Plastic

Plastic

Wake up! Oh blood born chemicals 

You have but to replace

Everything human in us

Molecule by molecule

We desire the change

Since our flesh is unpredictable

Climb into our brains

Settle into our weary hearts

Let all your power

Come from the wells in ground

Processed in plants

And fed to us through pipes

Polycarbons unite!

Come to us from corn and peas

Be sprinkled on our potato chips

Change our cellular thought

Into clumps of goo

Let us judge our world

From the great black pond

Into the limitless chemical beyond!

Barry G. Wick

Just one of over 600 poems

https://agereasonmistake.blogspot

Bandaides, Bolts, Bailing Twine, and Bitterness

Bandaides, Bolts, Bailing Twine, and Bitterness

Waking up at 6 am this song writes 

               Life that's grown,

About a blistered way, broken down,

               Along a graveled road.

From far far west to brightened east

              These travels seared by sun,

Alone and beaten down, these scars

               Are medals won.

Could future bring another game

                To live this torn-up day

The past has turned upon me now

                Dreams break my sleep away, 

The bills are large and money's gone

                Through dunnings sharpened

                 edge,

These wild and gruesome facts

                Have struck me with a sledge.  

I drank it all and withered on drugs,

                Tempted by every vice,

With those I love and friends alike

                I wasn't very nice, 

Here on a bed with hanging legs

               It all comes back to me,

Some died so sick, some thrown away,

               It's all just twirling grief.

I've reached out and sought the help

               From strangers near and far,

They're just like me in every way

               Their universe a star

They brightly shine in darkest night

               Reaching deep in me,

To patch me up, to fix what's broke,

               I'm down on bended knee.

I feel the need to talk, this shame cuts deep, this pain so sharp,

The only way, it seems to me, to join them 

               In their dark

So here I sit with others, their pain,

                Our lives together broken,

Here comes our healing, we fix it up,

                Each word in tears are spoken.

