All The Beautiful

All the Beautiful

to ya Buddy

whatever year this is

Symphonies tapestries clothing

sculptures and laced covered buildings

gold-leafed alters

with marble tombs of the famous

paintings of fawns and faeries

landscapes of flowers

ships with bare chested ladies

leading their sailors to discovery

and Shakespeare's drifting and lifting

Words weren't created

by people who stared

into glowing screens

of television

computers

or cell phones

Beethoven never wore

earbuds blowing out

his eardrums

no sirree

Today I listened

to Schubert's 1^st Symphony

he wrote when he was fifteen

I'll post this for you

so you can read this

on a glowing screen

because I doubt that

it'd have any meaning

for you if I didn't

Then your mind

will throw it away

like so much plastic

to end up in an ocean

of ones and zeros

only to be eliminated

by an electric pulse

or wayward solar flare

that switches off

everything we think great

so we can go back to

creating beauty for the world

for awhile

that lasts as long

as the pyramids

or The Parthenon

or a diadem of gold

that graced the head

of a Queen

or Miss Destiny in drag

and her new hustler boyfriend

Zack with all the muscles

who won't be remembered

except by the long-dead guys

he did the nasty with

for a quick thrill

five minutes after

he left the sex stall

of some future Pompeii

destroyed by something

they'll dig out in twenty thousand

and nineteen

and nineteen

and nineteen

when the screens

get reinvented

the books will fall apart

and

Michelangelo Squirtboy

can't get

The Holy Holy Miss Molly

to give him the money

for the ceiling he painted

in the

Crutch of Arnold the Divine

the word church long forgotten

proving once again

what religion was

and always will be

a group of old drag queens

welshers and chiselers really

who won't pay

what art is worth

The stained-glass windows

briefly flicker

with an audible “Oh no!”

heard throughout the pews

Spirituality rekindled

at midnight en masse solipsism

God can't be seen

if the screens flicker

Siddhartha has his one mouthful

of rice with pine nuts and onion

with an infantile Cabernet

He takes off his necklace

of clay beads

spattered with reds and yellows

then hands them to me

I have nothing to give back

putting down my pen

to start crying

with my head bowed

looking at

the orange breechcloth

up around my fat stomach

I pull on the threads

coming undone on the front

that hangs down mid-thigh

I'm thinking of gratitude

and Squirtboy's plastic bottles

of hand-ground oil paints

squeezed at the ceiling

with extra drops

falling into his eyes

A couple of bitches sing

something amazing

from the Marriage of Mozart

It only lasted 16 seconds

All that remains

this far in the future

“That was that.”

says the announcer

“Hey, we found 27 seconds

of someone else singing something

on a broken hard drive,”

he says with amazement

Nothing but the greats

on this station

You plead with me

to let you go

I'm getting tedious

you think

“Preserve your memories,”

I say

“They're all that's left blank.”

I may have the quote wrong

but it doesn't matter

I tried

Remember this was free

did you think

my space in your head

was worth anything

Me neither

Switch it off

and read a book

printed on special paper

signed and numbered by the author

while it lasts

Barry G. Wick, May 2018