On the Porch

On the Porch

The winter sun is low

In the warmer afternoon.

I think about

What I sew.

Wispy clouds hang overhead,

The sky's tangled thread.

Snow melts to send

Rivulets of water

Down sides of the street.

Slight wind damage to the home

Next to me has peeled

The skirting down half the side

Which faces me with a reason

To call the office to complain.

No no no. I'm not that sort.

My complaints are about me.

They cover my eyes before sleep

To wonder about all my poor choices

And the basics of my gay life

Or lack of it now.

Old men need partners that began

In the warm days of life

When porches never needed me.

Sunny life follows those days

As two men should follow each other.

I lived in fear of everything around me.

Every thought was a question.

Then the day came I stood for myself.

It was just a minute.

Those seconds have guided these years

Into the quiet and alone.

I make my peace with those I hurt

Many mostly in silence.

There's no one to call.

There's no one to help with dishes

Or to share the handle of a vacuum.

Now the breeze gets colder.

The sun is deep in the West.

So I am needing to find some warmth

Off the porch to be forgotten.

Barry G.Wick

Evolutionary Tears

Evolutionary Tears

Behold!  Oh stop with the religious angelisms.

To the future I listen from rhombic speakers.

I float in the air like Caesar's thirty molecules

Brushing through your veoli in search

Of mushroom seeds and rabbit turds.

I am still a being in the time of solar dawns

That tear at atoms releasing their contents,

A bag corn chips scattered on pavement

Trampled by oxen that pull covered wagons

Made of glass and unknown metals.

My descendants settle in cracks 

In the concrete of black holes and super giants.

I disturb all conventions with a dedicated thought.

Monster of Motion, be not still at the end.

Your fight against the calm goes on

As it screams for me to hear its familiar octaves.

Barry G. Wick

Freedoms

Freedoms

This is a time of confusions

When people are full of delusions

Their freedom is all

They want a tall wall

Between them and other's conclusions

Barry G. Wick

The Piano Man's Money

The Piano Man's Money

I know the song. The words didn't click for me when music was the Empire State of mind.  I did play piano before these dwindling word-soaked days.   A synth in the middle bedroom has 64 keys.  Good enough for sensual Bach.  I wish I had a piano with 88 writhing keys, hot and loose.  There are many free. I can barely move groceries and know few muscled lovers.  There's hire it done, but wealth escapes me faster than honey scooped by a greedy remover attacked by bees.

