the street
On there way to work
Boarding the morning bus
Pressed together like preserved butterflies
Between the pages of an old
And frayed book
