All Powerful

Sitting on the edge of the bed

looking murder through dark curtains

into the yawn-gaped day

that refuses to burn away

with fire-ray vision

the optometrist informs is real

This is no mere super villain

that limps from bed

through the kitchen to desk

now carrying

the instrument of salvation

It's black handle and toothy blade

ready to dispatch

the globe from Florida

in four strokes to the plate

Five neat pieces

reveal it's delicately strung beads

filled with acidic tears

that burst as jaws begin

their evil ripping

all the way to the rind

This orange begins

to raise the brain through the smoke

of dream-filled cataclysms

The earth is finally safe

Barry G. Wick

Phlebotomist, Poet, Students, and Teacher

Her smile

her thick-framed glasses

her short black hair

over her dark skin

She's from Sudan

drawing the blood

in an Iowa clinic

telling a poet

he should make money

from his poems

The answer for most

would be yes

hell yes

yes dammit

Poets aren't remembered

for their bank accounts

in a chain of banks

or how much they leave

their families après croak

Just one poem survives

for most who write

It might not be

their best poem

All any poet should want

is to have a junior high kid

ask the teacher in 500 years

why

they should have to read

this stupid old poem anyway

One day a student will ask

this as the teacher points

to a poem on the glowing screen

“It's old English,” she'll say.

Then the teacher will be

beaten and robbed

just minutes before

the third nuclear war

Barry G. Wick

Montana Love

Believe this is Butte
with a strange poison in the air
Is this going to or coming from
It doesn't matter
there is a YMCA in town
with a pool and shower
The check in is nominal
with a change from streets
to a comfortable suit to swim
A mile down the lane
and its out to sit
There is no one here
but a young man
who watches
who follows this exploration
of empty rooms
to the shower
he stares at places
where things reveal themselves
Simple conversation becomes
the invitation turned away
with wet silence
despite where his eyes
have been
as he hurries away
down the hall
and out the door
A towel drys a questioning head
At the door he is seen
farther down the street

Where is his life now
married or alone
dreaming of a traveling man
in a flowered Speedo
where love in Butte
is always furtive and fearful
This miners' town
of years ago
that turned to energy
when there was energy
to spend a night
embracing him
before that energy
turned into the aches
of older years
farther down western highways
the scenery of orange sundowns
and needy men unrelieved
having never held each other


Barry G. Wick

The Length of the Path

Laying in bed before troubled sleep
returns to surprise in colored dreams
with an impossible story
comes the memories of children's feet
on a hilly forest path to school
surrounded by the brown grass
of a snow-less winter or dry summer
among old pines flagged from wind
at the top of Hangman's Hill
with its beige and pink sandstone

The path returns in the morning
from the house sided in dull red
to the area behind the rock that marks
the top of the hill down the other side
to the road around the corner
or crossing the old witch's land
who yells trespass warnings
before you pass the mayor's house
seeing friends on the playground
playing tag or chasing games

Thousands of hikes to and from the school
where the first polio vaccines
on sugar cubes gave a mother confidence
that what happened to her brother
in an iron lung won't happen to her child
the school where friends would play
and old people voted in the gym
We played war games there of an old world
where real wounds happen bloodless
with loaded sticks or pine cone grenades

The first days of school began at a bowl
of limp cereal in changing seasons
when there were no problems dry or wet
challenging kids more than arithmetic
in a red brick building with gravel playground
Inside dark halls were forgotten brass
plaques to remind forgotten students
of the people who approved money
for the building of this school
and their commitment to learning

All students waited for Saturday mornings
with Mighty Mouse if the family was lucky
to have invisible television radiation
close enough to the towers of two stations
no more silence in the night to read
sitting on the carpet close waiting
for Ed Sullivan to show us Buddy Holly
being told to back up because being close
will ruin the eyes with which we need to read
the books in later times would become irrelevant

All the memories of the path are different
resting quietly inside those kids
who pull them up to wonder about them
or laugh at what was serious to teachers
as some of them came to school
hungry or in torn clothing from shacks
after a night where drunken dad beat mom
or arguments disturbed a darkened bedroom
when children would cry pulling covers
knowing parents could not love

Most of the whispers would disappear
learning the words for tests of memory
with spelling the days when corrections
weren't underlined on a glowing screen
but checked in red by unmarried teachers
who were smart to be single and free
The more we knew from the news
it was mostly that we learned Crest
was tested against other toothpaste
making us 34 per cent better with Fluoristan

