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POETRY
The following poems are from The Other Side Of Broadway: Selected Poems:1965-2005
SAN FRANCISCO STREETS
I have walked these streets
Like a cop walks his beat
My eyes taking in her every movement
My brain storing real and imagined changes
In sixty years her changes have not eluded me
She is older now more wrinkled and cranky
Much like me but the two of us get along
Like business partners looking after
Each others interest
Market Street once a fashionable socialite
Now a gaudy whore
Mission Street once the home of the Irish
Now glossed over
Tough looking youths with dagger stares
Where you guard your wallet
Like a eunuch guards the harem door
You have to learn to give and take
You have to learn to adjust
The city is like a cup of strong coffee
Stir her enough and the flavor floats
To the top
I have walked these streets all my life
In good condition and broken down Physique
Knowing there is no city like her
In the world
She is like a pair of empty shoes
Sitting under the bed
With no feet big enough to fill them
She is like a squirrel running between the
Live wires of a utility pole
She is like the last bullet in the
Executioner's gun
She is like a room full of poets crazed
With their own conversation
She is like Billie Holiday drenched
In sweat
All forgiving in her insatible lust
For life
POEM FOR BOB KAUFMAN
he walked the streets of North Beach
an ancient warrior with hollow eye-sockets
that seared the dazzling lights of the
city of San Francisco
his eyes boring into you like a silk worm
carrying decades of heavy sorrow on his back
like a bent-over hunchback
overcome with the rust of time
flesh stripped to the marrow the
mirror of his eyes doing a slow dance
up and down Grant and Green
a dark shadow riding clouds of
"Ancient Rain."
his life measured in hot jazz and verse
a surreal mirage where hip cats wailed
in perfect rhythm
as he walked an imaginary zoo
looking for tigers to talk too
runaway poems blaring in his ears
like a stuck car horn the Ancient Rain falling
falling
falling
washing away his tears
PURE JAZZ
intense convoluted horn solo
old Diz filling the room with
his raging truth
Miles Davis and his lyric savegery
cutting to the center force of gravity
lubricating the gears of my mind
whose pigments of indigo
disguised as blue
float through the blue haze air
echoing latitudes of motionless
motion
GHOSTS IN THE NIGHT
the shrill cry of dead
jazz greats ring out
in the night riding
on dark rain clouds
jazz notes loud as thunder
burst the eardrums
like artillery fire the
four-walls closing in
like a police dragnet
jazz luminaries
beautiful butterflies
speading their wings
reshaping the stars
the universe
cosmic matter waiting
to be reborn
POEM FOR MY FATHER
I look at your picture
hanging on the wall
and think back to the conversations
we never had
the way you sat there
and stared out the window
the last year before your death
No amount of drinking
can erase the memory
as I toss down one drink
after another past soft
liver tissue trying to avoid the
vacant look in your eyes
pieces of my brain stapled
to the lamp shade
INSOMNIA
Tossing
Turning
Praying for sleep
When all else fails me
But God has no time for insomniacs
And Christ must be busy practicing
For the resurrection
Falling asleep for an hour or two
Head churning buttermilk dreams
The Holy Ghost stopping by for a chat
Seems like an amicable chap
Swapping stories from the past
Just as if he were one of the boys
As I gradually surrender to his will
Dreams lined-up like shots of tequila
At a Mexican brothel
Only to wake again and again
Insomnia a heavily armored
Spanish Conquistador
Takes no prisoners
Plays your mind like a card shark
Your body like a whore
In the morning leaves you feeling
Like bits-and-pieces of a ship wreck
Washed up along the shore
PANAMA POEM
the young Panamanian girl
sitting alongside her sister
dressed in panties and bra
reading a comic book
and chewing on bubble gum
at a brothel called the
Teenage Club
waiting for the first
GI's to arrive
six girls lined-up
like bowling pins
rooted to their chairs
with zombie like stares
doing a woman's thing inside
a child's body
ON THE BOMBING OF IRAQ
it's history repeating itself all over again
from Napolean to Attila the Hun
gothic nightmares
and slaughterhouse mentality
old glory versus fascism
genocide versus annihilation
war criminals posing as heads of state
masturbating messiahs wearing the
masks of Auschwitz the
bones of women and children
fuel for Hitler's ovens
played out once more in Iraq
while corporate America stands guard
at Fort Knox
WINTER POEM
It's been in the thirties
two nights in a row
and I'm sitting here freezing
my ass off with a hacking cough
waiting for the power company
to come and fix the problem
but it isn't so bad when you consider
9/11 the war on Iraq and that
d.a. levy stuck a rifle between his legs
and blew his brains out
which has nothing and yet everything
to do with this poem
Thirty degree nights won't kill you
but they don't bring comfort either
the trouble with being single
the trouble with being seventy
is knowing you could die alone
and go undiscovered for weeks
with nothing but rotting flesh
to tell your story
and a few poems to remember you by
***
Presa Press will publish this Selected Poems book in January 2007. Retail priceL $18, plus shipping. I am making a special offer to visitors of this web site only. Pre-publication copies can be ordered directly from me at the special price of $13, including shipping costs. This offer is good through December 31, 2006. Send check to:
A.D. Winans
P.O. Box 31249
San Francisco, Ca 94131
Other books available from the author:
13 Jazz Poems. Hand sewn. Letter Press. 300 copy edition. $12, including shipping.
The World's Last Rodeo. 200 copy edition. $7, including shipping.
This Land Is Not My Land. $7, including shipping.
Dreams That's Won't Leave Me Alone. 200 copy edition. $6, including shipping.
Limited edition free Broadside of my choosing included at no extra cost. Mention this web site.
OTHER ITEMS FOR SALE:
1. From 1973 through 1989, I edited and published the widely acclaimed Second Coming Magazine/Press. Brown University purchased the archives shortly thereafter. The California Bicentennial Poets Anthology (hardback limited edition) was published in a 300 copy editiion. It originally sold for $20, and it's value has went up over the years. I am making available a small number of copies in excellent condition for the original $20 price, which includes postage and handling.
2. The Holy Grail: The Charles Bukowski Second Coming Revolution. The printing included a limited 26 copy, signed and lettered edition. The copy being made available for sale is in mint condition. Each copy included a signed Winans poem for Bukowski. This is copy X. $30, including shipping costs.
3. CD. America and Other Poems by A.D. Winans. $8, including shipping.
4. Chapbook: It Serves You Right To Suffer, Factotum Press. $6, including shipping.
5. Chapbook: Trying To Find A Common Bond. 50 copy, limited edition. Hand Sewn. Letterpress. $12, including shipping.
BROADSIDES
1. Two poems: For My Mother and For My Father. 200 copy edition. BOS Press. $5, including postage.
2. For Hank (Charles Bukowski), Second Coming Press. $5, including postage.
3. Audience Of One: Letterpress. X-ray Press. $6, including postage.
4. I Kiss The Feet Of Angels, on special paper. Centennial Press. $6, including postage.
5. Poem For Mingus. 8 1/2x 11, fold-over broadside, with photo's of Mingus. $6, including postage.
6. A Matter Of Trust. A special limited 50 copy edition, Letter Press, signed by both Winans and Croatian Translator, Vojo Sindolic. In English and Croatian. $10, including postage.
7. Special Limited Edition broadside produced by BOS Press, celebrating Winans' 70th Birthday (January 12, 1936). Limited to 100 copies. $6, including postage.
All copies of books, broadsides, and other items are signed by A. D. Winans