20261011

20261011

High above the neighborhood

A tree spits yellow leaves into a breeze

Spilling them across roofs and lawn

Higher still the contrails of jets

East to west west to east

South to north

A squirrel jumps from place to place

Searching for food

The black and white cat turns the corner

At the back of my house despite my call

For it to visit

I think of Buddha underneath his tree

Far away monks in red robes

Spin the prayer wheel 

Its golden surface etched with words

I do not understand

Then again, what would I ask God

What would I say to Buddha or Jesus

Nothing new that they haven't heard

Someone is lonely someone hungry

Someone wants to know if they matter

Someone wants the love of someone

Who doesn't notice them

And we all try to free ourselves

From wanting from needing from emotion

There's that squirrel again on its quest

For the very things I might want

Born on this earth addiction begins

At the first breath

Keep breathing it calls

Keep breathing

Barry G. Wick

One of over 600 poems

https://agereasonmistake.blotspot.com

Plastic

Plastic

Wake up! Oh blood born chemicals 

You have but to replace

Everything human in us

Molecule by molecule

We desire the change

Since our flesh is unpredictable

Climb into our brains

Settle into our weary hearts

Let all your power

Come from the wells in ground

Processed in plants

And fed to us through pipes

Polycarbons unite!

Come to us from corn and peas

Be sprinkled on our potato chips

Change our cellular thought

Into clumps of goo

Let us judge our world

From the great black pond

Into the limitless chemical beyond!

Barry G. Wick

Just one of over 600 poems

https://agereasonmistake.blogspot

Bandaides, Bolts, Bailing Twine, and Bitterness

Bandaides, Bolts, Bailing Twine, and Bitterness

Waking up at 6 am this song writes 

               Life that's grown,

About a blistered way, broken down,

               Along a graveled road.

From far far west to brightened east

              These travels seared by sun,

Alone and beaten down, these scars

               Are medals won.

Could future bring another game

                To live this torn-up day

The past has turned upon me now

                Dreams break my sleep away, 

The bills are large and money's gone

                Through dunnings sharpened

                 edge,

These wild and gruesome facts

                Have struck me with a sledge.  

I drank it all and withered on drugs,

                Tempted by every vice,

With those I love and friends alike

                I wasn't very nice, 

Here on a bed with hanging legs

               It all comes back to me,

Some died so sick, some thrown away,

               It's all just twirling grief.

I've reached out and sought the help

               From strangers near and far,

They're just like me in every way

               Their universe a star

They brightly shine in darkest night

               Reaching deep in me,

To patch me up, to fix what's broke,

               I'm down on bended knee.

I feel the need to talk, this shame cuts deep, this pain so sharp,

The only way, it seems to me, to join them 

               In their dark

So here I sit with others, their pain,

                Our lives together broken,

Here comes our healing, we fix it up,

                Each word in tears are spoken.

