I like wild women who drink straight shots
\nAnd lick their lips when flirting
\nI like demure women
\nWho look like librarians
\nAnd wear long dresses that touch the floor
\nBut I’ve retired from the game although
\nNot of my own choosing
\nForced to sit on the sidelines
\nAnd eyeball the show
\nAs I watch a young woman walk by
\nWith her orange blossom smell
\nA false promise lost in skipped heart beats
\nThat plays tricks with my shadow
\nTrailing behind like an old junkyard dog
\nWalking behind his master
\nHoping for table scraps<\/p>\n
Bayshore Junk Yard<\/strong><\/p>\n What’s left of a classic 1956 Chevy Mexico November 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n Alone in my hotel room Soon I’ll return to San Francisco Voices<\/strong><\/p>\n Ghostly voices race the night Portrait From The Past<\/strong><\/p>\n I open your old railroad watch (Photo: A.D. Winans and Diane Di Prima, San Francisco, 2005)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s nearing midnight and the By A.D. Winans<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLies like a war zone corpse
\nIn a deserted battleground
\nHubcaps gone seats gutted
\nSteering wheel pushed
\nInto dashboard
\nWaiting on the auto crusher
\nTo clutch her in its steel claws
\nTo come down on her
\nLike a serial killer
\nMutilated raped ravished
\nAll life squeezed out of her once
\nVirgin frame<\/p>\n
\nIn Mexico, thirty-six hours
\nBefore my flight back
\nTo San Francisco
\nA hundred blank poems
\nRattling around inside my head
\nI can turn each one
\nInto paper airplanes
\nFly each one to imaginary places
\nOr write poems on them in vivid old
\nMexico song rhythms
\nIf I could draw
\nI’d draw a rainbow picture
\nOf beautiful Indian women
\nWith faces brown as earth<\/p>\n
\nCity of dreamers, drunkards
\nAnd lonely lovers
\nI will turn these blank pages
\nInto poems fished from the
\nPond of my memory bank
\nBaited with the history of old
\nMexico<\/p>\n
\nLike a finely tuned sports car
\nSomething tells me I’m in trouble
\nWith the poetry \u201cbiz” boys
\nWho track my shadow night and day
\nIt’s nearing midnight and the
\nPriest has canceled mass the
\nTV screen blank for hours
\nThe witch doctor is making love
\nTo the voodoo priest
\nA headless chicken on her plate
\nThe poems inside my head
\nTurn outlaw
\nHold me for a ransom
\nI cannot pay<\/p>\n
\ngiven to you by your father
\nSee grandfather in his suit and tie
\nSee his\/your life sweeping by in the
\nseconds hand
\nHaunting memories rattle around inside
\nMy head like a pair of hollow dice
\nThe minute hand stuck at high noon
\nlike a hangman’s noose swinging
\nin the wind.<\/p>\n![\"ad-di-prima1\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/ad-di-prima1.jpg\")
\nABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong>
\nA.D. Winans<\/strong> is the author of more than 45 published works of poetry and prose, which have been translated into nine languages. He was the editor and publisher of Second Coming <\/em>for 17 years. The archives of this award winning magazine and press are housed at Brown University.
\nHis book, The Land Is Not My Land<\/em> was awarded a PEN Josephine Miles Award for literary excellence. He has been awarded editing, publishing, and writing awards from the National Endowment For the Arts, The California Arts Council, PEN, and the Academy of American Poets. For samples of his work, please go here<\/strong><\/a>. <\/p>\n![\"ad-sunglasses1\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/ad-sunglasses1-150x150.jpg\")
Ghostly voices race the night
\nlike a finely tuned sports car…<\/p>\n
\npriest has canceled mass, the
\nTV screen blank for hours.
\nThe witch doctor is making love
\nto the voodoo priest.
\nA headless chicken on her plate.
\nThe poems inside my head
\nturn outlaw
\nhold me for a ransom
\nI cannot pay.<\/p>\n