Poem on the Passing of the Dear Leader

Our bodies have turned to tears

and we run to the rivers

as fast as all tears flow

to get away from this grief

that consumes us

We shall be free of this grief

when our bodies meet the ocean

that has become the tears of the world

We give up all our food

so that you may eat in the next life

Your strength of purpose

comes from our empty pantries

as you fight for us

our enemies

beyond this world

And then our tears shall turn to steel

the steel of our weapons

and the muscles in our arms

as we join you to destroy

the imperialists who shame themselves

that they cannot see your greatness

and feel the love you had

for the peoples of the world

Our hearts are now empty

and etched with the letters

the great purpose of our lives

to be close to the heat

the was

your great name

We shall always remember

you

Kim.....something....something

Copyright © 2011 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

What Abraham Knew and When He Knew It

It cannot see the shadows

in the valley

nor the wind

that today

swayed the ponderosa pine

yet I have discovered

the value of my words

to the world

as valuable as any

written by a computer

programmed to write

And what of the monkeys

given typewriters

who spend their days

in attempts to write Shakespeare

so am I no better than

those self-same monkeys

stifled by the weaknesses

of today's language

My expectation is a lie

I tell to me

the thought that I might write

one poem that could remember

me to a future world

or that my death might have the means

to net a few lines in the obituaries

of faraway newspapers

their readers amazed they never heard

of my efforts or books

enough to make them feel

they had never accomplished

even the smallest recognition

of a world in the throes of ignorance

So I've charmed these thoughts

from the shadows of a windy day

and the movement

of unimportant evergreens

that gives me the truth

of my exhalations

that they are not enough

to move any tree

in the slightest direction

and to have this manifest

fall as if I have made a fault

that cannot shake the world

Oh, a friend might send a note

to assure me that a line I write

has bent their conscious path

and caused a shift to new directions

their words to heal my lonesome wounds

and dreamy sores upon the invisible skin

I craft upon my burdened exterior

where those words become a salve

expected to seal the canyons

on the surface of my ballooned ego

what would be better

than the silence I know

the compliment of the ages

for poets

For few know that Lincoln wrote poems

these simplest expressions of humanity

the leavings on a empty plate

where they are passed to the cat

to lick clean and have as much impact

and only I can free myself

from the encroachment of a solid world

where such pronouncements

can no longer penetrate

the largest exhale though

the spiked leaves of an evergreen

on a windy day

bitch bitch bitch

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

A Bunch of Grapes

(for Camille Saint-Saëns)

You played piano
then exhorted the crowd
to choose
which of 32 Beethoven Sonatas
they'd hear for an encore

At 11 years old

yes
a genius
but only youth demands such a choice
of its audience
being handed a bunch
of unique grapes
each with the taste
of its own perfect vineyard

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