A.D. Winans: Pre Labor Day Poem

like pulling a wisdom tooth
like an attack of sciatica
I sit here lost
in the attic of my mind

 

the fog rolling in
slips through the crack
in my living room window

 

born at home premature
under the light of a full moon
I walked the jungles of Panama
Fed off Beat Mania in North Beach

 

Shaman poets sang in my ears
under a bed of stars
young women with dresses
that clung to firm thighs

 

damp dark cavern
wet as morning dew
peach fuzz dinner
drew me in devoured me
like quicksand

 

the sweet fragrance of the past
swirls inside my head
mates with comrades long dead
as I walk back into my birth
work my way through
the sound of water
the wind sharp as a knife
propels me toward my destiny

 

my boyhood gone
like an old jalopy used-up
rusting in an auto junkyard

I head toward the comfort of the now
nailed to the cross of the past
in the language of the present
with no words to light the fire
as I carry the memories
like a mountain climber
with a heavy backpack

 

vague memories of my mother
singing me to sleep
and the chill of waking
the tongue of dawn
cold as dry ice

 

the hawk sweeps down
for the kill
a dog howls at the moon
a cat yawns in boredom
the universe draws a new boundary line
fragile as a new born child

 

the careful academic poet
weds the careful language poet
vie for who is published the most
in Poetry Magazine

 

the monkey rides the master’s back
the coo-coo bird moves backward
into the clock

 

fearful police lock and load their guns
black boys moving targets
in the night

 

voter suppression laws
to keep the voting down
southern barbecues
with rednecks hungry
for “nigger” steak

 

gone the passion of revolution
sell out satisfaction
to the status quo

the night hound of death
stumbles into the day
the rich roasting the poor
like a pig on a spit

 

labor unions turned
into mannequins
the war machine money makers
fuel the cash register
with the blood of our youth
no guilt no shame

 

the Roman Senate proceeds unabated
turn out gladiators
like machinery parts

endless parades marching bands
waving flags, played out
like an amusement park

 

slavery without chains
government without representation
this nation of criminal politicians

 

the ghost of Custer rises
like a creature from the lagoon
creeps through the night
like a faceless Santa Claus
with a bag of Indian scalps

 

Allah competes with the Pope
for the rights to the head of Jesus
beheaded by Isis barbarians
back from a night of slaughter
as the congregation stumbles
like a drunk into the future
carved out in the hands
of a gypsy fortune teller
as I wait out the night hours
in solitude
shut out the demons of insomnia
like a faulty night light switch

 

the holy of the unholy money exchangers
make and pass new laws
laws that feed on the bones
of the poor and blue-collar worker

 

a future where animals
turn into animal crackers
and birds are served live
at holiday feasts

 

the angels occupy the cheap seats
at Yankee Stadiums
God sends down a bolt of lightning
dismayed at the flawed diamond
he created

 

www.winansfansite.blogspot.com

THE FIRST ANNUAL BRUSSELS INTERNATIONAL UNDERGROUND POETRY FEST

Hello Fellow Dadaists:

 

3RP Co-directors  Co-editors of Maintenant 8 Kat Georges Peter Carlaftes are so happy to announce we will be performing with so many of our contributors on Saturday, September 20 in Brussels/Jette at 7pm:

Here's the event page:  

https://www.facebook.com/events/279040195632133/

 

and on Friday September 19, 3RP will have the European Book Launch Premier of Philip Meersman's THIS IS BELGIUM CHOCOLATE at  8pm.

 

Please share with all your European Fans & Friends

 -Thanks, Kat & Peter

A.D. Winans at Jack Micheline tribute

A.D. Winans reading at Jack Micheline tribute.




Photo of Floyd Salas and A.D. Winans


www.winansfansite.blogspot.com

A.D. Winans: FOR THE PEOPLE ON THE MOUNTAIN

lift your spirit as high
as the mercy airplanes
dropping food and water
to the 40,000 Iraqui
men women and children
seeking reguge from yet
another religioius sect
bent on genocide
in the name of their
invisible God

put your heart where
your words are
all this killing in the name of God
be it Christian, Muslim
or somewhere in between

 

Buddha's crossed legs won't stop it
the Pope can't stop it
the Koran can't stop it

the evil inside man's heart
began with the caveman
and waits the resurrection
hidden in a secret silo
with its missiles pointed
at God

Give America A Break: a tribute album to Jack Micheline

Give America A Break is a tribute album to Jack Micheline released on both vinyl and digital format. The vinyl version is a double-album, colored 180 gram virgin vinyl with a gatefold design. The double-disc CD contains bonus material not included on the vinyl.

