AD Winans: DANCING WITH WORDS

Poet Laureate Inaugural Address.  SF Main Library

January 27th 2013

DANCING WITH WORDS There are poets who like To dance with words Dance for favors and illusionary Poetry careers But dancing for an audience Isn’t like feeling the rhythm That rubs up against the soul Odetta, Buffy Saint-Marie Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger Billy Bragg Were living proof of this Money pigeonholes Power corrupts The spiritual truth The scriptures tell us this The true poet knows this Stands tall above The dancing with word poets Who are little more than Instruments of a poem greater Than themselves Bar room revolution talk Is little more than an exercise In futility Take it to the streets Be like Walt Whitman Walk blood stained battlefields Real and imagined Tend to the spiritual wounds Of your comrades Be like the people of Egypt Risking life and limb For their beliefs Be like the anonymous poets of Poland Who during the height Of government tyranny Tossed poems into the public square For the people to read Giving them hope in desperate times Be like your sisters and brothers In the peoples struggle in Wisconsin Fighting for worker rights Love them become one with them Shout your poems from rooftops In solidarity with them. Whitman was the Heavyweight Champion of poetry Stood tall and fearless among The enemy Which is never really man But the poison in his soul Pride envy lust for power How can those inflicted Write from the heart? One column of media praise Is of less value Than a single tear drop on a poem From a waitress in a greasy Road stop diner The dancing with word poets Dance a solo dance In a bar room with no jukebox The true poet’s topic is people Not the poet. a.d. winans 2/3/12

Photos: copyright a.d. winans 2013     A.D. Winans and Alejandro Murguia    A.D. and Vargas     Wilfredo Castano and A.D.   Byron Spooner and A.D.   A.D and Francisco Alarcon