Barry W

FagDad

FagDad

FagDad is a city

Someplace somewhere

He owns it

He belongs here

It's on a river of time

From then to now

Unspecified questions

With fearful discoveries 

In the still wild west

Where men are men

And afraid to tell the truth

FagDad is busy every day

Making meals and house chores

With an occasional thought

No thinking all the time

About the children

And grandchildren

Now he thought he did

Years ago when he was

Getting angry at the world

For hating him with no acceptance

Hiding behind respectability

Correct politics on public media

Lying every day just like

Every man

FagDad was never very dependable

He wasn't dependable in anything

Or for anybody in his life

His father was dependable

He went to work and played golf

In his mind when work bored

FagDad hated golf when he played

He played to please his father

That should have been his clue

There would be other attempts

For his father to love him

Nothing worked but he understood

That his father was constantly alone

Except for his scotch and soda

FagDad is always tight in space

And his mother there you are

Reading a newspaper on a loveseat

In the old times smoking a cigarette

Wanting one years after she quit

Asking him for a smoke he doesn't

Every space is wider than the first

Looking up at the rock through squares

Of the bay window across the room

Memories of who sat where or there

Her coffee with cream and sugar

With a cigarette drifting in what's left

Never acknowledging him outside

Of what she wanted him to be no

He could never be what he was

FagDad wakes up in bed

Watching himself becoming

The sounds of traffic far away

Going where he can't wanting

What he'll never be in still forests

Picking bark bits from tall trees

In hair stands thin trees

Close to each other on hill tops

In this space where he reaches

His own city where he is

Great vistas that peel away

His wanting and his beliefs

That become inflamed 

As he dunks himself to put out

His desires that agree with nobody

Barry G. Wick

Part of over 600 poems

https://agereasonmistake.blogspot.com

The Pleasure of Your Company

The Pleasure of Your Company

In all the fields of gratitude

Certain flowers blossom

White other wilt and turn to dust

Gratitude has many colors

Many shades peek around

Trying to hide the reality of feeling

Such is the phrase in the title above

There are companies that are not pleasureable

Cigarette companies want you to believe

Their products are pleasure

Just temporary relief from anxious feelings

Brought about the absence

Of the addictive element in their product

In fact everything you consume in this world

Is addictive

You liked breathing so you took a breath again

What could be harmful about radio

Exactly and I mean exactly

How many radio signals

Are going through your body

At this very moment

Radio signals on earth

Phones and nearby radio and tv antennas

Radio signals from outer space

Plus bits of this and that going through

Your body

Right now

Good heavens might not be good

All these are uninvited

All this company knocking on my door

Jumping through me without invitation

What are you causing

You’re not company

I didn’t invite you

I get no pleasure from hard and hot

Rock and roll music like I used to be

Uninvited

satellite signals telling me where I am

I know where I am

Contrived and named locations

Entities that have created and named borders

On a named planet led by egotistic idiots

Who squabble in their finest puffery

This is no place with a finite life

Destined to end by our hand

The hand of others

Or our own sun

Or some giant rock

Spinning towards us indifferently

It's not personal 

It's the business of a rude impersonal

Universe with distances too far

For us to cross

If we ever get there

Don't expect a warm welcome

We'll bring disease and nasty habits

Like what

In japan don't blow your nose

On the street

On Rigel 7

Don't wear clothes

Or scratch your nuts

Who knows what will offend someone

3

I like being alone now

Somewhere on a distant world

They crowd and smell you

Like dogs smell each other's butts

The pleasure of your company

Could be offensive

Even in the most carefully

Created moment

You're reading this

I am insulted

Barry G. Wick

Part of over 600 poems online

https://agereasonmistake.blogspot.com

Shadow

Shadow

I am a shadow of those

Who came before me

Dark with silvery glints

Unexpected bumps on skin

Expand into a frieze around

Societal distances due to secrets

No source of light creates me

My edges are clouds

With no particular shape

Easily passed through

As if flying on a moonless night

High up with little lightning

Grate me into a steel bowl

I will appear and disappear 

The tiny fly seen and gone

Continue to look and wonder

Fits those who train themselves

In my artful dreams of shade

Barry G. Wick

Visuals

Visuals

It has not been more than 200 years

Since the first photographs

Captured images of our world

Its been less than 60 years

Since we captured pictures

Of our whole world as sphere

In 100 years what will tomorrow's

Children look back on

If there will be human children

In that future time.

If there will be animals

Or plants or mold spores.

I look at this year as frightening

With threats beyond today

We cannot foresee or color

As if we saw a black gray and white

Photo as it's people dreamed

Of today as dark as tomorrow

Barry G. Wick

The Haunting

The Haunting

Across my ages is a house

Where dusty corners do not exist.

There is no gray, unpainted wood

On the outside to announce

Its purposeful being.

Creaky floor boards do not exist

To let this occupant signal

Where it walks in darkness

Or hides in a closet of shreds.

The only wind that sings

Its mournful song is on my face

As I walk from room to room

Or sit upon my porch

As an outside breeze

Heats or cools the living skin

Upon my face and arms

This ghost is invisible

As all ghosts really are,

Locked in a cloud of memory,

Clicking like an oil heater

On the first cold night of use.

I hear him in the dark

Even when the sun flashes

On a summer day, sending me

Inside to avoid its painful sting.

It is a phantom in my mind

That returns as surely

As any memory of psychic play

He's in the hospital where my friend

Lays in his last days on my visit

I'm about to enter the bright room

Next to this ghost’s darkened rest

The black entrance to his room

Next door into which

I could not see.

It's my memory of a hospital ward

As i pass the white dream

Of a nurses’ station

On my way for a visit

When suddenly the peace

Of it all shatters every corner

Of my own dark room

Hundreds of miles and years

In a past that once again

A voice cries out

A voice of someone I never met

That rattles my own bones

To shake my own chains

In sympathy with every horror

A man near the end of his life

As he is headed alone

His banshee like cry in one word

“Mother!”

I press a nurse to explain:

His parents won't come.

He dies of complications

Of a disease he acquired

In the great pleasure of life and love.

He dies of the same disease

That will release my own friend.

This ghost haunts my memory

As surely as any that might

Walk through an old dark house.

Through every thought of those times

Comes that voice as loud

As any pan I drop upon a floor. 

Its silence now only rings

As I lay upon my back

Alone in my night

Hearing the first drops of rain

On a stormy night,

As cold as any grave.

