Words that bleed
She was the knife in the
hands of Jack the Ripper
in a heavy fog bank
in a back alley
in old London Town
slicing dicing her way through the
canvas of my heart
She was the pearl-handled revolver
in the hands of Dillinger
that begged to be fired
but never got the chance the
night he was gunned down
in a hail of bullets
She was a keg of gunpowder
waiting to be ignited
Betrayed by a wet fuse the
night I awoke naked and vulnerable
Feeling like a voyeur walking in
on two strangers making love
My thoughts a mosaic tattoo
on public display
These wounded words that drip blood
Lying still as a beached shipwreck
in the bone-yard of a stranger's dreams
• A.D. Winans is a regular contributor to IS&T. He is
a San Francisco-based writer and poet who became involved in the West
Coast Beat scene in 1958. One of his friends, the late Charles
Bukowski, said of him “A.D. Winans can go ten rounds with the best of
them”.
