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 you BS for the deaf

Dumb and blind
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 man 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 street whore

Tell it to the crack head

Tell it to the last wino

On  desolation row

 

Tell it to the banker

Tell it to the butcher

Tell it to the unemployed

 

Tell it to the circus clown

Tell it to the insane

Tell it to the outlaw

 

Tell it to the panhandler

Tell it to the con man

Tell it to the baby
Found stuffed in a dumpster

 

Tell it to the displaced factory worker

Tell it to the elderly

Tell it to the Repo Man

Tell it to the last 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 the Indians at Standing Rock

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 coal miner
Dying from black lung disease

Tell it to the Chinese peasant
Toiling in the rice fields

For a dollar a day

 

Tell it to the garment worker

Slaving away in sweat shops

In Chinatown and the Latin Quarter

 

Tell it to the garbage man

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 Fascist President

Tell it to the oil barons

Tell it to the tobacco merchants

 

Tell it to the fur industry

Who club baby seals to death

For the clothing merchants

 

Tell it to the Vatican

Tell it to the Priests

Tell it to the battered wives of America

 

Tell it to big “Pharma”

Profiting off the sick and lame

Tell it to the millions of people

Dying from air pollution

In Mexico, China and India

 

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

​REVISITING INSOMNIA

​

4 am lost in the never 

land of chronic insomnia
a dark forest ravished by storms
where dreams go to perish

 

My mind hijacks my destiny
speaks in a foreign tongue
devours the silence like a sinkhole

Walks up and down my spine like
a gypsy tailor pushing a garment cart
down a long cobbled road

 

A sacrificial virgin burns in volcano ash
a Tijuana Jesus nailed to a plastic cross
winks at the twelve wise men making
a return trip to the Manager
after a shopping spree at Walmart’s

 

Poems swirl in my head like helicopter blades
drop me off at a graveyard where
a one-handed fortuneteller trades in
her crystal ball for a pack of tarot cards

 

My love returns from the Bermuda Triangle
in the disguise of a mermaid

 

There is no shelter from the storm
the river flows through North Beach into
the Café Trieste drowns one sleeping poet
and a burned out jazz musician

 

A political poet floats down to Spec’s Bar
with Mao’s little red book clutched in his hands

 

Pope Francis pleads for humility
God answers with a bolt of lightning
Jesus raises the stakes with rolling thunder

 

An army of red ants marches
backwards off a cliff
A bee colony drips honey between

he 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 in Hebrew
to a honky Sheriff in Alabama

 

Saint Peter empties purgatory
turns sinners into saints
Van Gogh demands his ear back

 

A new born baby is sacrificed at the Louve
a French Mistress closes her legs in protest
the mirror splits in half mocks my existence

Satan recruits me
God mocks my counter offer

a whisper of sleep camps inside my eyeball

I surrender with a whimper drown in a series
of Hail Mary’s recited by a defrocked priest
surrounded by thirteen sexy nuns

dressed in see through habits

            

                                                                       

THOUGHTS ON THE CALIFORNIA DROUGHT

THOUGHTS ON THE CALIFORNIA DROUGHT

sitting here feeling like a used car

one part after the other failing me
the aroma of  fresh brewing coffee
wakes my brain cells

the drought laughs at the masses

teases them with a light drizzle

picture of an old lover stares at me

from its place on the mantle
her smile warm as the campfire

I sat around as a child
my room a dust garden

my hamstring pull refuses to address

the promised golden years drown

in quicksand

Israel and Palestine engaged in endless war
Putin playing death games in Moscow

proof the cave man still lives inside us

fields toiled by immigrants
now treated like criminals

the elderly a liability

the young puppets in a political game

poets once warriors on skateboards
now prisoners of pride and envy

I take refuge in the soft raindrops
the peace of solitude rides my veins
like a steamship treading calm waters

the garden of my mind is still green

poems wait to be planted in fertile soil

no drought can kill

At Eighty

At 80

You realize

You’re not immortal

Parents long buried

Friends fallen by the wayside

Like spring leaves from an aging tree

Arthritic Bones that creak and moan

Mile walks turned to blocks

The year’s race by like
A track sprinter

Bring me to my mother’s grave

Her tombstone chipped

The words fading

No such fate for me

I’ll go the way of the Indian
My flesh given to flames
No dirt No worms
No suffocating box