Barry W

FagDad

FagDad

FagDad is a city

Someplace somewhere

He owns it

He belongs here

It's on a river of time

From then to now

Unspecified questions

With fearful discoveries 

In the still wild west

Where men are men

And afraid to tell the truth

FagDad is busy every day

Making meals and house chores

With an occasional thought

No thinking all the time

About the children

And grandchildren

Now he thought he did

Years ago when he was

Getting angry at the world

For hating him with no acceptance

Hiding behind respectability

Correct politics on public media

Lying every day just like

Every man

FagDad was never very dependable

He wasn't dependable in anything

Or for anybody in his life

His father was dependable

He went to work and played golf

In his mind when work bored

FagDad hated golf when he played

He played to please his father

That should have been his clue

There would be other attempts

For his father to love him

Nothing worked but he understood

That his father was constantly alone

Except for his scotch and soda

FagDad is always tight in space

And his mother there you are

Reading a newspaper on a loveseat

In the old times smoking a cigarette

Wanting one years after she quit

Asking him for a smoke he doesn't

Every space is wider than the first

Looking up at the rock through squares

Of the bay window across the room

Memories of who sat where or there

Her coffee with cream and sugar

With a cigarette drifting in what's left

Never acknowledging him outside

Of what she wanted him to be no

He could never be what he was

FagDad wakes up in bed

Watching himself becoming

The sounds of traffic far away

Going where he can't wanting

What he'll never be in still forests

Picking bark bits from tall trees

In hair stands thin trees

Close to each other on hill tops

In this space where he reaches

His own city where he is

Great vistas that peel away

His wanting and his beliefs

That become inflamed 

As he dunks himself to put out

His desires that agree with nobody

Barry G. Wick

Part of over 600 poems

https://agereasonmistake.blogspot.com

The Pleasure of Your Company

The Pleasure of Your Company

In all the fields of gratitude

Certain flowers blossom

White other wilt and turn to dust

Gratitude has many colors

Many shades peek around

Trying to hide the reality of feeling

Such is the phrase in the title above

There are companies that are not pleasureable

Cigarette companies want you to believe

Their products are pleasure

Just temporary relief from anxious feelings

Brought about the absence

Of the addictive element in their product

In fact everything you consume in this world

Is addictive

You liked breathing so you took a breath again

What could be harmful about radio

Exactly and I mean exactly

How many radio signals

Are going through your body

At this very moment

Radio signals on earth

Phones and nearby radio and tv antennas

Radio signals from outer space

Plus bits of this and that going through

Your body

Right now

Good heavens might not be good

All these are uninvited

All this company knocking on my door

Jumping through me without invitation

What are you causing

You’re not company

I didn’t invite you

I get no pleasure from hard and hot

Rock and roll music like I used to be

Uninvited

satellite signals telling me where I am

I know where I am

Contrived and named locations

Entities that have created and named borders

On a named planet led by egotistic idiots

Who squabble in their finest puffery

This is no place with a finite life

Destined to end by our hand

The hand of others

Or our own sun

Or some giant rock

Spinning towards us indifferently

It's not personal 

It's the business of a rude impersonal

Universe with distances too far

For us to cross

If we ever get there

Don't expect a warm welcome

We'll bring disease and nasty habits

Like what

In japan don't blow your nose

On the street

On Rigel 7

Don't wear clothes

Or scratch your nuts

Who knows what will offend someone

3

I like being alone now

Somewhere on a distant world

They crowd and smell you

Like dogs smell each other's butts

The pleasure of your company

Could be offensive

Even in the most carefully

Created moment

You're reading this

I am insulted

Barry G. Wick

Part of over 600 poems online

https://agereasonmistake.blogspot.com

Shadow

Shadow

I am a shadow of those

Who came before me

Dark with silvery glints

Unexpected bumps on skin

Expand into a frieze around

Societal distances due to secrets

No source of light creates me

My edges are clouds

With no particular shape

Easily passed through

As if flying on a moonless night

High up with little lightning

Grate me into a steel bowl

I will appear and disappear 

The tiny fly seen and gone

Continue to look and wonder

Fits those who train themselves

In my artful dreams of shade

Barry G. Wick

Visuals

Visuals

It has not been more than 200 years

Since the first photographs

Captured images of our world

Its been less than 60 years

Since we captured pictures

Of our whole world as sphere

In 100 years what will tomorrow's

Children look back on

If there will be human children

In that future time.

If there will be animals

Or plants or mold spores.

I look at this year as frightening

With threats beyond today

We cannot foresee or color

As if we saw a black gray and white

Photo as it's people dreamed

Of today as dark as tomorrow

Barry G. Wick

The Haunting

The Haunting

Across my ages is a house

Where dusty corners do not exist.

There is no gray, unpainted wood

On the outside to announce

Its purposeful being.

Creaky floor boards do not exist

To let this occupant signal

Where it walks in darkness

Or hides in a closet of shreds.

