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