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

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