This and That

1.

Slippery vision slippery thought
It is what it is and sometimes not

2.

Sometimes the squirrel
barks at the dog
Sometimes the snake
is et by the frog

3.

We stand by a tree to sing a song
and all the while the tree's asleep
It hates all singing, it thinks it's wrong
the prettiest melody makes it weep

4.

Given time to observe
everything's a learning curve
A rope is tied deep in our mind
Untie the knot and you might find

5.

Sit and watch do not expound
keep your feet upon the ground
Let no word take glorious flight
until it's certain that it's right

6.

The thing we buy the thing we try
is likely something to make us cry

7.

The look of love is oft desired
but then it gets unruly mired

8.

Beware what's writ on glowing screens
and what's said in Ways and Means
Politicians want your vote
not what's writ in a four page note

9.

We beg the stars to keep their shape
to stay the same for children's sake
What stories will the sky tell then
in twenty thousand years or when

10.

We dance around this planet
as if the universe we own
until we realize it's size
we're just a seed that's sown

11.

Surrounded by convention
we think it is quite normal
even if our clothes are ripped
it's truly all quite formal
Someone wears a loincloth
someone underwear
It's all really just the same
that we refuse to bare
In the jungles deep and dark
people wear no clothes at all
You envy them their bodies svelte
and gym yourself a bill that's tall
So to the jungle with you now
and shoot down monkeys from the trees
No clothes at all is you at birth
Swim in the river and dry in a breeze

12.

You there in your suit quite tidy
thinking you're all high and mighty
Without electric this and that
the dirt accumulates
And everything you wear
will soon entomb your fate
A spot upon your tie so fine
will grow so green with mold
and everything you own
will look so shabby and quite old
Don't criticize those upon the street
whose bath was weeks ago
They're human and complete
and know something you don't know
Civilization isn't planned
it's a train wreck pure and simple
Tomorrow's world infection
begins with just a pimple

Barry G. Wick

The Lawn in the New Day

Is there anything
more disheartening
than sitting on the edge
of a bed rising from dreams
filled with people
who are supposed
to be everyone that's inside
only to wish
there was someone outside
who would hold the hand
that stops a fall to the floor
as tears of amazement
refract the glow
of a green lawn
that sifts through raindrops
on a screen


Barry G. Wick

Campfire

The campfire of love
and the love of campfire
can both be extinguished
by a bucket
of cold water

Campfire belonged
to early man
who begged woman
to make dinner using it
which is why
baked rat is rarely
on the menu

Burning wood
could pop sparks
from the campfire
onto lovers
sparking in front of it

Campfire in a dream
can feel warm
just don't try
to pee it out

Wolves won't go near
a campfire
yet rhinos
will stamp and pee
to put one out
Rhinos call wolves
chicken
and like them fried
or baked in wine

How many campfires
have there been
upon the silk road
just enough
for the worms to weave it
without moonlight

Ever notice
that nobody cares
how bad you sound
singing around
a campfire
which is why
there's always a candle
lit in church

Men wearing
only loincloths
who sit near
roaring campfires
are called masochists

The crackle of a campfire
will mask
the sound of farts
only when alone

A group of women
sitting around a campfire
late at night
was called birth control

Trying to light
a campfire
in pouring rain
lead to the invention
of gasoline

Man put stones around
all campfires
to stop it from escaping
which is why
no campfire has robbed a bank
a second time

Early man never
announced himself
when coming upon
the campfire of others
This lead to the multiple
independent discoveries of
disposable loincloths

Genghis Khan
personally refused to create
“campfire surprise”
because he preferred
the smell of camels



Barry G. Wick

Tinkerbell Fascists

Rising above the castles of Washington,
winged beasts with their cannon wands
spray sparking red, white, and blue
fairy dust for all the media to marvel,
behind which, lies have only obfuscation,
midst the corpses of unemployed immigrants,
desiccated women of forced pregnancy,
the new babies to be slaughtered or starved
into the smiling skeletons of children,
bullet-riddled, laying upon school floors
or the dusty, bomb-scarred, oil-pumped plains,
as their puddling tears dry in sandy echos,
unhooked by a hypnotized-while-blind public:
who pray each evening to  their flat screens
in the hope that GODD will materialize
just long enough for them to crowd-cheer
His golden hair flying from the fans
placed for His closest media angels
that He excoriates to the knowing smiles
of those who pray to His heroic majesty,
unfazed by Zeuses like Eisenhower,
Grant, and Washington who could*
out-hero even the tiniest ghost riders
in pure, white, black-holed sheets festooned
with flaming blood-soaked crosses
marking the spot where dripping pussies
should be grabbed in public and adorned
with spinning, sparkling swastikas,
and a gun club membership card
entitling one, full, and free magazine fired
at the nearest scattering school children
who dare to imagine in their deepest thoughts
any liberal, democrat, or foreigner
who lives now or is a demon of the past
who failed to wave a ripped Old Glory
and give the Bellamy it's proper angle
above the bleeding putti who encircle
His gold coif that sparkles from this new Son.
Crawler Headline:  America drowns in fairy dust.