Ashes and bone my fate
Monterey or San Francisco Bay

The sunset my head stone

My poems my marker

POEM FOR BUKOWSKI

He was the original

Jack the Ripper

He was the tormentor

Of John Bryan

He was the villain

Of women’s lib

He was the last hope

Of the down and out

He was a Third Reich monster

He was a Hindu Guru

He wrote Harold Norse

Get well cards

He tormented his enemies

He frustrated his friends

He wrote poems in the shit houses

Of America

He wrote poems in the ballet

Of his sleep

He wrote Harold Norse

Get well cards

All he was folks was

The best show in town

Holy Priest Circus clown

The best act around

He was a Roman sonnet

He was an Irish ballad

He was the best Cesar salad

In a gourmet restaurant

He had the face of a moon crater

The stomach of a wheelbarrow

The heart of a whore

Which is more than you can say

For 90% of the poet’s around

He dug Brahms

He dug Beethoven

He was the heavyweight champion

Of Los Angeles

He was the Chaplin of San Pedro

He was stalked by the minor poet’s

Of San Francisco and Los Angeles

And the soft-boiled egg eaters

Of the Café Trieste

He was a rainbow of watercolors

Mixed in with one too many

Sunday morning hangovers

He loved boxing

He loved his beer

He loved his daughter

He loved his women

He was an antique book

In a broken down hotel

He was a bottle of aspirin

In an empty water glass

He wrote Harold Norse

Get well cards

All he was folks was
The best damn show
In town

BROKEN PROMISES

BROKEN PROMISES

at eighty years two months
the sun beats down on me
like the gleam in the eye
of a butcher lowering a hammer
on the head of an unsuspecting cow
being led to the slaughterhouse

the memories circle me like
old time Indians circling
a wagon train

I walk backwards into my birth
each new year like
a sharpened knife in the hands
of a trembling surgeon

lost in insomnia like a blind man
walking a dark road in
the dead of night

waking like a shotgun blast
in a killing field
lost in a language
I can not translate

the priest passes
the collection plate
rejects my confession
my sins laid out like
a sea of stars in
a far away constellation

all my poet friends take sides
purity versus the hucksters
God's choir plays bagpipes
refuse to play referee

the creaking coasters
of my grandfather's rocking chair
sing in my one good ear

the Holy Ghost devours
me like a python
my childhood like a bat
in a dark cave waits for God
to come out of the closet
and deliver the long
promised resurrection

"I'm Not A Man" Harold Norse poem read by A.D. Winans

Harold Norse's celebrated poem "I'm Not A Man" read by poet A.D. Winans on  5/10/2015 from:

I Am Going to Fly Through Glass: Selected Poems of Harold Norse

Read More HERE

I'm not a man, I can't earn a living, buy new things for my family.

I have acne and a small peter.

I'm not a man. I don't like football, boxing and cars.

I like to express my feeling. I even like to put an arm

around my friend's shoulder.

I'm not a man. I won't play the role assigned to me—the role created

by Madison Avenue, Playboy, Hollywood and Oliver Cromwell.

Television does not dictate my behavior.

I'm not a man. Once when I shot a squirrel I swore that I would

never kill again. I gave up meat. The sight of blood makes me sick.

I like flowers.

I'm not a man. I went to prison resisting the draft. I do not fight

when real men beat me up and call me queer. I dislike violence.

I'm not a man. I have never raped a woman. I don't hate blacks.

I do not get emotional when the flag is waved. I do not think I should

love America or leave it. I think I should laugh at it.

I’m not a man. I have never had the clap.

I'm not a man. Playboy is not my favorite magazine.

I'm not a man. I cry when I'm unhappy.

I'm not a man. I do not feel superior to women

I'm not a man. I don't wear a jockstrap.

I'm not a man. I write poetry.

I'm not a man. I meditate on peace and love.

I'm not a man. I don't want to destroy you.

-SanFran, CA 1972

The Man You Don't Want to See

​​

Beware

He’s a cheap trick puffing

On a cigarette

You can find him at the jukebox

Or at the pool table

Looking for an easy mark

He’s a cashiered soldier

He’s a second-rate Don Juan

He’s the man behind the cage

He’s the smile you see on cable TV

He has his nose up the ass

He’s a jack of all trades

He’s as old as mankind

In search of a battle zone

A boner without a bone

He’s a sex addict

Hiding under your bed

A towel man cleaning up semen

From a brothel bed

Reciting the 23rd Psalm

He’s the difference between

Night and Day

A Preacher who sells options

On how to pray

In a downtown pawnshop

He’s a weather-beaten cop

Dining on mashed potatoes

And pork chops

Intent on winning over you and me

He’s into Yoga and a master of Zen

He’s the food in a pigpen

Of anyone who can do him a favor

He comes in 28 different flavors

He’s the stain left behind

In the church pew

He’s a masturbating monkey

In the zoo

Dressed in designed jeans

And wearing dark shades

A cheap treasure find

He’s the man you never want to see

When you wake in the morning

And see yourself in the mirror