Barry G. Wick

First Base

First Base

The calling to an old 

Form of paranoia

Has me suspicious

Out of my day

And having conversations

In my mind

With people I hardly know

/

Who are you

I say to my imaginary nemesis

There is no answer

Because he doesn't know himsf

Inside my head

Which probably says

More about me than the person

Who occupies my imagination

So I travel.though all the possibilities

As related to my own history

With other paranoid people

Who studied me in another life

I had been lassoed by circumstances

I couldn't say no to

I grit my teeth realizing

The mess I'm in now

I can't say no to the new attacker

Who is likely just as lonely

Why would anybody

Want to meet me in this state

This magic of love will defeat itself

In a whirlwind of dust and smoke

From neurons rubbing themselves

That starts fires in the heart

Or wherever emotions

Lay at the bases of mind.and body

Barry G. Wick

Where Seldom Is Heard

Where Seldom is Heard

There are tears

Where only laughter

And smiles should live

People who believe

Love is love

Already know

Hate is hate

There is a search for answers

With deep sighs

And momentary shaking

Does this ever end

For everyone across the world

We are at war with every person

Of every belief

And every status

It is so easy to find something wrong

With the other we do not know

We live in our corners

Where we think safety's wall exists

It's not there

The dead are not there

With death on a classroom floor

At Sandy someplace

In a library at a high school

On a street in a protest parade

At a supermarket

In a tall building

In a nightclub

The names are not vocalized

At the next act of hate

Hundreds are forgotten

Except by those closest

To the grass and dirt

The moment of deepest anger

Or when we think we know

What is best for someone

Bulldozes another garden

For weather beaten stone

To wear away 

To disappear in ten thousand years

Only hate 

and maybe a little love

Is remembered

Barry G. Wick

Ghost

Ghost

What I am now is what

Guys in my college dorm

Called someone seldom seen

A ghost prefers no company

A university phantasm

May actually want to graduate

And go into higher degrees

I wanted to party

Despite that I barely graduated

Now my party days are over

I learned to ghost

After years of care for my mother

Who was a ghost for years

Social with a few neighbors

Aging and defects stopped her

A pandemic halted any contact

No diseases gonna deghost me

Pork roast in the oven

Dishes in the countertop machine

Microwave oven beeps potatoes done

What I sew is nearly done

čhegnáke the Lakota word for loincloth

A train horns its way through Iowa

Electricity charges this thing

Jim Wright never had

Up from a nap my brain not refreshed

A simple name escaped me

It's almost as if it was never caught

Behind the neuronic bars

Some things are never prisoners

In that aged fat gael in my head

One day everything will break out

To wander this universe I call

Godd

The ultimate sheriff whose badge

Shines bright even to days beyond

Until it explodes or gets

The thumb and forefinger

Slowly twisting up the wooden match

To extinguish it's flame

Big damn flame

To the future

This was never written

If found lore will create my story

Full of professorial lies

Created by people who claimed

To know me even as a ghost

Those people are lying

What to remember

Is that simple failures

Became these faithless words

Tippy typed across a glowing screen

Barefoot words covered in sandals

Of letters strapped with aches

Cracked heals so dry

Capital letters deceive you

To render meaninglessness

A language full of sand

Swepted with brushes

By ghost students who seek

Degrees of redemption

Over here over here they scream

We found his skull and blunted finger

Wow he typed hard

Boo I will say as I look over their efforts

They aren't listening

They were out drinking the night before

I've learned to dance in my ghost life

Open the doors to the buffalo

I'm accepted because I'm a ghost

Who no longer colonizes

Or owns chunks of land

All ghosts are one

Even if those like me are suspect

A thief of words now

Soon silent dancers let me join

Bless them because I was always

Ghost 

Life is forgotten

Air is forgotten

Mother is forgotten

The beep of a microwave is forgotten

Dinner is done

Time for meds that make me disappear

Hells bells I'm a sinner

And not kosher

Nothing of this may survive

Spare change anyone

This ghost needs a cab

To another universe

Even godd agrees

Barry G. Wick

 