Barry G. Wick

*Author's Note:  Eisenhower shook hands with Spain's fascist leader Franco, Grant wasn't well-liked by Native Americans(under-statement), and Washington had more connections to Great Britain than King George III....!

Glances

Across the space
between us
our eyes meet
your dark deep eyes
that need to be filled
with this love
that only an empty man
can generate
and I'm smitten
such a smile
and wishing
my fingers through
your black hair
There are many years
between us
does it matter
does it


Barry G. Wick
2018

Sunday Morning with Joni Mitchell

We're on the sofa together
She's in Memphis
with the other Egyptians
who built pyramids of music
She says she's sitting in a cafe
and I remind her it's my couch
in sight of corn and beans
in Iowa

I'm thinking about the news
and how I don't miss it
glad the currency of daily life
doesn't gloss over my eyes
Ha—current-cy
I don't know what has happened
in the last four days
and this morning
the world still full of fools
fighting for everything
“A woman must have everything.”
I know about that Joni

I'm beyond it all now
peeking from time to time
into the abyss
falling more slowly
than I did years ago
when I was a young journalist
in college during the war
following the march against
in the middle of wheat and lentils
in the great Palouse
Up and down the hills
filing as it happened reports
just like Edward R.
did from London
except I'm not on CBS
just the college station
wired into the dorms
with 8 listeners
who are reading Shakespeare
and Mao in the same language
from red books
I'm preparing for the day
a cop and a bunch of people
are murdered in Gillette
northeast Wyoming
when I go to the hospital
and am the first to report
live on the air
the policeman is dead
the killer is dead
and a pile of others
as this nut drove
across the town
spreading death
as easily as I put
the eggs on my toast
and the sweet stuff
in my black coffee

You still with me Joni?
You're fading out
as the summer heat of Iowa
makes a cloud fall
out of my freezer

Joni is traveling again
and I think of all the miles
between wherever
that are now so much
wasted dinosaurs
as we head for the end
of civilization that was never civil
as I stare at the changing screen
pictures that change every minute
three boys wrestling
in bright red breechclouts
at some rendezvous of trappers
their parents probably
What do you think Joni
of my tie-dyed loincloth
Yeah nobody cares
as she says “I'll be thinking of you.”
Oh sure babe
She's in her 70s
I'm in my 60s.
“Will you still love me
when I get back to town?”
I'm too young for you sweets
and if I'm looking at guys
in their malos
on some Pacific isle
then you might not be
the right person to cuddle with
“I've got the blues inside...”
Sorry, I know you had your heart set
on me as your man
We both sigh
me in my lonely Iowa
and you in your British Columbia
singing to an old nobody
writing some words
on a glowing screen
ready to get another cup
of Folgers
the only coffee I can afford
and you probably
with those beans
shit from the ass
of some odd cat
expensive beans
ground by natives
with their carved-rock
mortars and pestles
sitting in their loincloths
or is that poi

It doesn't matter any more
I don't know what's going on
as you travel
spilling your words
in ones and zeros
from my computer's CD player
hissing at summer lawns
please my dear
be nice
at least I'm wearing something
and you're jumping
out of my speakers
as naked a poet
as there ever was
while we're kissing in cafes
kissing on main street
rollin' rollin' rock and rollin'

 Barry G. Wick

Poem of Summer 2018

Call me Sebastian

It's a honest name for me

since grandfathers

back in time had that name

Tennessee Williams wrote the play

the movie

“Suddenly Last Summer”

