{"id":2470,"date":"2014-04-21T21:42:06","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T21:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/poetry\/?page_id=2470"},"modified":"2014-04-24T02:00:24","modified_gmt":"2014-04-24T02:00:24","slug":"a-d-winans-april-2014","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/poetry\/archives\/a-d-winans-april-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"A.D. Winans, April 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poem For The Friend Who Told Me I Need To Stop Dwelling On The Past<\/strong><\/p>\n

‘<\/span>
\na friend of mine tells me
\nI need to stop dwelling on the past
\nthat nostalgia is an anchor
\nthat will weigh me down
\nhe’s like the lyric
\nto that Hank Williams song
\n“I saw the light, “I saw the light.”
\na song he sang to Minnie Pearl
\nhis feet sticking out the side
\nof an open convertible
\non its way to Memphis
\nI’m still groping for that light
\na hundred shadows from my past
\nhitchhiking along for the ride<\/p>\n

angels have traded in their wings
\nfor a ticket to my dreams
\nthe phantom of the opera
\nhas a front row seat in my nightmares
\nmutilated poems wrap them self in my arms
\npit tomorrow against yesterday
\nnomadic thoughts camp inside
\nmy brain cells
\nmaster to none servant to many<\/p>\n

old flames light burned out torches
\nin my loins
\nthere is no place to flee
\nno resting stop at the end
\nof a long journey
\nfrom here to nowhere
\nI spend the afternoon
\nat Martha’s coffee shop
\nwith hot coffee and a newspaper
\nfor company
\ntomorrow those same newspaper lines
\nwill be past history
\nshould I pretend they never existed?<\/p>\n

I am ten months into
\nmy seventy-seventh year
\nwinter will soon be here
\nwith her cold claws and heavy rain
\nforcing her way into the walls of my mind<\/p>\n

were she of human flesh
\nshe would crack open
\nmy memory vault
\nfind miles of past memories
\nthat flow like Li Po poems
\ndown a river old as time
\nshould I ignore her
\ntell her to come back next winter
\nthat now isn’t the time?<\/p>\n

I have written one too many memorial poems
\nfor friends who have passed-away
\nshould I shut them out of my mind
\nfocus on tomorrow
\nbuild a graveled path that leads
\nto the promised land?<\/p>\n

my emotions are trapped in quicksand
\nno place to run no place to hide
\nendless chatter comes from
\nthe 4-walls where death
\nhides between the cracks<\/p>\n

the past is my lover
\nshe clings to my body
\nlike a child to a mother’s bosom
\nshe sleeps in my memory cells
\nlike a phantom bank that accepts
\nonly deposits refuses withdrawals
\nI think of her
\nlike I think of San Francisco
\nthe city of my birth
\nthe salt air smell at ocean beach
\nthe Marina Greens
\nnorth beach and the Fillmore
\nall filled with memories
\nmy past is my present
\nthe future a gypsy fortuneteller<\/p>\n

my existence
\na slow chugging locomotive
\non an anonymous journey
\nknown only to the conductor
\npunching invisible tickets in the hands
\nof faceless passengers<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ghosts From The Past<\/strong><\/p>\n

‘<\/span>
\nI drove the freeway to Tucson
\n1960’s Hippie Era
\npulled over twice by the police
\nlong hair and California license plates
\ngot me two citation warnings<\/p>\n

spent three days with an ex-lover
\nwho lived with a professor
\nwho taught a course in astrology
\nat the University of Arizona
\nwho the first day of my visit
\nfelt the back of my head
\nand asked me if anyone
\nhad ever told me
\nI had the same head shape as RFK
\nwho I later met in Washington, DC
\ntwo years before his murder<\/p>\n

three days in redneck country
\nwas like a year
\ndrinking at Western bars
\nwith cowboys who eyed me
\nlike I was an Indian
\nescaped from the reservation
\nunsure why I had come here
\nnothing beautiful nothing natural
\nexcept for the stunning evening sunset<\/p>\n

back home my friends drunk
\nin bars on Grant Avenue
\nshooting pool at Gino and Carlo’s Bar
\neating grub at Sam Woo’s where
\nthe waiter Edsel Ford insulted
\nthe customers as the dumb-waiter elevator
\nbrings up food no other Chinese
\nrestaurant can match<\/p>\n

a poet friend calls me
\nsays Ginsberg has flown back
\nfrom India to become the resident
\nGuru of the Haight Ashbury
\nwhile I rack up another warning ticket<\/p>\n

cowboy drunks give new definition
\nto the word redneck
\nno room for compassion here
\nno room for poets
\nwords like a campfire
\nwith no match to light them
\ndie in the desert heat<\/p>\n

I pull up roots drive north
\nthe death mask sunset
\nrides a passing cloud<\/p>\n

I stop in the desert
\npop open a bottle of water
\nhave a one way conversation
\nwith a cactus plant
\nwonder what my shrink
\nwould think
\nthe beauty of solitude
\nI could have
\na million conversations
\nin a single morning dialogue
\nI return home
\nkeep a notebook by my bed
\nwrite down my dreams
\nbut when I wake in the morning
\nsomeone else’s handwriting
\nis on the pages<\/p>\n

No one will identify
\nthe blood between the lines
\nsee the ghosts walk the halls
\nrestless souls from my past
\nlike a starving wolf
\nin the dead of winter
\nlooking to fill his hunger
\non wild game
\nor words that cling to flesh
\nlike scraps of exotic food<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A.D. Winans is an award winning native San Francisco poet and writer. He edited and published Second Coming<\/em> for seventeen years . He is the author of over sixty books of poetry and prose. His work has been translated into nine languages. In 2002 a song poem of his was performed at New York\u2019s Alice Tully Hall. In 2006 he won a PEN Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature. In 2009 he was presented with a PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award. Latest book titles include his first collection of short stories, In the Pink<\/em>, by Pedestrian Press and a second edition of This Land Is Not My Land<\/em>, with nine new poems not included in the original book. Two forthcoming books, to be published this summer: On My Way To Becoming A Man<\/em> (New York Quarterly) and Dead Lions<\/em> (Punk Hostage Press), a literary memoir on his friendship with Alvah Bessie (One of the Hollywood Ten), Bob Kaufman, Jack Micheline, and Charles Bukowski.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poem For The Friend Who Told Me I Need To Stop Dwelling On The Past ‘ a friend of mine tells me I need to stop dwelling on the past that nostalgia is an anchor that will weigh me down he’s like the lyric to that Hank Williams song “I saw the light, “I saw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":934,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2470","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nA.D. Winans, April 2014 - Full Of Crow: Poetry (Archives)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/poetry\/archives\/a-d-winans-april-2014\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A.D. 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