Barry G. Wick

Grim

Grim

No matter what a man does

To earn his living

To make his way

From birth to his end

From the lowly citizen

To someone of great accomplishment

Or wealth

He should know when it's over

When his successes or failures

Outweigh his need to be

Some will feel proud

What they left behind

Yet he may think on his failures

To reach beyond

To answer the questions

That grow inside him

He could not press to completion

Something in his family or work

Awards may stretch behind him

Friends forecast to amass at his grave

But death's final thought is death

The failure of the body

To keep him on his path

It is this failure that bends his spirit

Could he have done something else

To go on further

To change his world

Whether accident or disease

Death is a failure

And every man reaches it

Beyond it

He may be praised

One or more survivors

Will not celebrate his being

Now released to the ages

And when the earth is torched

By the sun in final flame

All that was man will end

Perhaps spacecraft loaded

With everything created here

Will be launched into voids

To wander into nothing

Only to be destroyed

Before it's discovery and decipherment

All accomplishment gone

Every thought destroyed

This has likely happened

To hundreds or even millions

Of civilizations across the universe

Beings created and civilizations destroyed

No reference or anything left

To show they existed

This writing could be erased days

After I'm gone or before

While science sees farther into space

Those who research must

See these same futures or more

Perhaps it's better never to know

To party every day in total ignorance

Just to celebrate the moments

Of our time and our lives

These words die here

These visions are complete

Resurrection only happens

With new planets

With new life

Discovering all man has found

Feeling the same 

Knowing the same

As different as each eye

That sees the stars overhead

With wandering imaginations

Recreating more language

That will flail the galaxies 

To the ends of their times

To tell the truth

I'm not expert on death

I'm still alive

Ask me in one hundred years

Barry G. Wick

Dream Light

Dream Light

I am here

Lost in what I know

Lost in the past

Lost today

Wandering inside

I can't leave myself now

Not like before

This dream is real

Full of disappointment

But always hope that fails

I need you

But cannot find you

I am banging my head

Against visions

Harder than any metal

They won't leave until

Your breath unfolds beside me

It will release me into dream light

Bright darkness full of me

Ready to wander the halls

Ready for revelation

I slip away

A deep breath draws in

And exhales

Exasperation tumbling

I am here in the sound of traffic

My stomach rumbles across

Distant roads

Hungry for meaning

Barry G. Wick

Shrine

Shrine

Behold!  This Shrine to me!

Put your hands together

As if praying to a deity

For I am something

I'm still working on, what?

But here's the Shrine anyway

It has been made

Of the rarest stone

In this country:

The Stone cut from

Mount Rushmore

Oh I'm not on the mountain

I just acquired the largest pieces

Of the rock fall

From the blasting

Think about it.

Some from Lincoln

Some from Roosevelt 

Some from Jefferson

Some from Washington

Pieces

All shipped to my crew

In Iowa

It's a shame it's been wasted

All these years

Assembled into this Shrine:

Tall columns

Looking like quilts of stone,

Glue dripping to their bases.

Every 10 or 15 feet:

A squished chipmunk.

I'll have a chat with the foreman.

Oh, but this holy place

Where I'd seen all this stone

Just laying below this ugliness

As a child growing into adult

More than once a year

We'd traipse as family 

With visiting, uninitiated guests

Unto the American “holy of holies”

Re-endoctrinating ourselves 

In the hatred of the poor,

Marginalized, former owners

Of this destruction

Honoring ongoing destructions

Of societies everywhere else.

In the name of our god

We praised these idols

And our god shook his finger

At us saying:

“Look, I published some stones

You've read about, and well,

You're not going along

With the program, commandment-wise."

So, as long as some of this mountain

Was wasted by a racist carver

What the heck, I'll use it.

Look.  Statues of great Lakota, Hunkpapa, Oglala, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Blackfeet, Two Kettles, Brulé, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho

Chiefs who pincushioned Custer

And his merry band.

All surrounding this Shrine,

Where inside written in stone,

is my apology to native kids

I did not befriend in school:

Among others I rejected

As lovers.

This poem does not solve

My problem

Or THE problem. 

