How come some have it all, she wonders
The clothes the Corvettes the coats so warm
Houses so big, all for one movie star and her boy toy
Pools they don’t swim in, just get drunk beside
More cars than they could ever drive
like little boys collecting marbles

Women panicked by age, skin stretched and sewn
Poisons injected into foreheads, butt fat into lips,
plastic made for Barbie breasts and big booty

Arnold must sit in a private spa with a head full
of foil to keep that blond, Redford, too
Hair Plugs For Men (I’m not only an action star;
I’m also a client) – only his agent knows for sure
Guys gayer than picnic baskets, hand on the girl’s
knee – but never higher than that.

Rich people dressed like… clowns.
BEIBER! Pull up your damned pants!
HEIDI KLUM! Put those girls in a bra!
KARDASHIANS! Just go away, now!
Jeez, they are all so fake…

My shopping cart, yeah, this is real
And my cup full of change from kind people
This bench, solid and all mine, for now
I may be homeless but I’m not a public joke
Here on Hollywood near Vine,
I’m the most authentic person in town

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil

Poets United wanted poems on truth, on authenticity. As seen through the eyes of a homeless woman, we begin to question what is real and why some people work so hard at faking it to appear authentically young, perky, and prosperous. Peace, Amy

Silence is for remembrance, thoughts of her childhood.

Summers… The dappled pony on Aunt Beth’s farm, riding at a canter back to the house. Shucking corn, peeling skin from squash, separating rind from dead-ripe melons. The tang of lemonade, made from scratch. Braised ribs from Moody, the steer who kicked and broke her wrist. Dinners on a platter; breakfast straight from Grandma’s cast-iron skillet.

There was no tomorrow, at least not until Ma came to collect her and the boys, back to the fast-paced, grimy city, home.

She switches gears to five years ago when, after careful moral inventory, she chose. Rejecting city life for the solace of the country cloister. Truth is transitory; choosing the habit over skinny jeans, long sleeves over skimpy T’s. Her chestnut hair fluttered to the floor, shorn like a sheep at Beth’s farm. Her simple cell: table with wash basin, lamp, bed, cross overhead.

A final goodbye to family as she enters the authenticity of spiritual life, simplicity over audacity. Ma lingers at the cloister gate, remembers how little Sandy (now Sister Joan) took catechism class so seriously. Sister Joan smiles from two floors above, then joins her order in preparing a home-cooked dinner to be driven into town for the homeless.

Shuck, peel, braise, remember.

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil

This was for Kerry O’Connor’s Get Listed at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads; words can be found HERE. Yes, I took liberties with the word “malinger,” but hey, my Iroquois name would be “Plays With Words.”  Kerry said to use two or three, but I went to town and used ‘em all!

My BFF, John, was at one time a brother in the Franciscan Order; later, he became a priest. Now he’s thoroughly enjoying life as an ex-priest/healthcare worker, moonlighting as a piano bar player in Philadelphia. Man, John can SING. He even performed “New York, New York” at his ordination party (including key change, per his instructions to the band). Peace, Amy

I.
She sings
for the lonely
whose martini glasses
teeter their moods to sighs of “then”
Choosing songs with good bones, timeless, misty
Watching hookups destined to fail
Witness to a rapt drunk
who cries; to whom
she sings

II.
The blur
of is/is not
falls upon her lightly
winds around her soul so tightly
She seeks solace in the bitter bottle
Battles blues with burn of bourbon
Diff’rent bottle, the script
would help her beat
the blur

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil

PROCESS NOTES:
First, thematic: She Sings is from my days in piano bars, where I was the only performer. Some nights I found that the sights and emotions of my customers were more interesting than my music. The reference to “good bones” is, of course, from old houses in terms of reconstruction.

The Blur can be any sort of mental disorder, when the person chooses to self-medicate rather than follow the doctor’s plan. In this case, she has received her diagnosis, gotten her meds, and won’t “play along.” Most heavy drinkers I know don’t gave the insurance or don’t realize they need a psychiatrist; I’ve seen this lead to the worst ends possible, including several suicides… and my mother’s lifelong battle with booze.

AS TO THE FORM: A Rictameter is a “form with a shape.”  The syllable count is 2-4-6-8-10-8-6-4-2.

