Shrink
I'm getting smaller
sliding away from all this
Each year is slippery
as the mind finds
new memories
to make pain
which didn't exist then
seem eternal and obvious
No one told me
lonely years hurt
So I tell you
Each moment comes back
Fill now with kindness
You may be forced
to explain to your
wandering mind
six questions you'd pay
a shrink to ask
to make you understand
all you ever did
Barry G. Wick
Truth
How narrow your loincloth
is directly proportional
to the size of your fine
Donuts are depressed
Elvis is eating lunch
Angels have hollow bones
Whatever you believe
Is true
Barry G. Wick
Poem of Day
Here come the drums
Their sound not unlike
The crunch of dry needles
Strewn upon a pine floor
Sometimes rocks tumble
In the creek at night
Heard outside my room
In the basement
Where the glass door
Slides open
And the water sings
To me in the dark
In the morning turkey
Feed in the grass
Visible through screens
On the door and porch
Oh I miss that home
That comes back
In dream and memory
But it belonged to her
Neat and perfect
Where I live now
Chaos and confusion
Breakfast now over
The piano of dark melody
Mysteries of quavers
And depressed peddle
Hanging on the moment
Cross the room
From the radio
At one time my fingers
Now enjoying the temple
Of his left hand
And the odd ghost line
Speaking across my emotions
I am sound of life
That was my training
Where words came later
Both appeared for me
In these short years
I am the better for these gifts
Barry G. Wick
The Last Gasp of Similitude
Before
So much depended
Upon being like something
Copying an image
Doing a curtsey to an equal
Your children must fit
The mold
So out they came
Little automatons
In suits and sport coats
Dreaming of their statues
The same fires
From the same sparks
No one prepared
For vive la difference
Well aren't you confused
As you search the world
Of images for you
The tired clone
Subway bumping
Midst the brothers and sisters
Larking at beaches
Comparing every body part
Every gesture of adjective
And compromise
What happens when
Expected visions
Gladiatorial spectators
Discern a change in the card
Oh my the confused
Strike their drums
Polish their cymbals
Tear apart their symbols
Anguish and gnash
Destroy and punish
Curse the variant
And so we separate
Into our villages
Seeking our dreams
Only to usher away
The seeker
You have seen similitude
In all it glorious patterns
Only to spit upon it
Clouding the waters
With your feces
Great angels
With gaping mouths
African river monsters
Floating above it all
Barry G. Wick
At Bed's Edge
Will I find a good morning?
Night was fitful and long
I turn to that which I take
to bed
to kitchen and living room
They fit in spaces of my walker
my phone and glasses
I think of grandparents
who picked up their glasses
before joining day
but they didn't have a cell phone
or the case I made to protect mine
They had no interruptions at night
no quick openings of glowing screens
to add news from around the world
to their brains that slowly drain
Their proper twin beds
were separated by a night stand
a glass of water and small lamp
Their radio was at the entrance
just inside the front door
far from their bedroom
a large wooden cabinet
made of mahogany
Were Grandpa's first stumblings
to turn it on and wait for tubes
to glow in order to bring worlds
into their lives or was silence
and permutations of first conversations
what started his day with Grandma
Age brings questions
with few answers
My grandchildren
will have questions
for me in 50 years
Consider them answered
as the last breaths drain
from failing lungs
as chemical thought
burns out
the last of years
when loneliness tugs
at painful joints
Your inventions will trail
like two parts of Bach
that disappear
one at a time
Rest well
Barry G. Wick
Old School
There is no such thing
No one can teach you to be old
Now that phrase means
that something is done
with technical procedures
from a previous time
For example wood working
with no power tools
Fixing your buckboard
with tools you made
at the forge in the shack
out back of the sod house
you made when you
settled on the prairie
I'm sorry but you didn't
do that
Prairies are now tilled
seeded and harvested
with giant corporate made
monstrosities
with ultra designed computer
controls that really don't need
the farmer to do much of anything
except sit eating lunch
If they're good farmers
they'll service their monsters
with new rubber this and that
oil up the beast
check the tires
and keep it inside after
a good power washed
replacement of the bean head
for the corn head
talking to their brokers
on their cell phones
Even this poem if you can call it that
is written on a glowing screen
actually typed old school
with spellcheckers ready to announce
my stupidity to the whole world
if I let it
I can sit here in my old school
breechcloth on a Sunday morning
listening to music of Vivaldi
played on recorders and drums
from the frequency modulated
radio miles away
a program likely to be
available on the net
for weeks months or years
What's more my computer froze
and even though I couldn't save
a few lines having saved
most of this poem
I took my cell phone
and photographed the screen
to save eight or so lines
that really weren't all that important
since most of what I write gets
thrown away before you get to see it
with a casual swipe of my thumb
across the tiny screen
below the keyboard on my laptop
or did I make changes just by speaking
into the microphone and tell this
piece of shit
it fucked up
and start over from where I'd saved it
in a pile of unintelligible ones and zeroes
Now all I wanted to tell you
was that I knew what growing old
was like for me
and how you could learn a thing or two
from this crazy old grandpa
who is going through the throes of age
This was my idea waking up from
the dreams of night
well actually early morning
and not one dream worth
repeating to anyone
Seriously, my Grandma Ella
never taught me anything
about being or growing old
while we sat at her kitchen table
in the little white house
on West Boulevard
sipping coffee and eating crackers
that she set up for me
It wasn't until years after
when I thought about it all
and her short curly white hair
that her stories about
her family and my grandfather's family
with the old pictures
of Minnesota and Iowa farmers
who barely had horses to pull
the plows and threshers of their day
An old man in bib overalls
standing in old school corn
that some company didn't own
the patent on
I'm off the track of teaching you
how to be old
Forget it
Even the doctors and researchers
who have written thousands of books
on gerontology and geriatrics
like my father's book on
Vision in the Aging Patient
won't tell you what you'll remember
from your childhood
and what you'll learn
about your parents and grands
by just sitting in your retirement
thinking about every word you heard
and remembered about them
and why they did the things they did
and why they were the person they were
and why I am the person I am
and why I can't remember names
and phrases of words
that trickled off my tongue
just ten years ago
I'm losing it
just enough so my children
and mostly my grandchildren
don't want to be around me
So I have to leave these words here
just in case they want to learn
old school
by reading instead of
looking at the video
on their cell phone
stumbling at the curb
of the street
or having an accident
in their battery solar car
hum hum hum
with the computer that avoided
the accident in the first place
when I realized I had
to take my pills
with the breakfast I'd forgotten to eat
when I started all this
staring at the upper screen
at a photo of a dead native
with scarified arms
or the fundoshi
of the Japanese
at the naked festival
bodies festooned
in tattoos
and me with none
in my t-shirt and breechcloth
old school clothing
a dumb old man
who knows why I'm here
and why my family
was the way it was
being born and growing old
the old school way
control S
Barry G. Wick
Lonely
I've always been lonely
Sitting on a piano bench
Practising scales
Practising alone
At her insistence
Not from love
But for her ego
That I make her
Look good
To her friends
To the town where
She wears her clothes
Where she wears me
A living cloth covered
In lonely notes
From a piano
Barry G Wick
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