A. D. Winans


Bill

He keeps a photograph tucked away
Inside his meager belongings
Three soldiers smiling smoking cigarettes
A Viet Cong in black pajamas
Hanging upside down from a pole
Gutted like a fish
Flesh nailed to wood Jesus like
Needs no caption

Guilt shadows him in doorways
And under freeways where
He now makes his home
Incoming artillery tears at his nerves
Pieces of flesh stuck to bamboo
Like a piece of meat thrust into
A tiger’s cage
Vietnamese peasants
Suspected Cong haunt his dreams
Like a faceless Santa Clause leaving
Behind a bag of body parts


Poem For My Father

On weekends my father worked
For Luke Morley
At the corner grocery store
Not for money but for conversation
He never had with my mother
Staying there until late at night
Stacking shelves with canned goods
Coming home with his reward
A pack or two of Pall Mall cigarettes
Sitting alone in the livingroom
Staring out the window
Blowing smoke rings in the air
The ashes falling into the ashtray
Like bits of pieces of his life


Approaching 70

the words come harder
set their own pace s
ometimes the turtle
sometimes the hare
always stripped bare

bukowski told me in a letter
you seem like a man
who knows where it's at
didn't then don't now
just hanging around
with words that dangle
like an outlaw's neck stretched
at the end of a rope


Writer’s Block

I stare into silence
Empty space has no vision
Restless ghosts eat
My words

-all previously published at Strange Road