 

The first half of this album includes some of the best of Micheline's readings throughout the years including tracks from the famous 1982 Naropa reading where he selected as the best reader of the weekend which was the first annual Jack Kerouac conference. The tracks vary form solo readings to duos with Micheline's long time tenor man Bob Feldman. Also included are excerpts from an interview conducted in 1980, by Gerald Nicosia, fully displaying Micheline's acerbic wit, razor sharp mind and visionary outlook on American consumer culture.

 

The second half of the album features over three dozen poets and friends of Micheline's reading his works, poems in tribute or sharing remembrances. These recordings took place around the country including New York, Los Angeles the Bay Area and beyond.

 

Some of the poets recorded for this album include: Neeli Cherkovski, Alan Kaufman, David Meltzer, Anne Waldman, ruth weiss, steve dalachinsky, A.D. Winans, Eddie Woods, Andy Clausen, Amiri Baraka, Yuko Otomo, Eric Mingus, Charley Plymell, Q.R. Hand Jr., Bob Holman, S.A. Griffin and many more.

 

The August 9th record release party at Project Artaud in San Francisco will feature ten of the poets on this album reading in between tracks being played from the album. The event is held at the studio of Phil Deal, a horn player who used to back Micheilne years ago. In fact, Jack Micheline himself has performed at this very studio at Project Artaud.

For more info visit unrequitedrecords.com

A.D. Winans: FOURTH OF JULY POEM

REVISED POEM from a broadside originally published
by Bill Robert’s BOS Press.

          FOURTH OF JULY POEM

 

          stepped on pissed on

          cheated and abused

          taken advantage of blue collar man

          caught up in the American scam

          don’t tell me anyone

          can be anything they want to be

          if they put their mind to it

 

          save your BS for right wing
          hate monger radio hosts

          it’ll never sell in the ghetto

          or to the immigrants

          you’ve turned your back on

 

          take your message to the church

          tell it to the men on death row

          tell it to the starving poor

          tell it to the sick and lame

          tell it to the rich folks

          tell it to the politicians

          tell it to the serial killers

          tell it to Wall Street

          tell it to the man on the gallows

          tell it to the chiseled faces

          on Mount Rushmore 

 

          tell it to the last wino

          on the bowery

          tell it to the banker

          tell it to the butcher

          tell it to the unemployed

          tell it to the panhandler

          tell it to the million families

          living below the poverty level

 

          tell it to the con man

          tell it to the baby found stuffed

          in a garbage can

          tell it to the displaced factory worker

          tell it to the elderly

          tell it to the re-po man

          tell it to the last space alien

          hiding out in Roswell

 

          tell it to the militia

          tell it to the FBI sharpshooters

          at Ruby Ridge         

          tell it to the arsonists

          at Waco, Texas        

          tell it to the junkie

          with dry heaves

 

          tell it to the farm worker

          tell it to the dishwasher

          tell it to the orderlies

          tell it to the flag waver

          tell it to the garment worker

          slaving away in sweat shops

          in Chinatown and the Latin Quarter

 

          tell it to big business

          tell it to corporate America
          tell it to the Supreme Court

          tell it to the blood stained

          NRA

 

          tell it to the Do Nothing Congress

          tell it to the oil barons

          tell it to the tobacco merchants

          tell it to the molested children

          of America

 

          tell it to the priests

          tell it to the Vatican

          tell it to the pharmacy industry

          profiting off the sick and lame

 

          tell it to the millions of people

          dying from air pollution

          and a poisoned food supply

 

          tell it to the man on his deathbed

          not sure why he lived

          or what he is dying for

 

          tell it to Jesus Christ

          shout it to the stars 

          line the traitors up against the wall

          rewrite the Ten Commandments

          and start all over again

www.winansfansite.blogspot.com
 

A.D. Winans: Press Release from NYQ

NYQ Press is proud to announce the Publication of On My Way to Becoming a Man by award winning poet A. D. Winans

 

Publication Information: 5½ x 8½ in.; 116 Pages; ISBN: 978-1-935520-25-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014934950

 

Publication Date: May 31, 2014. Website: http://books.nyq.org/author/adwinans

Retail: 14.95, plus postage and shipping.