identifying the dead Sebastian Venable

as the major character

we see without his face

late in the movie

He has no face

yet we know he likes boys

and he's getting older

he's getting older

a bad sign for gay men

Cousin Catherine

now replaces mother Violet

for Sebastian

in his travels

to procure for him

To Mrs. Venable

Sebastian

is the be-all end-all stylish poet

His last trip to Cabeza de Lobo

with Catherine

he gets eaten by crowds

of boys driving him to the top

of the highest hill in town

It's a fag-bashing sure enough

There I was sitting in the back

of a Pontiac station wagon

at the Pines Drive-in

at a young age

with only my mother

in the front seat avoiding

my father for the night

to see this movie

and I stared

at the tight swim suits

on the beach boys

as Elizabeth Taylor

recounted her character

Catherine's terrors

the summer she escorted

Sebastian on his travels

in place of his mother Violet

Catherine suffers

post-traumatic stress disorder

as a result of what happened

to Sebastian

and says horrible things

Violet wants cut out of her mind

Sebastian didn't write

his poem of summer

according to his mother Violet

because Catherine

could not give him what he needed

lots of hot boys to stimulate him

they way he needed stimulation

Violet Venable wants

a lobotomy for Catherine

because she tells the truth

ooowwwieee

Violet lost her ability to attract

so she blames Catherine

for no Poem of Summer

to have been written by

Sebastian who writes

one poem a year

in summer

My mother was my Violet

dragging me around town

to the dress shops

the fabric stores

the shoe stores

her dress maker's

chin wags with her friends

baby sitters ad infinitum

the local television station

to the piano teacher

and put tears in my eyes

demanding I practice

refusing my desire to play baseball

putting me on every stage

and local television show

to play

I hid in the trees

to hide from you Violet

Any self expression

on my part

any outburst at school

was met with shame

shame shame shame

I treated girls

with great courtesy

polite courtesy

mustn't touch them

must treat them as untouchables

like your all-powerful mother

who trained you

from the age of four

to be a slave

to her desires

to eventually write the poems

that were never written

Get me a lobotomy mother

to take away all these memories

of not knowing who I was

of not knowing what I wanted

of only knowing what you wanted

of growing old now

an old queer

with no one who loves me

who kisses me on every occasion

I turned everybody away

who loved me

because I was suppose

to love only you mother

I'm far away in my own

Cabeza De Lobo

Here endeth my Poem of Summer

now let the boys eat me

Here's a bottle of hot sauce

and a tub of potato salad

Barry G. Wick

May-June 2018

Leafless and Loving

Let us remember
that each sex
has skirmished
or warred
against the image
of each other's bodies

Men owned magazines
ad agencies and more
that presented an image
of women
that wasn't the reality of them
The image of “bullied” women
was always created by men
who were governed by doctrines
founded in other nations
by men who subjugated
their partners
writing rules
that all men should follow
rules that have followed men
to the new world that now
looks strangely old and outdated

Women also decided
that men could not be men
proud of their bodies
as they are
much as they opposed
native American men
from wearing only loincloths
into western towns
without first wearing
red long john underwear
red supposedly being
the color of their skin
Men have been “cowed”
into passing laws
against themselves

Every image
of Adam and Eve
is a lie
since leaves obscure
of what each
is most proud
and never at liberty
to reveal

We can vote
but we can't be equal
(just let that sink in)

These are just a few
elements of the war
between the sexes
By denying the other sex
permission to be themselves
each loses their hegemony
in an endless and useless war

Each sex has become
a forest of frosted branches
trees without the leaves
of a following spring
covered in sack cloth
and the ashes of war
Ashes from the leaves
hastily grabbed
to cover the “embarrassment”
of having eaten an apple
told by an obviously male god
to be poisonous
to the good order
of “his” garden

The sackcloth now comes
in bolts from China
India and Indonesia
but that's a different poem

But it does bring us to
the topic of clothing
which is why god
made winter
to rob Adam and Eve
of leaves
so they'd have to get
their clothing
from the Salvation Army
Goodwill Industries
St. Vincent d ePaul
and Filene's Basement
giving rise to the argument
between them
that Adam could
cover himself
with any old rag
but that Eve
had to wait
for the fall fashions
It only made sense
to her
but she ended up
getting
Yves Saint Laurent
since his first name
sounded like hers
despite her inability
to read the tag
tags she saved
to put in her own
hand-made clothing
so her friends
would be wowed
Her clothing was limited
due to the restrictions
Adam placed on her
household budget
From that stems
all the anti-women crap
that men put out there
The truth is that Adam
got tired of weaving cotton
and cleaning sheep's wool
and good-lord
have you ever tired to
coral silk worms
He appealed to god
to help him with the worms
to which exclaimed
'For that kiddo
you'll need leaves
and I'd like you two
to suffer for a couple
of cold winters
No dice'

Adam didn't understand
the dice reference
so Adam invented them
and god got good and pissed
at all the gambling
going on the garden
which was the real reason
he expelled them from the garden
Seven come Eleven
just didn't sound
like a good beginning
for a prayer

Barry G. Wick

Grandmothers

My Grandmothers Ella and Florence
were born
when women did not have the vote
or much of a say in anything
until they were grown
with families of their own
Men decided
pretty much
everything
just as men now
decide
when women want sex
when women need health care
when it's time for dinner
who should visit
how to iron a man's shirts
the why of anything

The nation is still ruled
by books brought
from old countries
that say women
belong to men

This is a new nation
not the old world
yet men are raised
to treat equal citizens
who now have the vote
like dogs and cattle

Get out the whip Maude
it's time for your punishment

How many votes must be taken
before women finally control
the nation
if only for two or four years
enough time for men
to think about real equality

Here now
a time when an autocratic man
who treats women badly
is elected by many women

Come back my Grandmothers
to teach this world again
how men and women should be
in a new nation
conceived in liberty
marching in the streets
for equal rights
and other important stuff
like that there

Barry G. Wick
April-June 2018

The American Acolyte

Each person elected
to office
has chosen to preach
the best of this nation
whether they do so
or not
They are democracy's priests
The political activist
even just a common voter
assisting each leader
to provide
the spiritual growth
necessary
to advance
the causes of the people
love hope charity
sharing sympathy and empathy
success and failure
for those two potential outcomes
of life
are brothers
even as many familial brothers
cannot conceive of helping each other
physically or emotionally
Those elected
must recognize their need
to communicate
with even the lowliest element
in their area of influence
for each
high and low
to each other
are acolytes


Barry G. Wick