It just states the obvious,

Among which

Are soldiers who received

The Medal of Dishonor

At the massacre 

Of Wounded Knee,

Natives beaten, killed, or disrespected

By Rapid City Police,

South Dakota State Police,

Every white politician of the town,

And state including

Governors Bill fucking Janklow

And the last female mess.

There.

Now, I feel wonderfully relieved

Like a good, useless liberal.

Oh, there's a mouse-sized

Statue of Donald Trump

Carved out of buffalo patty

Coming out of his hole

In a non-conspicuous corner.

A tiny sign announcing

His presence:

“Here comes the Coward”

And everything the Epstein files

Have to say

On a flash drive jammed

In his tiny mouth.

Barry G. Wick

https://agereasonmistake.blodspot.com

Paypal: rikwrybac@yahoo.com 

Truest Evil

Truest Evil

Waking, as we must,

To my own reality,

The mirror reflects a sadness

In the face of my own evil.

How, at times, I rejected love

From this man and that man,

This woman and these children.

There is nothing more evil

Than these negative actions.

Part of this story

in understandings' wake,

Is how I poisoned myself

With food, with alcohol, with sex

That proved no love to me.

I still desired this expensive life

Where all was needed

Became acceptance of my soul,

Which is truth to every person.

Now, I try to find amends

With each person where none

Betrays the folly of my quest.

Some victims killed themselves

Or cried until the tear-soaked sheets

Took days to dry,

Just as my own became a desert.

So, I am left befuddled as a liar

Who cannot find his way

Into a story that saves himself.

From his own awakening

Of self-induced harm,

That others now see,

At distances they keep,

Protecting themselves

From whose false betrayals

They might, themselves, experience.