 

Availability: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell’s, Small Press Distribution (SPD). To the Trade: Ingram Distribution, SPD

 

Winans is an award-winning poet and a 2014 recipient of a Kathy Acker poetry award. He is a member of PEN and the author of over sixty books of poetry and prose. He edited and published Second Coming for seventeen years. He worked for the San Francisco Arts Commission for five years as an editor and writer. His work has been published internationally in over 1,500 literary journals and anthologies. In 2002 a poem of his was set to music and performed at Alice Tully Music Hall. The New England Conservatory of Music accepted several of his poems to be set to music and performed at a later date. In 2006 he won a PEN Josephine Miles award for excellence in literature and in 2009 PEN Oakland presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served on the Board of Directors of several literary and art organizations, and is currently an advisory board member for the proposed San Francisco International Poetry Library.

 

www.winansfansite.com  

 

NYQ Books™ was established in 2009 as an imprint of The New York Quarterly Foundation, Inc. Its mission is to augment the New York Quarterly poetry magazine by providing an additional venue for poets who are already published in the magazine.  

 

www.winansfansite.blogspot.com  

En ces lieux… des livres 2014: Loudun, samedi 26 juillet 2014

Interzone Editions participera pour la troisième année à "En ces lieux... des livres", organisée par l'association "Cultivons le livre" à Loudun le 26 juillet.


Site en ligne : http://enceslieuxdeslivres.wordpress.com/


Programme 2014 : http://enceslieuxdeslivres.wordpress.com/programme2014/ 

A.D. Winans: Strange Dreams & Rain Poem

 

A.D. Winans  & D.R. Wagner

STRANGE DREAMS

 

strange people have taken over
my body, shameless homesteaders
who stake their claim

like old time California gold miners

 

the men are elderlywith grey beards
and drive horse and buggy carriages
the women wear dresses
that hug the floor

there are no children, no dogs

just one black cat with a pointed tail

 

 

the town cryer

keeps me awake all night
a court jester roams at will

through my dreams

a king dressed as a queen
winks at me

an army of red ants
crawl inside my head

a monster lies under my bed
feasts on the living dead

 

a midget woman courts my favors
offers herself in twenty-eight
exotic flavors

 

we make love in a sea of hot lava
the night collapses like
a building under the weight

of a bulldozer

 

I am summoned to appear before
a military tribunal

my good conduct medal called

into question

 

a rip tide tears at my brain cells
my landlord cancels my lease
the trial winds up in a hung jury
the baliff writes down

his phone number
tells me to give him a call

he has a hot three-some
he thinks I might be interested in

 

The son of Freankenstein
shows me the way to the roof top

where down below

a faceless mob waits

with pitchforks and fire bombs

 

a drummer boy from the civil war
works his way into my heart
Betsy Ross hands me a confederate flag

the ghost of John Wayne sounds
the bugle charge

the night an insatible nympth

feasts on a  bed of fallen stars

rain poem

the storm
lets up

the birds
take flight

neighbors dog
sheds water

drops in
sprinkler rhythm

a cavalry
of children

magically appear
in rainbow splendor

sun peeks
from clouds

smell of fall
in the air

 

 

www.winansfansite.blogspot.com 

A.D. Winans: I was selected to be Poet of the Week at Poetry Super Highway

I was just notified that I have been selected to be a Poet of the Week at Poetry Super Highway.
My poem below will appear online  at their web site during the week of June 2-8 and then be part of the Poetry Super Highway's archives.

 

 

!EARLY BIRTHDAY POEM

sitting here fifteen days
before my seventy-eighth birthday
I drink my morning coffee in solitude

wear the early chill of morning
like a quilt of stitched memories
my mind a nosy intruder
plots the course of my life

the moon a graveyard
shines its eyes down on me

surely that is not me
I see in the mirror

the months the years
revolving doors

like the trick mirrors
at the Funhouse
at Playland at the Beach

friends fewer in number
wait for me in my dreams

like ducks in a blind

left with a cup of morning coffee
a spoon that stirs memories
of  young women

the pleasure of warm flesh
on fresh linen sheets
hot as an iron pressed
to a singed garment
turned to bones that rattle
in the graveyard of my dreams

the conversations that lasted
into the early morning hours
turned to idle chatter
with ghosts from the past

A.D. Winans: new poem: GHOST SHADOWS

ghosts appear
in my bedroom at night
they are faceless
and their moans are inaudible
one is as large as sidney greenstreet
he sits on the side of the bed
leans over like a sinking ship
his eyes anchors that weigh me down

mock my 78 years
move like bulls in a bull ring
leave wreckage everywhere

they mark the months on my calendar
with large X's,  Sidney gets up from
my bed, plays the saxophone
in a wailing blues melody

one female ghost mocks Billie Holiday
sings the lyrics, "hanging fruit."

