To whom and in what do I fit
raised by a lonely woman
who had second thoughts
after her marriage
of three decades
her second husband
tossed away at the wrong time
for poor reasons
when she could have had
someone to share a few more plays
concerts and parties
then ostracized by his circle
deserved or not
She was never very physical
never full of hugs
or just a simple touch
It felt so odd to hug her
as her runaway dementia plowed
though her hole-filled brain
mowing down memories
of everyone including me
at the end of her autonomic gasps
silenced by drops of morphine
Here the violins crescendo
in dark hours
months past those tears
when I still talk to her
across the chasm between
her chair and my sofa
the same stations
that brought calm to her sleep
Even in the years I cared
she always shouted
to a flameless room
filled with family shadows
in years that didn't
include me
never once falling
over the syllables
of her children's names
Her ashes in the ground
beneath the pines
far away
in what seems light years
across the galaxy of states
I am buried in my mobile home
quiet until the dawn
when I can no longer hold
the emptiness at arms length
only to jump into a cold bed
trying to still a vacant mind
akin to pulling a boiling pot
from a glowing stove
the liquid boiled away
to cause rainbows of heat
in the steel
Yes all the colors
anyone could want
except the one color
of you in my heart
whoever you might be
I hug the ceiling with my eyes
doused in minuscule shadows
from the acid street
curtains always drawn
to keep away my dreams
that always end with you
that always awaken to sorrow
much as she opened
her crusty eyes to empty days
You are not my mother
you always an imagination
of your face and hair
reflected in the polished pipes
of her empty funeral dirge
or the mirror of tarnished imagination
I don't know your eyes
the touch of you beside me
in these days of punishment
spiking memories mixed
with the burn
of never having met you
my invisible love
as I try on these age-filled years
a new coat made
from the wooden shavings
of my last breath
Barry G. Wick