Invisible

 Invisible

This is me

Outside alone

Sitting on the knoll

Looking west

At the city below me

Through grass

And pine trees

I am like I will become

Separate and different

The sun in my face

Thinking of nothing

Being nothing

Being with no one

Because I was raised

By a lonely woman

Who shopped every day

For herself

Because shoes and clothes

Filled the hole inside of her

Once a year she'd shop for me

Or give me stupid clothes

At Christmas I'd wear once

Like her closets full of dresses

And shoes

She'd cook dinner while

I practiced piano

Yelling at me to play

It again

Or angry at me

Enough to slap

Or trot out for her image

So I created different worlds

Than the one I was in

With puppets or dreams

Because no friends lived

Next door

Our house was alone

Where my parents were alone

Where I was alone

At the end of our road

On the side of a hill

Behind lonely pines

Invisible

Barry G. Wick

Monet's Dog

Monet's Dog

In rare film

now turned to video

Claude Monet paints

in his garden

at Giverny

When he leaves his canvas

we see a small dog

follow behind him

To that small dog

Monet was everything

Perhaps somewhere the name

of that little dog

is mentioned

though Monet's painting

of the little dog

is just called

"Head of the Dog"

It didn't matter

to the little dog

that Monet was Monet

It doesn't matter

to us the name

of the little dog

nor the name Monet

We just see what Monet saw

after his paintings

became more than his garden

became to him

The little dog just saw

the garden and Monet

who stood there doing something

while the little dog panted

in the heat of a summer day

Monet likely held that dog

on that quiet evening

comforted by the company

of a small dog

I want to be comforted

by a little dog

to have that little dog

be everything

that Monet's little dog

was to him

and his paintings and my poems

to mean more to my children

than they do now

to Monet

and to me

Barry G. Wick

Narcissus, their son

Cephissus and Liriope

Were really hot for each other

Liriope had a thing for river gods

Cephissus had a thing for nymphs

They did it on the shore

Of still waters

Liriope was knocked up

And had a kid they named

Narcissus

His parents thought he looked

Too hot for his clothes

So he took them off

To go sit by the still waters

Looking at his reflection

Until a fish splashed his face

He got bored with that

Asking his parents for an iPhone

Nope no way

We don't have Zeus pockets kid

Narcissus went out and found

A sugar daddy who fondled him

Bought him an iPhone

Whereupon he's been standing

In front of a mirror applying make-up

For 3,984

Of the last 4,000 years

Looking at himself

Posting selfies

Covered in layers of Max Factor

He applies with a trowel

Hey kid, you look mah-vel-ous

You really do

(I don't have the heart to point out
His wrinkled canyons)

Barry G. Wick