a mortician appears
wearing a black beret

He looks a little like Ferlinghetti
walks in heavy boots to the sound
of John Sosa's marching band

I'm assigned a seat in Dante's hell
where Satan turns up the heat
my mind boils over
zombie women flirt with me
a tribal council is convened
finds me unfit for membership
a cannibal sizes me up
invites me to dinner

God weighs in admits
he did not create man
in his own image
that Adam's rib was a joke
the night engulfs me
the four walls collapse in the lap
of a defrocked priest who sings
me a lullaby

The dead sea comes to life
high tide battles low tide
a smattering of stars
fall from the sky
land at my pillow
like fairy dust

The Pope washes my feet
Jesus is not impressed
God lets out a yawn
The universe holds  back
its laughter

A.D. Winans

MAY 7 DADA @LPR

Three Rooms Press presents Part 2 of the 7th Annual

NYC Dada Poetry and Performance Salon

featuring the NYC launch of

Maintenant 8: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art
PLUS
Silent Auction of Original Drawing
by French/American Artist MARY BEACH

Wednesday, May 7, 7 pm in The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge

Admission free
Modern day Dada poets, collagists, performers and artists are creating disruptive, controversial and thrilling works that continue the spirit of the avant garde art movement sprung from the horror of World War I. Their work will be featured the 2nd of two NYC Dada Poetry and Performance Salons on May 7 in The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge. Additional information and reservations: info@threeroomspress.com. Costumes encouraged! The event will feature readings and performances by Los Angeles-based performance artist Doug Knott, British-American sound-visual poet Jane Ormerod, world-renowned beat-jazz poet Steve Dalachinsky, DADA-NYC founders Robert Hieger and Joanie Hieger Fritz Zosike, the Dude of Dada Peter Carlaftes, art by avant-garde photographer Philip Scalia plus a silent auction of original artwork by famed French/American artist Mary Beach.

Original drawing by Mary Beach to be auctioned 5/7

About the SILENT AUCTION of Mary Beach original artwork

ORIGINAL DRAWING by MARY BEACH (1989) will be available at Silent Auction on Wednesday May 7th at The Gallery @LPR (7-9:30pm). Three Rooms Press is excited and honored to present this rare opportunity to own an original work of art from one of the most accomplished women artists of the latter-part of the 20th Century. The bidding will start at $500.
Claude Pélieu and Mary Beach met in 1962 and, until Claude's unfortunate passing in December of 2002, shared an exemplary rich and creative life. Traveling extensively while living primarily in Paris, New York and San Francisco, their existence was a bohemian adventure during which they ceaselessly explored and continuously created: With a keen and graceful eye they deconstruct, critique and reinterpret the classical and contemporary worlds of art and media, while creating striking new works of wit and beauty -- drawing subconscious associations that are both mysterious and poetic. Long hailed in Claude's native France as the natural inheritors of the Surrealist legacy (a direct line has been drawn by French critics from Picasso and Braque to Schwitters and Duchamp to Warhol and Pélieu), their works are highly prized and respected. However, in Mary's native America, the pair remains relatively unknown, their work still awaits discovery by both mainstream critics and collectors. Additional information about Claude Pélieu and Mary Beach here.

Maintenant 8: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art

About MAINTENANT 8: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art

A stunning annual collection of contemporary Dada writing and art by an international array of sensational artists. Provocative, disruptive and essential for collectors of contemporary radical art. Maintenant 8: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art (ISBN: 978-0-9895125-1-0, Three Rooms Press, $15.95) is the seventh edition of an annual collection of contemporary Dada work inspired by Dada instigator and Three Rooms Press spiritual advisor Arthur Cravan. Since 2008, the Three Rooms Press series has collected outsider art, poetry, mail art, collages and more from around the world. Maintenant 8 features art and visual poetry by a wide range of internationally recognized creators and provocateurs including William S. Burroughs, Jerome Rothenberg, Charles Plymell, Grant Hart, Mike Watt, Exene Cervenka, Pontus Carle, Irene Caesar, Volodymyr Bilyk, John M. Bennett, Giovanni Fontana, S.A. Griffin, Fausto Grossi, Patrice Lerochereuil, Gerard Malanga, Kazunori Murakami, Paolo Pelosini, Johan Reisser, Poul Weile and many more. The series has been recognized worldwide as a leading source of contemporary Dada art and writing, with editors invited to present material from the journal with contributors at events in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Berlin.