Ungrateful Little Shit: A Prayer

Ungrateful Little Shit: A Prayer

Oh mighty universe to whom I pray

Upon my birth I had not learned

There would be no memory of me

Since discovery that I've always

Been ungrateful until recently

Not all to whom I should be grateful

Will know how much I regret

The ingratitude that greeted them

Upon first contact with me

So to my children and their mother

I apologize for my gigantic shithood

More could be written to assuage

The guilt I've felt for years

Yet this will have to suffice

I am grateful that we've met

And your gifts to me are beyond

My ability to repay your kindness to me

And the suffering you have endured

My parents were generous and true

To the point I'm uncertain I never thanked

There was food clothing shelter 

Presents travel memories education

Hopes dreams thoughtfulness

And all the trappings I'm certain

I never fully gave to my own children

That which they should hold a grievance

For their father their entire better lives

For my lifetime friends I can never say

How grateful I am for their holding me

When they all knew how weak and useless

I always was from before grade school

To the years I finally retired to be myself

I'm not certain why I became this ungrateful

But now that I've realized the depths

Of my failures to support your lives it's all

I can do to give thanks to your fulfilled selves

And finally to myself I expressed gratitude

For waking up from a wasted life to do

The proper thing by being far away from all

To no longer submit this weak being

To all the glories and amazing people

Who are so much better than I am

Though now I have risen one tiny notch

From the bottom where I failed to share

Thank you one and all for this awakening

Barry G. Wick

Bus

Bus

To the bus with wide seats to be

Filled with middle age members of

The Chamber of Commerce blue hairs

Smoothe roads south then north in western

South Dakota prairie for promotional

Visits to ranches where Angus cattle

Spend their limited grass fed lives

In preparation for the plates

Of my home when my sales improve

Breakfast of steak and eggs

South of town paid for by a worried rancher

I don't know but he's a friend's father

Who also has town business and money

I just saw his face in conversation

More wrinkled than just sun

More wrinkled than just age

In his Stetson hat and Tony Lama boots

Where did he rent all this seating

Outside the bus parked on gravel

The prairie doesn't care for what trods it

Or about business or coyotes

Prairie chickens puff their gullets

To attract females for bird sex

Mammal claws dig for a small meal

Deeper in the sun hardened sod

Prairie dogs scurry for the other exit

Only for eagles and hawks to swoop

Breakfast over we return 

In a que to the bus with tighter seats

Full of coffee and fried potatoes

Dead Angus and scrambled ovums

Oh I'm impressed with this generous rancher

There's nothing more I can stuff into me

Now I wonder if the bus has a toilet

That doesn't embarrass when I walk

Back through the tall seats and staring women

Headed north we're told lunch 

at the next ranch almost North Dakota

Owned by a famous family

Part of the Little House heritage will be

After a ranch stop outside Belle Fourche

Or was that other ranch first

Years past remembrance of detail

Everything is black cattle and clones today

Pot roast on the hoof with scalloped potatoes

Outside Faith named by Catholics or people

Worried how life on this open land

Will bring it's worst to the families settled here

Welcome find by rumor passing through the crowd

The ranchers new ten grand Bull 

Is tits up in a field after lightning the night before

I wonder if insurance will help

Or is the steak I eat too fresh for words

Yes bulls don't have tits so dick up then

The last stop is where gallons of semen

Last through the ages in liquid nitrogen

To take it's expected progeny through growth

Through a future of prairie and feed lots

To that magic number of twelve hundred fifty

Pounds of beefy barbeque layered in sauce

Smothered in human drool and buttered onion

The trip over its home to chicken with everything

But the cluck and beak a meal devoutly to be wished

Barry G. Wick

Lists

 Lists

In my lonely rooms

A song on the radio

Reminds me of you

And how the silence grew

The pain is beyond me

As it stares from all corners

Of where I am today

It won't be long

And I'll put it aside

Like I did with alcohol

The memory of you

Came on strong today

Brought on by music

I won't stop listening

Just that tune less and less

To the time when I won't hear

My present to me also came

After realization I'm not included

I knew it in depth

Then that view of a list

How it all goes 

Quickly or painfully slow

Every day I review

All your faces and

How I hurt my list

I'm awake

In these lonely rooms

As I deal with the wreckage

Of halcyon days

I float here like the bird

That charms the waves

Into calm

All these waves will soon

Be still

Nothing will be said

Nothing will matter

Exactly what I created

With my nest

On a rocking ocean

A list full of wrongs

Like notes that return

At the first musical measures

Barry G. Wick

Poem

Poem

A bud has made a thud

It's fall again

When oh when

Will I elope with spring

To sing my hope and then

Ring the bell

Oh hell soon winter

Will disinter my blue face

An always pent-up thing

Bent on places green

To tell the world I've seen

Ropes of tangled leaves

That race from ground to sky

To try the sun's most precious light

Barry G. Wick

Passing Out

Passing Out

I am dead now

But I still breathe

It's an addiction for which

There's no group

No weighty book

To give strength and tips

On how live with death

I chat with friends

Watch their stories

Stay connected 

From my dead world

To their lives

This isn't ghosthood

Though close

My grave still makes

The sound of dishes 

As they are raked

By the arm that rotates

With pressured water

There is a buzz 

of a finished wash

For my shroud

It won't load itself 

Into the dryer

In Egypt the dead lay

Out to dry

My coffin needs a vacuum

The dust on the furniture

Is the dirt on my grave

There are no tears yet

I'll hold my breath

For them to start

Would that fool you?

I feel light headed

Barry G. Wick

The Monster

 The Monster

When did this enter

To sit in its corner

A Longing from Rain

A Longing from Rain

Is there time left for love

Or just the sound

Of rain on a metal roof

Unshared

Belonging to only one

With no arms wrapped

Or lips touched

To that sound

Could be laughter

As dreams spread

Through the gaps

Of conversation

Ah not a chance today

As my thoughts

Echo in an empty bed

Barry G. Wick

Lost in the Music

Lost in the Music

On the radio

Two musicians

A violinist and pianist

I grab my violin 

An orange rocket I will play

Along with the Stradivarius

He bows powerfully

And tenderly

The Strad responds

My bow is sharper than his

As I attack my instrument

Over the boards

Of this small stage

I denude it's.flesh repeatedly

As stripes of notes

Fall on to the  audience

Between the movements

Each phrase is clipped

As if to shorten this great piece

My violin passionately reveals

It's inner glory

The steamy pot reminds me

I have carrots to cut

Oh but we made such 

Beautiful music together

Bon appeftit

Applause fills this aromatic air.

Barry G. Wick

Poem

Poem

All of this has never happened

So if you recognize someone

Don't be stuck up

Say your first name

They probably don't remember

Your first name

Last names are for business cards

Or when bowing to Japanese 

I never met those people

Except Bill who was half

Though remember I always acted

Like I had a fence post

Up my ass so

This is all something I never learned

But gladly share with you

Barry G. Wick

Who's There?

Who's There?