The only wind that sings

Its mournful song is on my face

As I walk from room to room

Or sit upon my porch

As an outside breeze

Heats or cools the living skin

Upon my face and arms

This ghost is invisible

As all ghosts really are,

Locked in a cloud of memory,

Clicking like an oil heater

On the first cold night of use.

I hear him in the dark

Even when the sun flashes

On a summer day, sending me

Inside to avoid its painful sting.

It is a phantom in my mind

That returns as surely

As any memory of psychic play

He's in the hospital where my friend

Lays in his last days on my visit

I'm about to enter the bright room

Next to this ghost’s darkened rest

The black entrance to his room

Next door into which

I could not see.

It's my memory of a hospital ward

As i pass the white dream

Of a nurses’ station

On my way for a visit

When suddenly the peace

Of it all shatters every corner

Of my own dark room

Hundreds of miles and years

In a past that once again

A voice cries out

A voice of someone I never met

That rattles my own bones

To shake my own chains

In sympathy with every horror

A man near the end of his life

As he is headed alone

His banshee like cry in one word

“Mother!”

I press a nurse to explain:

His parents won't come.

He dies of complications

Of a disease he acquired

In the great pleasure of life and love.

He dies of the same disease

That will release my own friend.

This ghost haunts my memory

As surely as any that might

Walk through an old dark house.

Through every thought of those times

Comes that voice as loud

As any pan I drop upon a floor. 

Its silence now only rings

As I lay upon my back

Alone in my night

Hearing the first drops of rain

On a stormy night,

As cold as any grave.

Barry G. Wick

Grim

Grim

No matter what a man does

To earn his living

To make his way

From birth to his end

From the lowly citizen

To someone of great accomplishment

Or wealth

He should know when it's over

When his successes or failures

Outweigh his need to be

Some will feel proud

What they left behind

Yet he may think on his failures

To reach beyond

To answer the questions

That grow inside him

He could not press to completion

Something in his family or work

Awards may stretch behind him

Friends forecast to amass at his grave

But death's final thought is death

The failure of the body

To keep him on his path

It is this failure that bends his spirit

Could he have done something else

To go on further

To change his world

Whether accident or disease

Death is a failure

And every man reaches it

Beyond it

He may be praised

One or more survivors

Will not celebrate his being

Now released to the ages

And when the earth is torched

By the sun in final flame

All that was man will end

Perhaps spacecraft loaded

With everything created here

Will be launched into voids

To wander into nothing

Only to be destroyed

Before it's discovery and decipherment

All accomplishment gone

Every thought destroyed

This has likely happened

To hundreds or even millions

Of civilizations across the universe

Beings created and civilizations destroyed

No reference or anything left

To show they existed

This writing could be erased days

After I'm gone or before

While science sees farther into space

Those who research must

See these same futures or more

Perhaps it's better never to know

To party every day in total ignorance

Just to celebrate the moments

Of our time and our lives

These words die here

These visions are complete

Resurrection only happens

With new planets

With new life

Discovering all man has found

Feeling the same 

Knowing the same

As different as each eye

That sees the stars overhead

With wandering imaginations

Recreating more language

That will flail the galaxies 

To the ends of their times

To tell the truth

I'm not expert on death

I'm still alive

Ask me in one hundred years

Barry G. Wick

Dream Light

Dream Light

I am here

Lost in what I know

Lost in the past

Lost today

Wandering inside

I can't leave myself now

Not like before

This dream is real

Full of disappointment

But always hope that fails

I need you

But cannot find you

I am banging my head

Against visions

Harder than any metal

They won't leave until

Your breath unfolds beside me

It will release me into dream light

Bright darkness full of me

Ready to wander the halls

Ready for revelation

I slip away

A deep breath draws in

And exhales

Exasperation tumbling

I am here in the sound of traffic

My stomach rumbles across

Distant roads

Hungry for meaning

Barry G. Wick