What the heck is Dada?

The original Dada movement peaked from 1916-1922, primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. Its purpose was to ridicule what its participants considered to be the meaninglessness of the modern world. In addition to being anti-war, dada was also anti-bourgeois and anarchist in nature.

A.D. Winans: 3 POEMS in Children’s Anthology

I’m pleased to announce I have three poems in a new poetry anthology for Children:A unique and culturally diverse anthology of poetry for children and youth by over 50 San Francisco poets. It Includes an appendix of 26 poetry lessons for teachers and parents based on poems in the book. Copies of the book have been distributed free of charge to all the public elementary and middle schools in San Francisco as well as all the branch libraries of the city system through a public fundraising campaign.
A portion of the proceeds from sales goes to support poetry workshops in schools and community centers.

Feather Floating on the Water is fully illustrated with black and white drawings by Jack Micheline, Adrian Arias, Claire Bain, Virginia Barrett, and Ravenna Osgood. The cover image is by San Francisco artist Marius Starkey.

Feather Floating on the Water-poems for our children
published by Jambu Press-Studio Saraswati
San Francisco, California, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9824673-8-1
Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 2014932647
Paperback. 212pp.

$15 (normal retail price is $18), plus $3 shipping and handling.
Payment may be made through Pay Pal.
If shipping address is different than pay pal account information, or you wish to order internationally, please email publisher at: saraswati.sf@gmail.com

Gerard Malanga Poster (Glasgow International)



Gerard Malanga Poster (Glasgow International)

www.thepoetryclub.net

Gerard Malanga receives first poet of distinction award from Edna St. Vincent Millay Society

More pictures in the site of  Djeloul Marbrook at : http://www.djelloulmarbrook.com/gallery/gerard-malanga-receives-first-poet-distinction-award-edna-st-vincent-millay-society

Submitted by Djelloul Marbrook on Sun, 03/02/2014 - 13:09:

For forty minutes last night, as sirens slashed the frigid silence outside and painted the inside of an art gallery emergency red, the poet Gerard Malanga read poems about eminent people he has known or studied—among them Gabriel d’Annunzio, Valerie Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Gore Vidal.

Malanga, as famous for his photography as his poetry, never gets in the way of a poem. His readings are singular acts of faith in the work. The actor Matthew McConaughey recently said in a similar vein that getting out of the way of a script is crucial to him.

All recent, unpublished and never-before-read, the poems Malanga read at McDaris Fine Art Gallery in Hudson, New York, are keenly observed encounters with people, their natures and their intellects.

Malanga’s is a fond eye. Often he is more interested in the companions of the famous than the famous. He is electrically aware of the circumstances and environs in which he encounters them.

In one poem the novelist Saul Bellow wants to play softball and tries to rouse the sleepy young Malanga. The poem, like many others, suggests Malanga's filmmaker's eye. He remembers not only what people said, what they look like, but how they moved. He remembers encountering, for example, the photographer Diane Arbus in the library of The New York Times, and in a few lines he gives us an Arbus nobody else has described quite so insightfully. Describing William Burroughs, we get the writer's cranky whisper. It would have come across in the words even if Malanga hadn't mimicked the sound.

Here are some of the other people we so memorably encountered last night: Chris Marker, Emile de Antonio, Faith Frankenstein, Dorothea Lange, Benedetta Barzini, a close friend of the poet, Jasper Johns, Cornelius Gurlitt, René Gresham, and Jim Jacobs.

More than most poets, Malanga has spent a lifetime among fellow poets, artists, filmmakers and photographers, and in his poems we encounter them glowing with Malanga's love for them. That is a rare achievement in any art form, redolent, say, of Johannes Vermeer's unmistakable feelings for The Girl With the Pearl Earring.

It is a tribute to Malanga's personal style as well as his work that the audience's response to his poems often consists of the silence of awe and the sort of murmuring that denotes profound impact. Rather than break his spell, the audience reserves its sustained applause for the end of his readings. People who frequent poetry readings will recognize this as a rare salute.

"Dad 3," a poem about vacationing with his father in the Shawangunk Mountains of New York, gives us an early and excruciatingly intimate glimpse of the astute observer Malanga would always be. But it gives us something else, something that bends a brilliant spotlight back on his earlier work. At some point he leaves his father and returns to a barn where he speaks to the animals in a language he has now forgotten. But Malanga has never fully forgotten that language, and it both informs and haunts his poems.

