A.D. Winans

A Trip Back in Time

Strange this trip back in time
Not with flesh and blood
But in disguise of words
The muscles the cells changing
Dying and yet somehow surviving
Traveling through a warped time tunnel
Through an origin you cannot remember
Because there is no you to remember it

I walk behind my shadow
Shed the years like a burlesque dancer
Sheds her clothes

I who have never called myself a poet
Never clothed myself in consonants
Vowels similes or metaphors

A chef who plants words on the page
Like a florist prepares a bridal banquet
A tender arrangement of flesh and bone
At war with the demons who leave behind
A Custer massacre of words

In the twilight of my life
I race the clock like a hungry dog
Sniffs a gourmet meal
Left feeling like the last sentinel
The last paying customer
At the last movie show

All these years an explorer
Set out to discoverer a new world
Blindfolded without map or compass

The Holy Grail a shameless slut
Spits out bits and pieces of the puzzle

The poems arrive like a migration of birds
Poems mated with a full blood moon
Left cooking these strange images
Like a fry cook sweating over a greasy grill

I wake in the morning with vague dreams
Rambling inside my head
My eyes a heat-seeking missile
Honing in for an invisible kill

Left feeling like a junkie overcome with tremors
A matador without a sword
With nothing but a red cape
To fend off a raging bull

 

A.D. Winans is a native San Francisco poet who is geographically challenged and long ago lost the map to where he was going.
http://www.adwinans.mysite.com
http://winansfansite.blogspot.com