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Thank you to those who support me via my Paypal account: rikwrybac@yahoo.com. The government doesn't read my poetry. You do. Out of over 400 poems here on this blog by me, I hope you find one or more you like. Thank you for my readers. Thank you for your comments.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

What Abraham Knew and When He Knew It

It cannot see the shadows
in the valley
nor the wind
that today
swayed the ponderosa pine
yet I have discovered
the value of my words
to the world
as valuable as any
written by a computer
programmed to write

And what of the monkeys
given typewriters
who spend their days
in attempts to write Shakespeare
so am I no better than
those self-same monkeys
stifled by the weaknesses
of today's language

My expectation is a lie
I tell to me
the thought that I might write
one poem that could remember
me to a future world
or that my death might have the means
to net a few lines in the obituaries
of faraway newspapers
their readers amazed they never heard
of my efforts or books
enough to make them feel
they had never accomplished
even the smallest recognition
of a world in the throes of ignorance

So I've charmed these thoughts
from the shadows of a windy day
and the movement
of unimportant evergreens
that gives me the truth
of my exhalations
that they are not enough
to move any tree
in the slightest direction
and to have this manifest
fall as if I have made a fault
that cannot shake the world

Oh, a friend might send a note
to assure me that a line I write
has bent their conscious path
and caused a shift to new directions
their words to heal my lonesome wounds
and dreamy sores upon the invisible skin
I craft upon my burdened exterior
where those words become a salve
expected to seal the canyons
on the surface of my ballooned ego
what would be better
than the silence I know
the compliment of the ages
for poets

For few know that Lincoln wrote poems
these simplest expressions of humanity
the leavings on a empty plate
where they are passed to the cat
to lick clean and have as much impact
and only I can free myself
from the encroachment of a solid world
where such pronouncements
can no longer penetrate

the largest exhale though
the spiked leaves of an evergreen
on a windy day

bitch bitch bitch


Copyright © 2011 by Barry G Wick

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The Big Drip

Diamonds falling from the trees

as two days of snow

bright white to half gray

sits on the evergreen

to catch the third day's sun

splitting light

as they drop branch to branch


they remind me

why my father had his ashes

tossed into the ocean


why wait for the water

to wash you to the final

frothy waves

when you can be dumped into the big waters

and know you didn't have to wait

centuries to make it to the nearest beach



Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick

Friday, November 4, 2011

Ben and Peter, beside the Sea


remembering
Benjamin Britten 1913-1976
Peter Pears 1910-1986


The excitement of a radio studio
at the time
the best source in the world
the microphones to everywhere
to be heard and be enjoyed
in the great days of radio
the same year
that Adolf murders all his gay friends
in the long night with knives
and here in this radio studio
the singers prepare
rehearsal for the great British audience
where a handsome young composer
meets a handsome older tenor
only to fall in love later
at the worst of the war

when going to jail in their country
meant shame and shun
Ben wrote songs for Peter
Ben wrote parts for Peter
while Hugh Auden and Ben
made a habit of art
and Isherwood made a pal of Ben
at the bath on Jermyn Street

Ben and Peter friends for 42 years
in love from the war on
collaboration at every level of music
in a freer America
to spend bright summer days with
Aaron
and all the boys
who weren't allowed to fight
the powers of Paragraph 175
who had to keep their secret
and they kept the secrets of others
pianist composer and tenor
the dreamer and his voice
open even to the Queen

and they would remember the war
with minor chords
of the saddest music
Ben with his requiem
and Peter singing the debut
at Coventry Cathedral
lionized by the audience
as they privately remember so many
secret friends who went away
in the fight.

Now remembered in the moments
of “Moonlight”
when one hears the soft
love words they say to each other
together for eternity
unmarried except
for the shared notes
they sang and played
the rings of golden vibration
that circle their boney fingers
side by side
north of St. Peter and St. Paul
in Aldeburgh, Suffolk
as they shimmer beside the sea

KENNETH GREEN (1905-1986), PETER PEARS AND BENJAMIN BRITTEN, 1943.

Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick