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Thank you to those who support me via my Paypal account: rikwrybac@yahoo.com. The government doesn't read my poetry. You do. Out of over 560 poems here on this blog by me, I hope you find one or more you like. Thank you for my readers. Thank you for your comments.

Sunday, November 20, 2022

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



Sunday, November 13, 2022

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







Saturday, November 12, 2022

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