Not a Prayer as Such

Do you see me in the sky

I am on the ground

trying to catch your eye

I'll wave my arms

and scream a lot

but I wonder if your angels

are against my plot

to just talk to you

to get your advice

on what to do next

and pay the price

for all my foolish ways

and goofy days

when I was human

and quite perplexed

I can't call you god

or some other name

because from those

you've taken blame

for all the bad things

on this earth

and while I nod

and poke the air

in hopes that you are there

I've grown to believe

you might not care

even just a little

or a jot and a tittle

So it goes

my invisible friend

I've run out of ways

to get you to attend

to the chores

you once were famous for

creation and all it's glory

I'm fairly certain my simple problems

can't be cured

if you just hear my story

Back to your room

as magnificent it might be

but I suspect

you are as gloomy as I

with all your creation here

that's never correct

and from what this stems

we suffer we cry we cannot act

so where you live

is as dark and dreary

as what I'm assured surrounds me

So there I said what I've felt

blurred and bleary-eyed

dry of all the tears

I once shed

and if you heard this soul

turned toward me or not

I got it off my chest

the rest is just the same old thread

you hear most every day

from folks like me

the lesser of the tribes

you put to wander here

Copyright © 2013 by Barry G. Wick

To Make Sense

It's dark with the only light

a screen across the room

upon which I type these words

The fans of the computer

The fingers pounding out words

The refrigerator in the kitchen

chugging out ice

and ice smashing back and forth

in a plastic container with a handle

You can't call it a glass

it's not a plastic glass

because it's not glass

it's a plastic

I must have spent 20 minutes

looking for the recipe

because I wanted to make

some sense

I know

trying to make sense

in the dark

when a yawn comes upon

and the stomach growls

I just have to wait

and go to the store

common sense

what is the price today

Copyright (c) 2012 by Barry G. Wick

The Blunders

The Blunders are guests in this house

who live all around me

They touch my hair

They stroke my hands

but mostly they just rattle around

like a marble in a tin can

alerting my soldier mind

of their forage into my territory

Often, they come in the dark

in dreams

strange allegories blended

with the pinpoints of stars

and wisps of smoke and dew

as hard as I might try

I cannot get them to leave

They are embroidered on my clothes

and often sneak beneath my skin

The older I get the more annoying

they become

all of them are the child's mind

I once possessed

when I'd just as soon forget

them at the side of a country road

an unwanted pet wandering

without the love of family

Oh, don't think of me as cruel

they have taught me morality

patience of thought and deed

the importance of passing time

and distant colors I'd thought were gray

but come back to blaze

through my thoughts

fires burning out of control

I only want doused

but no, they don't put out

they put me out and I am annoyed

by their constant caresses

Copyright 2012 (c) by Barry G. Wick

Quintet for the Confused Mind

I am flying through

Antonin's mind

perhaps some European scene

or Iowa

when nearly 94 my mother

says this isn't very good then

your trees are blowing outside aren't they

they aren't my trees

you own them

they belong to you

those trees?

Yes

they don't look like anything I ever had

Perhaps Dvorak owned them

as his piano glided

like Dakota air

through the branches

of these spruce

and the Box Elder

beside the creek

Copyright (c) 2012 by Barry G. Wick

The Folly of Faggots

Farley is a fireman

from Fargo.

Farley's fella Fritz is a fiberglass finisher

from Faulkton.

Farley and Fritz:

fun, fashionable,

fapping and frenching friends.

Farley and Fritz are fathers

for Frank and Felicia,

founding a family

from failed flings.

Father Fred fulminates inflexibly,

“Foolish faggots,

freedom is for fundamental families,

forebears of forever!

Faggots forsake families!

Freedom is a folly for faggots!”

For Farley and Fritz

Father Fred is a freak

and a fuddy-duddy.

Father Fred influences fanatics.

Friday, the first of February,

Farley and Fritz

feel fractured fingers, forearms and faces

failing to fend off

ferocious fighters forging fatalities:

fiends of the fist in a frenzy.

Finally,

Farley and Fritz

are phantoms,

a foundation for a field of flowers,

favorite of the foxes.

Frank and Felicia are afflicted

and facing fears of the future.

Farley and Fritz:

fallen friends,

forever focused,

famished for freedom.