A bit of history from the Real Toads site: Created in the early 1990s by two cousins, Jason D. Wilkins and Richard W. Lunsford, Jr., for a poetry contest that was held as a weekly practice of their self-invented order, The Brotherhood of the Amarantos Mystery. The order was inspired by the Robin Williams movie Dead Poets Society.

In the Forests of Time

In the forests of time
grows a tree of great stature
and mythical powers

A statue and a garden and
a haven for those who crave
a little time

The Key of Life stands guard
ensuring time is not wasted
but hasty exits are seldom

Linger in this forest with me
as we examine the footprints
of the mysteries of life

Take a branch, any branch
Hunker down a spell
Lost in the growth of time

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil

Chelsea Bednar is an up-and-coming artist; she lent us use of this image for Margaret’s “Artistic Interpretation” prompt at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. I was inspired by the clocks and the small ankh on the left side, known as the “key of life.” For more poets’ interpretations, click HERE, and for Chelsea’s website, click HERE. Also for dverse Open Mic Night.  Peace to all, Amy

Meanwhile, at my other poetic home, Kim Nelson at Poets United wanted offerings about the universe. Here is mine. Peace, Amy

The Universe Within

Deep inside our outer skin
Underneath that layer, within

Past the muscle, stretching leather
and our arteries’ coursing tether

Deep within our very bones
a universe that cries and groans

Waters of our bodies’ form
Chemicals upset the norm

Feel the balance quiver, shake
Know that inner, dark earthquake

Hormones, drugs in all our meat
Stay within us, to compete

Weak, our natural defenses
Only diet recompenses

Choosing the organic way
Balance will once more hold sway

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil

The effect of CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, also known as Factory Farms), where animals are captive and packed tightly together, means not only growth hormones but antibiotics in grocery store meats are partly stored and partly excreted into sewage. Meanwhile, Monsanto continues its stranglehold on the produce farms, expanding to a point where their air-sprayed delivery of (sometimes human waste) fertilizer is threatening to migrate onto organic farms. Your best bet? Buy local, organically grown produce – and support small, family-run farms.

Peace and health to all, Amy

In Puerto Rico, you wouldn’t know spring
if it rose up and bit you in your tanned ass.

In Wisconsin, it’s freeze, then thaw, then
freeze again… then roast in your bedding.

In Upstate NY, you go to school to get
ready for finals and sweat through class.

Spring is an unpredictable, mercurial,
unsentimental storm of hot and cold.

April may shower, but May does not
guarantee flowers or blue skies.

May is here, yet Spring has snowstorms
hidden in the seasonal envelope’s fold.

It’s muddy. It’s messy and inconvenient.
Spring hides behind a sunny-side disguise.

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil

For Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Izy wanted the truth about Spring… all the bad parts. I’ve been through the season in every place mentioned, and I guarantee that I never put away the snow shovel until after Mother’s Day. We once had a surprise storm on (no joke) May Day, and it dumped three feet of wet snow, made me pull little Riley back to the house from the ditched car on a plastic sled, and still the Jeeps and SUVs were out on the road doing donuts. That’s the storm that made possible the picture of Riley above! Whodathunkit?

Also at my poetic all-season resort, Poets United.  Peace, Amy

Rasslin’ and Roller Derby with Ruthie

She’s two glasses into
Dad’s homemade saki
and it’s only noon.
“Gettem! Crushem!”

Auntie Ruth, banging on her tray,
rocking her wheelchair with
with fearsome might, and she’s
pretty tight. Saturday Rassling.

“That fight, we shoulda had
money on it, Amer,” she smiles.
I’m 12 and her best companion
since she moved in with the family.

“Where’s the National IN-quirer?”
I wave it and remind her, “First,
Roller Derby, then, the world news.”
Time for Joanie Weston, Amazon.

Old-school roller derby, women
big as fridges scooting, scrapping,
scraped up and bruised. Unlike the
rassling, these girls are out for blood.

“That Joanie must be hell on her husband,”
she snickers, clicking her false teeth.
“One more snort, Amer.” I fill her
punch cup with Dad’s toxic moonshine.

“Ruthie, something tells me Joanie Weston
isn’t married,” I offer. “You remember
Aunt Frank?” Frances, the loner sister in
cowboy boots with a femme friend.

“Yup. You think it’s that way with
Joanie?” I nod assuredly. “Well,” says
Ruthie thoughtfully, “then I hope she has
a nice girlfriend, like Frankie did.” Wink.

