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

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

Poem about Feelings written by local Prisoner Published by AD Winans

I published many prison poets when I published Second Coming
from 1972-89. William Wantling was one of the best of them.
His statement here express my own feelings on poetry. AD Winans

 

POETRY

 

I’ve got to be honest. I can

make good music and rhyme

 

at the right times and fit words

together to give people pleasure

 

and even sometimes take their

breath away---but it always

 

somehow turns out kind of phony

Consonance and assonance and inner

 

rhyme won’t make up for the fact

that I can’t figure out how to get

 

down on paper the real of the true

which we call Life. Like the other

 

day I was walking

on the lower exercise yard here

 

at San Quentin and this cat called

Turk came up to a friend of mine

 

and said Ernie, I hear you’re

shooting on my kid. And Ernie

 

told him so what, punk? And Turk

pulled out his his stuff and shanked

 

Ernie in the gut only Ernie had a

metal tray in his shirt. Turk’s

 

shank bounced right off him and

Ernie pulled his stuff out and of

 

course Turk didn't have a tray and

caught it dead in the chest, a bad

one, and the blood that came to his

lips was a bright pink, lung blood,

 

and he just lay down in the grass

and said, “Shit. Fuck it. Sheeit,

 

Fuck it. And he laughed a soft long

laugh, 5 minutes, then died. Now

 

what could consonance or assonance or

even rhyme do with something like that?