Copyright © 2012 by Barry G. Wick

Guardrails

On my route home

along the highway

are guardrails

three wire strands

between zink-coated metal posts

punched into the ground

that will hold back

errant drivers and their cars

from the ditches

on either side

The memory of you

punches through the invisible

barriers I put on my road

where once I drove into your ditch

and was hooked in the brambles

you created for me day after day

This is not fair

I made a recovery from the accident

that was us

I sent out the crew

to make those repairs

truckloads of beefy guys

with hammers and wrenches

in their hardhats and toolbelts

I even inspected their work

in photo after photo

touch after touch

thrust after thrust

I've just sent a wrecker

to pull my thoughts

away from you

and I expect to be on my way

after I make the payment

old memories force me to make

the fresh pain of poor driving

along this rocky backroad

Copyright © 2012 by Barry G. Wick

238 Ghosts

[Part of a multi-part, epic poem currently being written surrounding events of June 9, 1972, The Black Hills Flood, during which thousands became homeless, hundreds and hundreds injured, and 238 people lost their lives in one night of flash flooding.]

They roam the land where I live

and yet I don't live here

they do

I am as invisible to them

as you are

They go shopping

for their invisible lunches

full of twigs and broken glass

they walk through the wrinkled hills

filled with steep evergreen canyons

as deep as wooden coffins

looking for nothing

but what they see

just empty towns

and houses without people

These collaborators in a dark parade

occasionally meet each other

nod, say hello

some know each other

others do not

Their silent conversations

contain broken tail lights and splintered siding

with knowing glances inside knowing eyes

unseen portraits to each other

slashed canvases covered in damaged oils

seething with life and love

none of it loud

quiet ghosts filling empty spaces

Magnetized by one day and the hours of rain

they stick to the sides of canyons

bits of bark trees and grass

an occasional coffee pot

part of a chair

the springs of a twisted bed

across the creek from a house

that stands to this day

Sometimes naked

they breathe as they remember

their last breath

the chest rises and falls

their last breath goes in and out

seconds after second minutes after minute

hours after hour days after day

their last breath makes them live for us

Copyright © 2012 by Barry G. Wick

Oppression

out comes
the delicate dance of the overlords
which shows how they truly are
and
how they see themselves
inside their protected world
surrounded
by their illusions
of safety and security
their bristling weapons
shyly
displayed in their over-politeness
because
they always remind us
that
we're just passing through
what they already control