Roller Derby ends; Joanie and her team are
victorious once again. “And now,” parking
my sneaks on a table, “The evening news.”
ALIEN MEETS NIXON AT WHITE HOUSE

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Image from Amy’s collection; please do not copy family photos.

Another from Mom’s side of the family, the irrepressible Ruth Stoll, sister of Grandma Blanche Laughlin. Auntie Ruth moved in with us after her 98-year-old mother died. Ruthie would get so potted on saki that all the wooden baseboards were scratched up from bad steering!  She was a pistol and kept the whole family hopping, especially on penny-ante poker night (we used the same pennies over and over again and put them back in the cup when we were done).

For ABC Wednesday (R) and my two poetic roller rinks, Poets United and Imaginary Garden With Real Toads.

Stealth is Everything

Drone, circling for attach.
Silhouette on desert-blazing moon,
a crooked arc,
soon makes a gaping space
in an Afghan town, bro-
ken
lives

Quivering mouth of a mother
calling for her boy
in this cave that was
his school two minutes ago.

Medics minding limbs
destined for amputation.
Crowd chants a renewed vow
of vengeance, fists in air.

(Dear Mr. President,
Get our troops
the hell out of there.)

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Image from Wikimedia Commons, open license, by Gideon Tsang.

For The Sunday Whirl, where words can be found HERE. Also at my two poetic homes (yes, it’s true, I’m bi-site-ual), Poets United and Imaginary Garden With Real Toads and saving for dverse Open Mic night!

Not much more to say about this, except that IEDs are designed to kill Americans – and if North Korea had oil underground, we’d already have waged another war on them under George W. Bush (may his reign rest in pieces).

Peace. I really mean it. Amy

So first up, Poets United’s Poetry Pantry wanted posts for moms. Second, Poetic Bloomings called for computer-generated lists of anagrams of our own name – and a poem written with ONLY those words that appeared on the list. Well, “Liberatore” just about blue-screened my computer, so it’s my birth name I used.

FOR POETS UNITED

Mama, Mommy, Mom

Mama,
tell me story ’bout
going to Sleepytown
and then we gonna
say prayers.
I love you, Mama.

Mommy,
can I join the Brownies?
Really?
Mommy,
can we go over my
spelling words?
Cool!
Mommy,
they want me to play
softball – maybe pitch.
Can you –
You’re gonna be an
assistant coach?
Wow, Mommy,
you are so busy
but you always have
time for me.
You rock!

Mom,
just a text for now,
I’m in the middle of finals,
but I’ll call you tomorrow.
Happy Mother’s Day,
dear mother, I love you
more than chocolate!

Now matter what name Riley called me,
I was always there for her.
And I always will be.
That’s the blessing of being a mother.

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Image from Amy’s collection, “Riley, one day old”

———————————–

FOR POETIC BLOOMINGS  (anagram poem)

All in My Name
(Amy Louise Barlow)

I’m a bluesy limbo mouse
Alias, lousy bellow yowl

Bosomy ruby allure, yum
My morals: slim, wily, muley

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil

Hydrangeas on Block Island, 1988
Image by Joanne Bergenwall,
licensed under Wikimedia Commons

Blooms began to give way to age
as summer heat set in, bushes and
hedges of hydrangea, a veritable
fantasy of violet on the small island.

The guys were gigging there and I
was large with Riley, up early each
morning to watch blossoms adorning
the pathway to town. I walked down

to the gate and set out around the block
taking stock of purple bunches, hung
on branches like ornaments. The most
lovely stage of the hydrangea is in its

swan song: Faded to a pinkish hue as
crisp brown edges form, they look like
the silk inside of my Grandma’s purse.
Violet, you were never lovelier than

that summer, me in full childbearing
bloom, you holding on long enough
to strut your stuff and bring me peace
before the band awoke, grumbling.

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil

Riley’s father had a gig on Block Island, just off the coast of Rhode Island. I skipped a lot of the performances, preferring to sit on a rocker on the front porch and talk to our hostess about our baby to be. We’d watch as an elbow or foot almost punched through my thin summer dress, chatting. We spoke of the bushes, and violet was the choice of everyone on her block. In Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, the character Shug declared, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” I think she was onto something.

This was for Kim Nelson’s “violet” prompt at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads.  During my meditation today, I was whisked back in time, when I was in as full a bloom as the flowers.  Peace, Amy