The Millay Colony for the Arts and the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, which sponsored last night’s reading, could not have chosen a more appropriate poet to receive its first Steepletop Poet of Distinction Award. (Greg Vogler, a Millay trustee, is shown here making the award).  Malanga shares with Millay a clear voice, an undeterred eye, and, perhaps most of all, a gift for setting up a vibration that rewires the circuitry of a place and a time.

Steepletop is the name Millay and her husband Charles Frederick Ellis, an artist and actor, gave their home in Austerlitz, New York, near Chatham. But what makes the award even more relevant is that Millay Colony and the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society share with Malanga a profound interest in other creative people. The gift Millay Colony presented Malanga last night is as appropriate as the award, a first edition of Millay’s What Quarry, Huntsman, 1933. Malanga is a book dealer and rare book collector.

Reading from a portfolio on an antique suitcase, an inspiration of gallerist Wendy McDaris (shown here arranging Malanga broadsheets), Malanga and his overflow audience were surrounded by Millay artifacts, photographs, china, Millay’s typewriter, and first-edition books.

Malanga is the official poet of the Glasgow (UK) International Arts Festival, April 4. 

A.D. Winans: Dead Lions

A new book of poems by A.D. Winans:  Dead Lions, by Punk Hostage Press, out on 3/15.

 

AD Winans: Presa Press to reissue my award winning book: This Land Is Not My Land with distribution in both the U.S. and Europe.

Just a note to let you know that Presa Press is re-issuing This Land Is Not My Land in a 2nd, improved edition.


The new printing will have a perfectbound spine and an ISBN and Library of Congress number, bar code, etc.  They will nclude the Panama poems that were later published in Presa Magazine.


The  book  will also be released in Europe in 22 countries, through Gazelle Books Ltd.

I'm pleased that the book will move from the previous chapbook status to a perfect bound book with distribution in both the U.S. and in Europe.


Al

http://www.adwinans.com/ 

The A. D. Winans Fansite

This blog is administered by Ginger Killian Eades. It hosts A.D. Winans' poems.


http://winansfansite.blogspot.com/2014/01/three-poems-by-d-winans.html

AD Winans: 4 AM INSOMNIA POEM

lost in the never never land of insomnia a dark forest ravished by storms where dreams go to perish my  mind hijacks my destiny speaks in tongue devours the silence walks hunchbacked like a gypsy tailor pushing a garment cart a sacrificial virgin burns in volcano ash a Tiajuana Jesus nailed to a plastic cross winks at the twelve wise men making a return trip to the manger after a shopping spree at Walmarts a fortune teller trades in her crystal ball for a tarot card reading the lone survivor of a shipwreck floats aimlessly at sea my love returns from the  bermuda triangle in the disguise of a mermaid the pope pleads for humility god answers with lightning jesus responds with thunder a bee colony drips honey between the legs of a dairy queen a haunted house coughs up an angry ghost drunk on death dante gives up his seat in hell to Rosa Parks who recites the lord's prayer backwards to a  honky sheriff in Selma, Alabama  Saint Peter empties purgatory the FDA declares sleeping masks a fraud Van Gogh demands his ear back a new born baby is sacrfiiced at the Louve a french Mistress closes her legs in protest| the mirror mocks my image twenty-plus years of sleeplessness camp inside my skull hot as volcano ash satan recruits me god makes no counter offer a whisper of sleep camps inside my eyeballs I surrender with a whimper drown in a series of Hail Mary's recited by sexy nuns in see-through attire

A.D. Winans: EARLY BIRTHDAY POEM

sitting here fifteen days
before my seventy-eight birthday
I drink my morning coffee in solitude

wear the early chill of morning
like a quilt of  stitched memories
my mind a nosy intruder
plots the course of my life

the eye can not see
the naked universe
nor caress the fertile stars

the moon a graveyard
shines its eyes down on me

surely that is not me
I see in the mirror

the months the years
revolving doors

like the trick mirrors
at the fun house
at Play land at the Beach

friends fewer in number
wait for me in my dreams

like ducks in a blind

left with a cup of morning coffee
a spoon that stirs memories
of  young women

the pleasure of warm flesh
on fresh linen sheets
hot as an iron pressed
to a a singed garment
turned to  bones that rattle
in the graveyard of my  dreams

the conversations that lasted
into the early morning hours
turned to idle chatter
with ghost's from the past