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Thank you to those who support me via my Paypal account: rikwrybac@yahoo.com. The government doesn't read my poetry. You do. Out of over 560 poems here on this blog by me, I hope you find one or more you like. Thank you for my readers. Thank you for your comments.

Saturday, July 26, 2025

Purification

Purification

The orange peels are drying
There are a few candles
Some glass jars are filled
With fuel and wicks

There a few poems
It's likely they won't be read
No one will hold hands
The body will be gone

Must the spirits do it themselves
Surely the person will have
Begged for forgiveness
For all their sins and mistakes

There is no common process
To give someone an entré 
Into the afterlife up or down
Some tribes and the popes

Create their ceremonies
But atheists just chew crackers
And slurp homemade soup
Or from some tasteless corporation

Say a quiet prayer to whatever
The deceased did not believe
No legacy will be extoled
Lives just disappear now

More and more families break
Friends move where no one knows
Dreams are just ignored
At the end of the day

Valued things are stolen
Or sold to a bidder who
Did not know it's possessor 
Bits of spirit go with each


Barry G. Wick






Friday, July 25, 2025

Boiled Eggs

Boiled Eggs

Yesterday I boiled a dozen
Brown eggs my friend
Brought from the food bank
Even when I had plenty

All the other eggs 
Had not been boiled
Sitting quite happily
In their carton lounging

On the stove water heated
Like starting a small torch
To seal the edges of elastic
I might use in sewing a jockstrap

I wear the jockstrap from yesterday
While my eggs sit unboiled
In their carton with other eggs
Egg cartons are like jockstraps

When the water starts to roil
I prepare an ice water bath
To finish eggs outside their hot bath
I think about dipping my eggs

One by one the eggs jump in
To the boiling water dreaming hard
My timer starts counting ten minutes
My friend reads the book I gave her

I check the timer like I
Watch the pot boil that bubbles
Around the brown eggs
My jockstrap itches for a dip

Near the end of ten minutes
I watch the seconds drop off
The ends of the earth
Like ships scream into space

The bowl of ice water dances
With the ice and chilled water
In anticipation of having eggs
In its belly when turning a page

One by one I transfer eggs
From hot water to the stainless
Ice bath wondering If these eggs
Will shrink in their jockstrap carton

Much later the eggs still 
In their shells go into
The refrigerator for tomorrow's 
Breakfast Raisins and toasted bread

I scratch myself in a clean black
Jockstrap I sewed several
Weeks ago while dreaming 
About my eggs being cool to love


Barry G. Wick


Thursday, July 24, 2025

Awake

Awake

What is this again
I'm awake like I woke
To see something then
I'd never seen

Fifty years of sleep
Lulled into darkness
By needs for money
By needs that tore me apart

Now here in this year
I see flies that sing
The yoke of music
Blistered notes of jazz

Dear Meandra I slept
In your loud bed of tranquility
Heavy breathing between dreams
As I tour these jumbled measures


Barry G. Wick

Saturday, July 19, 2025

Losing Weight

Losing Weight

Everywhere I look
There are thin men
Without an ounce of fat
They live in their pictures
Their short videos
When women complain
They are objectified
They don't see the world
Of objectified men
In tight clothing or nude
To show every artery or vein
In their semi hard or erect
Penises 
Muscles or not
I don't fit in their world
More than not
I've carried fat 
Looking in mirrors
Hating my fat
Hating myself

Now in my old age
I lose weight
With veins showing
In my old hands and arms
Skin hangs under my arms
Stretch marks show on
My stomach and legs
I eat less and less
I'll never have what I see
In other men
That I objectify
They will never 
Come to see me
I will grow older
Smaller
Lonelier




Monday, July 7, 2025

Trauma

Trauma

Shut away from a world rage
Creates a place on your own stage
Where light is turned down dim
Breakfast cooks on a recent whim
There is no more incessant pain
As the joy brings sleep with simple rain
There won't be any touch or scratch
No hurt with mother's words that match
Careless children in a weakened state
As beans and salad flee the plate
Be alert to this simple sign
The lines that fall to page with rhyme
Behind them is a needed time
For rest and peace this home is thine


