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

            

                                                                       

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

Activist and Poet Nellie Wong Gives Public Reading with AD Winans

For More Info Click on Each Link in this Post

Award Winning Poet: AD Winans

Award winning native San Francisco poet A D Winans and Oakland native poet and activist Nellie Wong will be reading from their works on September 16, 2014 at Adobe Bookstore.

A D Winans has been published internationally and translated into ten languages.  He will be reading from his new book This Land Is Not My Land, NYQ Press and from new poems.  He is the former editor and publisher of Second Coming Press and received a 2014 Kathy Acker poetry and publisher award.  In 2006 he received a PEN National Josephine Miles award for excellence in literature and in 2009 was presented a PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award.

Nellie Wong

Nellie Wong was born in Oakland and has published four books of poetry.  Her work has been translated into Chinese, Spanish and French.  She traveled to China in the First U.S. Women's Writer's Tour with Tillie Olson, Alice Walker, and others. She is a well-known activist, and has been honored by the San Francisco Women's Foundation and University of California, Santa Barbara.

When:     September 16, 2014

Where:    Adobe Books

                3130 24th St 

                San Francisco, CA 94103                                       

Time:       7:00 PM