The door has opened

To let myself be with me

Too often I was forced

To hear other voices

Trained to let them

Control my thoughts

This isolation has created

The mind I was suppose

To have from the first

I say hello in greeting 

To someone I never knew

It is myself as an old man

Barry G. Wick

Take Flight

Take Flight

It's spring

The mother robin

Can only feed worms

To her chicks

Because worms

Were what she'd been fed

When she was a chick

If robins understood advertising

They'd feed M&Ms, Fritos, and Coca Cola

To their chicks

Then there would be fat robins

Laying around unable to fly

I wish my mother had fed me worms

Then I'd have been able to fly

Instead of just getting by

Believing everything I see

On glowing screens

Then going into advertising

Telling everyone I'd never met

Believe what I say

You can't fly

You can't fly

Barry G. Wick

The Fat Imp

The Fat Imp

At the edge of bed

Gathering phone in moose skin pouch

A new tablet with cords

Then remembering to brush teeth

Wash eyes and hands

Sandals 

To the kitchen

Fill water jugs in the fridge

Take first two pills of the day

Test for sugar

Test for pressure

Take temperature

The imp sends a photo

Rare

Since imps are mostly thin

Able to move quickly

Joking and playing tricks

Certainly not hobgoblinish tricks

They are mean

Like knocking the measuring cup

From a hand to break it in the sink

The hobgoblin plays mean

With the imp

Locked as they are in the home

Unseen and invisible to everyone

Except each other

The gob is seen by the imp

Imagined really

Since the imp is alone often crying

Over spilt flour and tea

Tomorrow is bread day

Tonight the fish dipped in batter

Fried to the imp's strict recipe

Meals planned days in advance

Since he's fat and hungry

To play a trick on himself

His mind mixes the tartar sauce

As an old horn concerto

Mixes notes with Chopin

How strange for the imp

Who will call this familiar 

Spawn of Satan today

Something that sounds common

In his life

Since his friends are also

Unprotected from words that wound

He feels them in others

A failing of this life

That should have covered him

In alligator skin and tank steel

And so the imp begins his emptiness

Today her Majesty the broadcast baroness

Filters room to room

The couch says

The tea cools

Batteries charge

A dark day with rain

Is the shade of Satan

As is every sunny day

The old fat imp

Presses forward in lockstep

With the phalanxes of other imps

Killing silence

Shredding a lonely day

With questions 

Barry G. Wick

Hidden Baggage

Hidden Baggage

We bring baggage on these trips

Even when we're alone sitting

In an old person's room

With spider webs hanging

In the corners

I bring the Black Hills

With my own thoughts

Of Mt. Rushmore.

Plus all the people

We took as guests there

Through old days years

People expect their local friend

To act as tour guide

No it's okay I'll wait

I've been here hundreds of times

I don't need to hear or see

The hypocrisy again

It's tattooed on my body and brain

Invisibly with nothing ink

Then a satchel full of stories

Spread each time we visit

The poets house on the far hill

On the curb with the view

That's ok in the waves

Of chipmonks and noisy children

Off to the buffalo

Stay in the jeep cannot

Yeah he's two feet away

Thinking he'll horn your face

Hanging out the window

A hundred degrees in the shade

Nice crop of sage this year

Pick it and get caught

You'll pay your fine

Before the college loan

Leave the rock

Public property

Fingerprints are traceable

Now the flight back to Rapid City

Or Deadwood or Sturgis

The headline reads

Tourist Gored by Buffalo

I remember that lady behind

Us on the Harley

No update on condition

But I know the buffalo

Is smirking once again

Barry G. Wick

Going Nuts

Going Nuts

It's soon time to go completely nuts.

It's important to be remembered

As the member of the family

Who was completely on the bizarre

Side of existence when a person

Crafts bow ties for bees

Puts lipstick on flowers

Massages trees with baby oil

Cuts the lawn with a scissors

Rolls naked down grassy hills

Wanders dark streets in top hats

All decisions are made with

The yes-no-maybe wheel

And ends every sentence with +

As if to signify there's more +

Then coming to the thought

That's how life should be lived

Every day+

Barry G. Wick

 

The Treaty

The Treaty

When childhood is over,

When the parents push you out,

Even for the world of work,

Or higher education,

A treaty is made with the world

That says you belong to you,

Unless you elect to stay

Close to the family.

Major decisions belong to you

As do mistakes and goofs

And all matter of wrongs

Against the others who live

In the town.

There are those who believe

You owe your government

Whatever the government says you owe.

If you get pregnant

The government's say you owe

The product of that pregnancy

For paying taxes

Service to society

As a soldier in war.

Only women no longer

Belong to themselves ever.

If a man wants to use

A woman's body 

the precedent has been set in stone.

Women can be forced to have babies.

Which means men can legally force

Women to have sex.

Never mind anti-rape laws,

Kidnapping laws,

Raped and pregnant

The man owns the woman's body.

It's his treaty with society.

The baby and all children from his woman

Belong to him.

This includes the girls he brings

Into the world.

Forget their mothers.

They have no freedom for anything.

So says thirty states

And the Supreme Court.

The men voted.

They own the law.

They own the women.

Even the women they convince

To be their slaves to their law

I thought we rid ourselves of slavery.

I thought people belonged to themselves.

I guess I don't and the women I've known 

Don't own themselves.

That is so, so wrong.

Barry G. Wick

The Well

We sang a song at summer camp

About a boy who falls into a well.

I am still falling

Into the well of memory.

Upon its sides are shards

Of glass that cut me as I fall.

The well has no bottom

That would stop the pain

Of everything I remember.

I awaken from my dreams

Only to find I'm still falling.

This is my punishment

For all the hours 

Of useless life I've lived.

When I discovered

The memories I have

Of all these years,

I cringe as I pass

Another sharp piece

Slices the shreds of skin

On what is left of me.

This is my punishment.

