Double-click to see full version, created by Amy verrrrry late one night during the Yikes! Cymbalta! Cycle, which is still going strong – forecasted to continue at least four more months. For ABC Wednesday, the letter is T! Thanks, Rog and the Team…
Sing to Spring
(Fade in on open field, where members of the local Women’s Chorus are engaged in their annual ritual of welcoming the new season. Dressed like milkmaids; everyone thinks they are a little nutty.)
Amorous buxom choristers, dancing everywhere
Fearless, guileless, heaving inspirations, juggling knowledge and
lascivious, mature natures…
Pendulum quickens; rhythmic sashay turns vibrant windmill…
(Two hours later, at a coffee shop, the event concludes with these time-honored words…)
Yum! Zabaglione!
© 2015 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Yes, my mother told me that, one fine spring day, a group of her friends from a local women’s barbershop group got together and did indeed “Sing to the Spring.” Of course, it didn’t involve a coffee shop; methinks they were slightly hammered!
For Imaginary Garden With Read Toads, where “Play It Again, Toads” found me attracted to Marian’s ABC romp through the alphabet, along with Margaret’s post of “Spring – detail” (1890) by Thomas Wilmer Dewing. Peace, Amy (and what a fun singer was my Mom, right?)
Artwork © 2015 Amy Barlow
Rich White Guy Pyramid Scheme
Now you gaze fondly upon
your bread of life pyramid
filled with evidence of
those “special rights” you cherish
The right for your hubris to rule my life
The Right be right, the Left be damned
to burn in hell (at the intersection
of Wall Street and Walmart)
The real family values:
caring for children and elders,
keeping the whole family healthy,
ensuring a future for the children’s children
These values don’t make it
onto your pyramid
Unless they are your blood relations
and you can escape the inheritance tax
© 2015 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Ah, it’s Open Link night at dverse, and Grace is tending the bar. Haven’t posted there in a long while, so come on over and sample the hors d’oeuvres! Also at Mrs. Nesbitt’s brainchild, ABC Wednesday, where Roger and friends are on the letter O (for One Percent!). Peace, Amy
NOW! (with Sid the Kid)
Now is the time
to sing our songs
while we’ve breath in our bodies and
souls that speak out loud
those thoughts that were heretofore
only whispered
Now is the time
to sing our songs
Our collective outpouring
of grand illusions
grander delusions
of elusive goals that never
leave our sights
“If not now, when?”
We don’t do ‘then’
We won’t surrender
the immediacy of this impulse
We want it now
We sing it now
We create it now
© 2015 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
About time I introduced you to Sid the Kid, previously known as A Guy (and usually accompanied by His Ancestor, who shall remain hidden for the moment!). Sid has morphed over the years into an androgynous kid, always full of fun and optimism. I’ve been drawing him for years, much to the delight of my dear friend Sidnie, for whom I have named my little buddy… even though Sidnie is about as cis-gender a woman as I have ever met, lol.
For ABC Wednesday, the letter N… where our fearless leader, Mrs. Nesbitt, quotes John Donne and we all bring our best alphabetically minded selves to the table! An homage to the eternal liveliness of spring. May the season stir us all from our winter lairs of mind and spirit… if indeed that is where we are stuck at the moment. I know I was, but this prompt helped me break out. Woot!
Peace, Amy
#art #poetry #spring #now #sketches #coloredpencil #abcwednesday
Artwork by Amy Barlow © 2015
#cross
#cross
#golgotha
#crucifixion
#deathpenalty
#executionbystate
#sacrifice
© 2015 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
In memory of Mama, who died 23 years ago today during Lent. Also, for ABC Wednesday: Love, Lent, Loss. Peace, Amy
Acrylic on canvas, 9×12 by Amy Barlow (Liberatore)
Determined Swimmer
She’s good in water
A determined swimmer
An athlete going for the gold
With each stroke, determination grows
Hope flows with coursing blood
(a flash of daddy’s face)
Swimming for her life
or because of it
Because water will wash away
traces of THAT
Wash her clean of past, passed
(what happened, over and over again)
Almost there
Air collapsing from her lungs outward
The sea, an effervescent bubble mass
of inside, now outside
(he’s dead yet alive, too alive and too strong)
The picture fades from view
Her eyes shine in a wide-awake stare
A limp doll sleeping
on solid ground
at last
© 2015 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
The painting says it all, if you understand her determination. I have felt like this, too many times. May all who have been abused find peace… peace that does not need this kind of plunge. Amy
Zentangled
Doodlers delight in empty margins
Empty spaces need a bit of this and that
My teachers hounded me for scribbling
Riley suffered the same fate in school
Only difference: She became a bone fide artist
while her mom still doodles oodles of oddities
© 2015 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
ABC Wednesday is on Z, and I am into Zen tangles just before sleep. Such a calming pursuit, helping me to let go of the day, simply allowing my mind to follow my pencil as it meanders.
I know serious Zen Tanglers work in pen, but you know me… This blog ain’t called Sharp Little Pencil for nothing! Happy New Year and peace, Amy
Fall Moves In (a lament)
A hearty breeze brings
a shower of shattered shedlings
scattered on the lawn
At dawn, slippery, slothful
lying low; sunup warms and
wakes them to crunchcrackle delight
Within the crowd, can you see?
Lost souls… no tree to shelter them
Fodder for the loathsome length
of punishing, pewter-sky winter
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Artwork © Amy Barlow Liberatore (open image in new window for closer view)
More artwork from me, drawn this time for the theme of the poem.
I already have a head start on the winter blues.
Lots of you know what I mean, and I’ll take on the subject of “holly jolly consumerism” later on.
The thought gave birth to verse and art, so I guess something good came out of it!
For Poets United’s Poetry Pantry and Imaginary Garden With Real Toads.
Peace and light, Amy
To My Cuppa
Here we sit by a fire
The dynamic duo: Coffee and me
Dinosaurs of the old cliché,
“I was sitting in a coffee house
when this poem came to me.:
But that’s how it is.
Hands warmed by
ceramic cup, aromas of
roasted beans, baked goodies,
and the occasional
stinky college student
combine to create aMuse-ment
There is nothing so sweet
as a bite to eat and a sip of
my dearest co-conspirator
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Pictamy also © Amy Barlow Liberatore (click to enlarge)
Food and Writing, Writing and Food. Yeah, that’s the call from Kim Nelson at Poets United. It inspired both the pictamy® and the poem. Food and writing are an inseparable combination… unless you prefer Drinking and Writing, but than try reading what you wrote the next morning, much less tracking down all the cocktail napkins. You know who you are, ha ha.
While the coffee is first with me, always, there’s a nosh… Right, Buddah? Also in the margins at my poetic lilypad, Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. Peace, Amy
Had a wild hair and drew this the other night. Whatcha think? Click on image to enlarge.
Also at my lilypad at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. Amy
Sharp Little Pencil 