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Poems
FOR JAMIE Sitting alone at the Lost And Found Bar Here in North Beach Dark skin centuries removed From the present You tap your fingers to the late afternoon music coming From the jukebox No longer able to play your saxophone Sitting alone like you Forgotten in a downtown pawnshop Tagged for a quick sale Someone puts a dollar in the jukebox And Billie Holiday sings softly in your ear Brings an instant smile to your face A lighthouse beam dividing the Thin line between sanity and madness This is your turf your veins burning With the energy of life Long lines of images haunting the Early afternoon hours Bronzed warrior of old Sitting here at the Lost And Found Bar The beat forever going on
FOR WILLIAM BURROUGHS
You played the game out like a Mafia Don Late for an appointment with the Godfather Living life with the tenacity of a gunslinger Looking for another notch on his gun Your cinematic midnight cowboy dreams Cut-up poster boy hero images Walking the mind's third eye Traveling a time zone of drug induced mythologies Grinding away the days the months the years Like a frenzied lap-dancer Seeking thrills in forbidden pleasure zones
ON THE DEATH OF JACK MICHELINE
The shrill cry of Lorca rings out in the night Jazz notes loud as thunder burst the Eardrums like artillery fire The four walls closing in like a police dragnet Poets are like butterflies Spreading their wings Reshaping the stars the universe Cosmic matter waiting to be reborn
REMEMBERING BOB KAUFMAN
He walked the streets of North Beach An ancient warrior with hollow eyes His eyes bore into you like a drill Forced to carry 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 Avenue A dark shadow riding clouds of "Ancient Rain" His life measured in hot jazz and verse A surreal mirage where hip cats Wailed in precision 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 wounds
Kaufman and Harold Norse. Taken at a party hosted by me in 1976. Photo by Winans America AD Winans: FOURTH OF JULY POEM AD Winans: A Call to Poets |