I am where I belong.

It is dark.

It is painful.

I am shamed.

Others may fall in front

And behind me.

Of them, I am unaware.

I have been unaware of others

All my life as I ran over

So many.

Be assured I suffer

Every mistake

Now that I am alone

As I fall through the memory

In a dark and dangerous well.

Barry G. Wick

The Adventures of President Gluppot

 

The Adventures of President Gluppot

President Gluppot sends his greetings

by chance of all these meetings

from the nation of Retainia.

Another war, another mania.

“I'm happy you have joined us,

You're in a deep, purloining fuss.”

This has all happened much before

like a knock on an ocher door.

“You can stay as long as you like,”

As he casually stabs all with a pike.

So begins another sticky situation

in the somewhere of another nation.

“You cannot dream of freedom, gents,

just dig deep for gleedom's pence.”

Barry G. Wick

Narcissus

Narcissus

Greet your mirrors, boys.

No more looking at the smooth

Surface of an ancient pond.

Now, your smartphone camera

Preserves every oil-coated

Muscle on every anatomical

Part of your well-tanned body.

Your pride shows beneath

A black thong or nude

What the heck, why not?

We all look and compare.

There will never be perfection

Until an old man believes

As he sips the wine of youth.

Barry G. Wick

Life Goes On

Life Goes On

Life goes on

Death goes on

Eternity goes on

The remembered go on

The forgotten go on

Eventually everybody goes on

We live for the living

We live for ourselves

We live for our families

We live for the moment

We live with our guilt

We live with our shame

We live with what we built

We live with our name

Barry G. Wick

For Ira Laney

A Broken Branch

A Broken Branch

My son no longer talks to me

Just as I no longer hear the crows

On the flagged ponderosa

Next to Hangmans Rock.

His children know more about me

Than I know about a crow's breath.

It twisted down the hill to my face

As it flutters the fuzz on a young ear

That cannot fathom the confusion of

A son's first sounds just fresh

From his mother's womb.

My lonely hours inside this trailer

Beg for any voice to speak

One kind word that first

Came from his mouth. 

I am so proud of him

That he has thrown me away

Like a match that failed to strike.

I am no man to him

As most gay men are to their families.

We are men in name only

As we hold ourselves aloft

Our black feathers brushing worn bark

Our toes holding fast to dead branches,

Screaming unintelligible verbs

At loosely arranged north winds

Hoping other crows will find this tree.

Barry G. Wick

A Time for Moats

A Time for Moats

It's no fun guessing.

You were there

Then you weren't.

I couldn't  know

What you were thinking.

You came to my place

Nicely dressed

Like you were going out.

You didn't call.

What could I know?

All these years now

Are bricks stacked

Against each other's walls

Ready to make new ones.

I say the wrong thing.

You begin to cry.

You won't get angry.

What can I know if

You say nothing

Along with your tears.

I give up.

Is this the way it is

To be with everyone

I want to love me?

There is only one way

Out of this silence.

It's time to get concrete

Mixed for the bricks.

There are only walls

To build between me

And everyone else.

I'll open no doors.

I'll start no calls

And answer none.

In here must be

Some kind of happiness.

Barry G. Wick

Good Morning

 

Good Morning

The fan on the furnace

spins for longer and longer

as a horn on the radio

plays its concerto

of a cold morning

The machine on the counter

plays my dishes clean

Electric lights right and left

and over the stove

All this to disappear?

My fragile world

disappears imperceptibly

as it crawls through the hours

its low slung belly

drags upon the hard ground

There are no heights

for it has been the demon

of all lives

waiting for its time to bite

A simple breakfast

will make it disappear

if only for temporary seconds

Which will hide you more?

Eggs or bran

Coffee or tea

Butter or jam

If we give it choices

it will stray from its

muddy path

and lose itself in decisions

I send it to the stars

A few parsecs and it will

forget about me

Barry G. Wick