Barry G. Wick

https://agereasonmistake.blogspot.com

Paypal:  rikwrybac@yahoo.com 

Complication

Complication

The second  awakenings

From the first birth sleep

The world is strange

Without the language to make it mean

The only communication is scream

Someone solves the pain

Or doesn't

Clothing with buttons or pins

Then language

Spoken the written

Full of rules

At each step into work and money

See and relations

Now computers and legality

Fears of loss and strangers

Then imagination turns simple

Throw these away

The rich get it all done

Including tents set up

At Burning Man

Then home to yachts

Or mansions

Then age sets in

Time for something simple

A basic roof with quiet

Books not glowing screens

Escape 

Into a wilderness of thought

A private stream of clear consciousness

Just before breakfast

Wishing the world

Would let you summer walk outside

In just a loincloth

Without calling the cops

Barry G. Wick

http://agereasonmistake.blogspot.com

Paypal: rikwrybac@yahoo.com 

The Shine

The Shine

There in the shower

Standing with glimmering droplets

Caressing your body

As they fall into rivers

And oceans

Perhaps you are the reverent 

Young man in the red loincloth

Hands clasp in prayer

Standing in the Ganges

He hears only the drone

Of the river as his mind

Sings Shanti

His long hair vibrating

In the pluck of the sitar

Then I see the light wave to me

From the surface of a stream

As it transforms into the wet skin

Below your back

The droplets of my desire

To reach out

Then to stop myself

As I always have

Denied myself love

Accepting only shame and guilt

This pattern is a ringing bell

From inside the shrine

Of my empty arms

Hear this prayer

As I stand in your waters

Let me find you always

In my emptiness

In your emptiness

As my hair falls 

Down my neck 

Standing in the thunder

Of a million storms

And the flashes

Of my body's lightning

Barry G. Wick

https://agereasonmistake.blogspot.com

Over 600 poems from the last 18 years

Paypal: rikwrybac@yahoo.com 

Irrelvant

Irrelevant

We are here on the typer

That Bukowski mentions

Except mine is a bit more

Technology

Technology

Technology

I also don’t drink like I used to drink 

At every bar

Or like Bukowski

I suppose it’s a shame

I have no chemical inspiration

And no doubt

Your notice of my bad poetry

I have to write

I have to communicate 

Anything to the universe

And uninspired on every level

Something artificial could

Do better

But that's not me

I breathe and I

Think with flesh

You may dispute that

You have my permission

There is jazz music in the background

That's inspiration from the 1950s and 1960s

Which means I'm not relevant

I get that

On this yellow checkered table cloth

Beneath a ceiling fan

Salt peanuts

Salt peanuts

Thank you Dizzy

Barry G. Wick

The Limited Life

The Limited Life

It was a Life Magazine

From June of 1964

Governor Scranton on the cover

The article about homosexuals

That opened my eyes

And closed my life

I am 12 years old

I know I am different

I could be arrested

Shame my family

This founded my thoughts

For years

Even in college I couldn't

Tell my student shrink

Who and what I was

On days the gay group

Met at a religious house

On campus

I'd walk outside back and forth

Until the fall of 1972

Following a summer

At a cabin with Mike

Just one week of love

And discovery

Stonewall never made the news

In my hometown

Even with my college experiences

Falling in love and rejecting it

Denial upon denial

Hurting others for years

Hurting those who loved me

Wanting acceptance

Wanting real love

Now comes the loneliness 

Of old age

Alone nearer the end

A heart

Still full of shame

No one to talk to

No one to love

Just words to others

Just words

My children could never

Understand this emptiness

Or at least

I hope not

But for some of them

I'm nothing

Just someone walking

In the desert

Waiting for that pile

Of bones and meat

And buzzards

Real buzzards

Barry G. Wick

Steatopygous

[While listening to American Theater Organ Society Radio]

Steatopygous

Shall we dance to this organ

From the days of over the top

Theater decor in major cities

And just who am I asking

To pretend he would not trip me

It's my own enlarged posterior

Sliding so easily in my shorts

Across the blanketed chair

From which I shall not rise

As gentle flutes sing their invite

He can't pretend that ten pounds

Now lost to these months

Is spectacular to everyone

Who'd watch this festooned nob

Sway in elegant elephantisms

I shall remove this extended hand

To remain seated while embarrassed

That such a thought would cross

My sleepy and swampy thoughts

Barry G. Wick

Out of the Way

Out of the way

Oh you were thinking

Of some little restaurant

With checkered red tablecloths

Surly but fun waiters

Or some highway dive

With truckers

And gravy drown

Hot beef sandwiches and mash

I was thinking of my life

That began at four

When my mother Jean

Started me on piano lessons

I hadn't heard enough music

To form an ear 

So my ego grew

And while my output was 

My fingers and vibrating strings

I was there and music was not

Here later

After long years of not playing

I'm listening to everything

Made by greats that filled

The radio and television

I never really heard

I'm out of the way

I'm not the center

Mom thought I should be

Music fills the early morning

Cab Calloway

Peggy Lee

Woody Herman

Willy Bobo

Minnie the moocher

Eats Fried Neck Bones

And some home fries

Loading Sixteen Tons

And

That's all there is

Barry G. Wick

Time

Time

Every second is a little day

The morning comes

Rising reveals the light

To guess the time

Is a game to play

It was lost by 

Forty-five minutes

Living began in dark mode

The sink is now 

An open mouth

About to spit

On an aging face

The mirror turns

The hours to years

Eyes wrinkle

Arms flap

These muscles

We're once able

To fill and work

Without a breeze

The same shirt

The same shorts

Each decision

Makes the day grow

Eyebrows shade

As face skin droops

In half circles

Its another day

As this second

Drags itself to another

Only slower

This time

This measure

This breath

Barry G. Wick

Morning Shock

Morning Shock

Out of bed

To the plastic sink

I hit the light switch

Thinking of all my failures

Refreshed to me by

The opening image

On my phone

Tall in white underwear

I think of Montana

So many passed though

Every one a winner

And I rejected them all

Out of fear that my family

Would be hurt

I only hurt myself

Keeping myself from 

Adventures filled with love

Now as light hits my eyes

Old irises close as eyelids

Late upon this sour scene

Shut me off from wrongs

The towers climbed

Falling to hard ground

The morning filled with memory

Barry G. Wick

Awake at the End

Awake at the End

I remember my birth

In hazy images

In a struggle for light

Laid dreamy upon my mother

You will carry the memory

Of my last day

That seemed so long

As it came to an end

Every step was noted

Every ripple of music

That hid upon the shadows

I am there in breath

A glissando of dreams

Enfolded me always

That is where I spent days

Instead of being awake

Barry G. Wick