Now the commercials are more believable
than the repeated news on some channels
The informative presenters have nothing
and never give us tests they check in red
These news stars of fact also know
what ad agencies say about repetition
So true or not we all live over-informed
near Hangman's Hill's blue pasque flowers
that grow in bunches along the path
enough for teacher enough for mother

Some days we played in school
because the radioactive fallout
was so bad from who knows where
from over the hills from over the seas
There was no understanding this
because it looked the same outside
just as any other day in our town
just as any other week in other seasons
So over the years our parents died
our friends died too of cancer this or that

How many inches of memory
are used to make this message
how much of it lost to chemicals
that we were told was part of better living
As we watch our planet die
with plastic piling up in the oceans
in the guts of birds fish and mammals
oil and gas still rule the lands of earth
only the lies have changed from tigers
in the tank to tanks at the doorsteps

Children and grandchildren show up
in invisible bytes of ones and zeroes
who have murmurs in the heart
disabilities too hard to explain
a need for chemicals to concentrate
all the while teachers no longer
believe it important to check wrongs
on papers turned in to show progress
only that all students should be encouraged
to be there the day of the national test

We wonder now if what we made
was not the world we wanted
just something we tumbled through
in which grandparents rolled before us
in their old clothes the future down-loaders
will laugh at and never really know
what the pictures reveal to be true
that we are just as ignorant of our age
as they were of their making-something-better
that takes the challenges away from some

No one returns to the path on the side of the hill
going back and forth to the red-brick school
to and from the redwood sided house
in a small meadow below the crest
of Hangman's Hill where three horse thieves
ended their lives at the behest of locals
who thought stealing a horse equaled death
just as today when we think just being a child
in a land faraway is worthy of death from the sky
when our path now conflicts with the kings of oil

This path is steep or rocky in places near and far
It's the same path going to and coming from
that has been beneath feet in many shoes
The first paths are always the one that stay
locked into the mind like anchored rocks
This could be anyplace with its varied flora
being picked to take or picked on the way home
It is always the same feet one after the other
So up the steps into the house paths take us
where land is flat or hilly the result is the same



Barry G. Wick

Shut-ins

Old people in their homes

who are unable to leave

are adventuresome rocks

who hope for a great flood

to take them downstream

while they feel like fish

who just escaped a hook

Barry G. Wick

Collected

There are names on books

of who edited poems together

by this or that author

the editor sharing a life

that could not possibly

be understood in its entirety

not understood by the readers

who do not breathe

the same air

as the poet walks

in sandals or barefoot

in loafers or heels

The collected dust

on a poet's skin

would show where

the poet walked

but they do not sell

small vials of it

in bookstores

Collected hair

left by balding poets

isn't traded

at the supermarket

Old bills paid

by checks signed

might still exist

but few might collect

Empty bottles or bindles

don't seem to make it

to the auction

The last rays of light

that touched the poet's skin

have been reflected

in light seen or unseen

Exhaled breath

with droplets of moisture

traded to the air

from coursing veins

dissipate among the vegetable stands

on a distant street

in a town unnamed

in every line of poetry

or letter written to a friend

All we have are remnants

of inspiration

that deleted a moment

of awareness of everything

around the poet

long enough

for pen pencil

tapped keys or tapped keyboard

chalk or tip of burnt kindling

to set limited words

spelled in designed letters

of a thousand alphabets

onto something another

might try to comprehend

only to fail

this challenge

of crawling beneath the skin

to live one second

in awe or disgust

of a life for which

we are desperate

Barry G. Wick

Strange Morning

Up earlier than expected
the want to sleep more
the want to make coffee
hot water run for dishes
then the business of health
then the business of bills
as hunger creeps over a tongue

The numbers have been logged
with a late mother's silver pen
or on an aging computer
that was once fast
and now begins to show
how there is a need
for something newer and slick

The body ages quicker
one pill makes this ache go
another makes movement easy
here are these two
that silence the electric feet
another raises some number
that makes a doctor happy

One friend gave a small statue
of the Hindu god Ganesha
the elephant sitting here
all powerful unable to fix
that friend who now lives
his last days confused
with a tumor that eats his brain

The bills create another ache
Morning sun does not bring joy
Its reminder is the passage
of time that cannot be stopped
of failed love and loss
the want to return to night's dreams
where sleepers play unashamed


Barry G. Wick