"Venus and the Burning Temples" by Mark Bryan

 

a.d. winans

Sleepless in San Francisco

I get up early
have a cup of coffee
drive to the ocean
no one in sight except
a lone seagull searching
for breakfast

I sit down on the sand
think of the past present and future
pieces of my life plucked from the soul
playing my heart strings like a violin

I stare out at the ocean
watching the seagulls spread
their wings in flight
and for one brief moment the
wind flickers off my eyelids
like a butterfly's wings spread
out across a flower

I slip in an image unconsciously
like a thread through the
eye of a needle
listen to phantom voices
from the past hammered out
like steel forged inside my head

My mind a volcano waiting to explode
as part of my exiled youth
returns in bits and pieces
as I retreat back into myself
shedding the years like a lone sailor
charting his way back to the womb

 

---

Bio:

a.d. winans is a native born San Francisco poet, writer and photographer. He is the author of numerous books and his work has appeared internationally. He edited and published Second Coming from l972 through 1989. A book of Selected Poems will be published in 2007 by Presa Press, with an introduction by the San Francisco poet laureate, Jack Hirschman..

Archive / Submission Guidelines / About the Editor