Barry G. Wick



Sunday, July 6, 2025

Puer natus est nobis

Puer natus est nobis

My Latin is a little rusty
Where rust never formed
Not a dead language
Just parked in some corners
Designed to force
The less-than-catholic
Into translation frocks
Where we uninitiated
Wear a temporary collar
to pretend we are moved 
By such erudition

I had my own reason
To leave my church
Yet some still cling to theirs
To spray the world
With their Roman candles
Creating flame spewed
Over the rest of us
To grow the weeds 
That should have been sprayed
Sparked centuries ago
Filled with hate and stakes
For refuseniks of accepted lies


Barry G. Wick



-


Tuesday, June 24, 2025

the way it for me today

June 24, 2025

Hi dear readers,

I'm 73 and get around badly on my stage 4 osteoarthritic knees.  I use a walker.  My plans began a few years back.  With no money except Social Security and gifts from friends.  I knew I'd need a mobility scooter some day.  I've lost close to 160 pounds with more weight loss planned.  Mobility scooters are rated by weight.  More weight, more money.  I grew very heavy sitting with and caring for my demented mother.  But yes,  I opened my mouth and shoveled in food.  I weighed 530 pounds when I moved to the Iowa City area.  I'm now around 370 pounds and going down.
A mobility scooter has to moved somewhere in order to go into shops and malls....or parks.  That takes a dedicated carrier.  With gifts from friends I purchased  this carrier for my 20 year old jeep.  Used, normally priced new $170 to $240.... this was for sale for $100.  
Months ago I acquire a huge sail for free.
When I'm able to find a mobility vehicle
I'm going to sew a cover.  If haven't checked lately, sail cloth ranges $28 to $36 per yard.  I estimate I have 20 plus yards I acquired yards free from a nice man cleaning out his shop.  I have yet to take out the sail from its huge duffle, but there's time.
This message is my prayer to the universe
To help me get an electric scooter of sufficient strength and power to help me around the rest of my years.  Here I am as of mid-June 2025.  Ì
If you Or the universe can help in some way my PayPal account is: rikwrybac@yahoo.com 
I'm grateful for everything I have now.  My life.  My new friends in  Coralville and Iowa City.  My old friends from Rapid City, South Dakota.  My poetry tutors, my simple inspirations.  Oh,  out of the over 560 poems here, I hope you find just one you like.  Who knows.  I may have written just one good poem.  One great poem?  Probably not.  But that's for the ages to determine.  Your PayPal gifts?  Simple gratitude is all I have.
Barry G. Wick






  

Dance

Dance


We have to dance even if we sway

In our wheeled chairs

We have to sing even if we just hum

We have to know art

Even if we only feel sculpture or

Touch a wall hanging made of rope

With tin cans full of dents

Many feelings fall from us

The fruits that grow

From the rain of lìfe


Barry G. Wick

Thursday, June 19, 2025

The Lonely Audience

The Lonely Audience

We stay silent in this passage
From visions of a bright stage
To bones in padded seats
It's as if clouds pass over us
As they create flashing shadows
Leaves sparking in the trees
Bees circle in front of Spotlights

Here we watch a world baking
Unable to throw itself into fire
Insane leaders driven by gods
Soak the earth in living color
A puppy laps it up to live
Boys stomp in playing  puddles
The lonely audience picks losers

Barry G. Wick

Friday, May 30, 2025

All the Questions

All the Questions

Midtown New York
People outside the library 
My mother worked 
At the library
Probably Flushing Meadows
But who knows

My parents are visualized
Sitting on the steps between
The lions silent unmoving
To the roar of traffic
Did Leo 1 beep?
Ah, just a horn

During the war conversation 
About their work
About their fears
I never asked the many questions
I could have asked
While they lived

My children are silent
Without the dialog
I ask them of their lives
Their children and growth
Old like me they'll want to know
All the answers I never heard

Barry G. Wick