Copyright © 2012 by Barry G. Wick

Another Prison for this Glorious Day

I must rush now

the day speeds away

when it occurs to me

my world around me is larger

than I think it is

despite my place

attached to my elderly mother

a fleshy ball with an invisible chain

of memories and feelings

There were times I ventured

beyond these walls

and thought myself so fortunate

to have met so many people

and let my body brag and dance

away from this creek and valley

Those experiences inspired very little

and pushed no words to the creamy top

of that murky milky life

There is much more for me in the quiet

and the shade of the evergreens

than all the pain the beyond created

Because here I can finally see

the dried leaves of the woodbine

that hangs on the screen

the patches of snow

that remain through the winter

and the water that swirls and roils

through the backyard

even if only through

a few dirty windows

which sun barely slides

Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick

How Rude the Eagle

A blue sky above

a yellow checked tablecloth

where Mother sits to face the creek

for breakfast

above

a bald eagle makes circles

above the eastern slope

of Norris Peak

when the sun is right

we see the flash of white

from its tail and head

first several circles one way

then several in the opposite direction

a quick turn away to the north

to seek some other space

where it can't be seen

by an old woman in her wheelchair

and her son who nears 60

who both dream of such freedom

she from her age and many infirmities

and me from daily chores

that make the knee and back

feel like they've broken

when mother asks if the eagle

would like to use her handkerchief

and have a piece of her granola bar

And all I can think about is a snot-nosed

American bald eagle

about to munch on a whitetail carcass

and needing to wipe it's bloody beak

on mother's handkerchief

No Quaker Oats granola bars for thee or me

The nerve of that bird

when it's got all those flags

that flap in the breeze

just ready for eagle boogers

red white and blue

Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick

A Waltz in March-time

You can't imagine what 38,000 years

will do to change the world

and yet attitudes will remain the same

Human are humans after all

The great weather had come

and stayed

The deserts became verdant

years of peace and plenty

Where Mogadishu had been desert

a city of mud brick

now great forests

gardens of fruit and vegetables

as it was all across Africa

Yes oil in Saudi Arabia

but giant forests of redwood-like trees

The world burned wood

and the great greenery of the planet

sucked up all the evil

man could put into the air

He told me he couldn't love me

because love hurt too much

Nothing changes

even the dreams are unbelievable

snow in Timbuktu

Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick

The Big Drip

Diamonds falling from the trees

as two days of snow

bright white to half gray

sits on the evergreen

to catch the third day's sun

splitting light

as they drop branch to branch

they remind me

why my father had his ashes

tossed into the ocean

why wait for the water

to wash you to the final

frothy waves

when you can be dumped into the big waters

and know you didn't have to wait

centuries to make it to the nearest beach

Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick

Ben and Peter, beside the Sea

remembering

Benjamin Britten 1913-1976

Peter Pears 1910-1986

The excitement of a radio studio

at the time

the best source in the world

the microphones to everywhere

to be heard and be enjoyed

in the great days of radio

the same year

that Adolf murders all his gay friends

in the long night with knives

and here in this radio studio

the singers prepare

rehearsal for the great British audience

where a handsome young composer

meets a handsome older tenor

only to fall in love later

at the worst of the war

when going to jail in their country

meant shame and shun

Ben wrote songs for Peter

Ben wrote parts for Peter

while Hugh Auden and Ben

made a habit of art

and Isherwood made a pal of Ben

at the bath on Jermyn Street

Ben and Peter friends for 42 years

in love from the war on

collaboration at every level of music

in a freer America

to spend bright summer days with

Aaron

and all the boys

who weren't allowed to fight

the powers of Paragraph 175

who had to keep their secret

and they kept the secrets of others

pianist composer and tenor

the dreamer and his voice

open even to the Queen

and they would remember the war

with minor chords

of the saddest music

Ben with his requiem

and Peter singing the debut

at Coventry Cathedral

lionized by the audience

as they privately remember so many

secret friends who went away

in the fight.

Now remembered in the moments

of “Moonlight”

when one hears the soft

love words they say to each other

together for eternity

unmarried except

for the shared notes

they sang and played

the rings of golden vibration

that circle their boney fingers

side by side

north of St. Peter and St. Paul

in Aldeburgh, Suffolk

as they shimmer beside the sea

KENNETH GREEN (1905-1986), PETER PEARS AND BENJAMIN BRITTEN, 1943.

Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick

Elvis Has Left the Building

It's a Saturday in October 2011

in the Christian calendar

5772 in the Hebrew calendar

4708 in the Chinese calendar

1432 in the Muslim calendar

and today in the Lakota calendar

in South Dakota

of the United States

where two people

of German Scottish and Norwegian descent

listen to a Japanese musician

with an English orchestra

play an Austrian-Bavarian composer's

piano concerto

on a Minnesota radio station

in a country he barely heard of

over wires and glass fiber

on equipment

made in China and who knows where

at a quality only available to the richest

of Salzberg and Vienna

250 years ago

and still

Mozart

hasn't left the galaxy

Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick

Two Poems from the Same Morning

An Automatic Yard Light During the Fall


Yesterday, the dark brown turkeys, four of them
waded through the dry, fallen leaves
only to fly across the white water of the creek
to find better peckings
This speckled backyard waits
for the whitetail deer
in the depth of a yellow and red fall
Perhaps they came in the colorless night
through the evergreens south of the house
when the light sparked on
slowing my descent into sleep

Mother looks at the same birch
day after day
and says how beautiful the yellow and white tree is
as it loses it leaves in a golden rain
Mother loses her white hair
and her fading memory
of this yard as she
passes through like an aging animal
in search of its next meal
and she only set off the yard light
during her gray years
a bright yard light that woke me up
to the rainbow of this life


Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick




The Search

I see a yellow leaf caught
in an evergreen to stay the winter
I wait for the passing of deer
across dry grass, brown weeds and fallen leaves
I warm my hands in sun through dirty windows
that shows the dust on a flat table
I smell the dirty plates and unwashed towels
after a small breakfast
I am the legs that hurt, the back that aches
and the swollen joints in my hips
I sense the sun push away from this valley
when the clouds come between us
I droop like heavy eyelids
as the day props itself up on stony hills
I clamber for the earth to fill in
and smooth over these wrinkles
I search for the bridge that crosses
from this life into the uncertain

Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick

The Wee Hours

That's when I get up to go wee
then sit
to stare at a bright screen
across the darkened room
and worry
about everything I can't control
pretending to be powerful
able to build tall buildings
dream my grandiosities
when the facts strike me hard
and I know the crash comes
from around the corner
of the dreams that awakened me

and so I end up
in an update scenario
filled with multiple screens
which demand my attention
as they douse me with cool light
from broken promises
and wishful thoughts
then off to sleep again
to keep this boat
from its frightful leaks
of life in bondage
to the unseen force
a gravity that swims
though each minute
that turns from gold to jaundice


Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick

No Moon Tonight

22:55 and just returned
from the Safeway
where Roma tomatoes
were a buck and 29 a pound
and I chatted with a lady
listening to an audio book
on a Fujitzu portable computer
Her son favors hard charging
games at high speed
on lightning Internet

Now, 9 miles west of Rapid City
the yard light sends its orange hue
to the neighbors and beyond
when the howling begins.

I can listen to Chopin
but when the coyotes talk
on top of Norris Peak
there's no chill like an old chill
and I'm in the darkened cave
eyes wide open
spear stick at hand


Copyright © 2011 Barry G. Wick

The Other in Flames

“I am the way, the truth and the life.”
Yeshua as transcribed by someone now called John.

The Other in Flames


There is always some teacher
some guru
some self who thinks
in a twisted way
to find the moment of your weakness
when you will accept what is outside
inside of you
and they never let you go

It is the gesture of their hand
their counting of fingers
their conversation for which you paid
their love their friendship their manner
that spark of what they are
and as you uncover your layers
they scale your walls
that protect the nuggets of soul
you are already

You are your own traitor
who walks away from the wooden horse
to sleep under the common moon
who thinks we are all the same
under layers of skin the soul
one and unending
wake up and burn it now
for the soldier chisels his way out
to kill you in your sleep

And what of mothers and professors
who clutch at you with their scowls
their spanking thoughts revealed
when all the time their goal
in not the same
as what you know inside
of what you are
separate alone with yourself
in silence and perfect
without these words
you should throw away


Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick

The Silent Wave

In the great need for silence
the sound of water
low and high tones
in its race across stones
that bump and thump
in the dark night.
And the voices that sometimes
speak from the curls and eddy
a stray line of remembrance
some phrase from the past
as if someone is really speaking
and you think
you've heard a voice
when it's only water
it's holy movements
speaking of past lives
telling us of the people
who played in it's reflections
stared as it passed them on a shore
on the edge of it universe of cycles
the waves of water that wash over death
the pounds of water that smooth rock to sand
and soon it all becomes
a blur in the background
a constant drone of submergence
the play of drum, string and voice
horns of drops and slides of invisible bones
down which we travel to a forgiving sea
sometime in our future sometime
as it all goes away through
valleys and canyons
stripping the flesh
from this loving earth
from this lonely imperfect body


Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick

Kiddie Parade with Jazz and Pain

A simple breakfast on the screened porch
with the tiny wasps feeding on the woodbine
jazz from a station in San Francisco
here I am munching raisin bran in skim milk
at the side of a small river
full of trout and frogs
and boulders with their rolling thumps
a sliced orange
drinking cheap coffee
Kurt Elling sings his flat nasality

This won't last forever
just as my infected tooth has finally
been relieved for this day
I'm feeling the reach of the vine
to the southern side of the screens
spreading out to shield me from the sun
they thinking that following the sun
now that morning awakens everything

Every day something new to see and do
and yet it all seems the same
like watching a series of childrens' parades
day after day
enough of cute costumes
and dressed-up dogs
pulled in wagons or dragged on leash
My mask is hard to see through
as I waddle down the street
hand in hand with another nearly blind child
when I see myself years older
at the side of the street
sitting on a porch screened
from the biting world
and the water flows
in an endless roil

the only savior here is a swinging bass
jesus deftly pulling the strings
on his solo
followed by big daddy on piano
and a holy spirit on drums
this is a religion
which echos on long streets
when I suddenly lose the hand
I hold
and wonder if I can make it
to the curb of my old age
inside the sunlit morning
with an empty bowl
and rinds
just there a trout grabs a black fly
Kurt seized by a grateful fan
in a bear hug
too many teeth
waiting for their own infections
like rocks pushed
by rivers of pus
bumps on the roof of my mouth
spiked by vicious bugs
that drain the yuck
from raisins
like wasps on this ever expanding
tree of woodbine
and a daybreak filled with shards of sunlight
enough to squint through the covered face
on a march through a world of applause
tutu-covered pekinese
and three cats wailing over the bay


Copyright © 2011 by Barry G. Wick