Life is Good When…
Life is good when children smile, their bellies full.
Life is good when girls play rough-and-tumble
after their tea party.
When boys are allowed to cry without ridicule…
Life is good when all folks have a home, however humble,
with food on the table and friends to share it.
When community clinics offer free health care
to those who need it most: addicts, women facing choices
that men don’t think twice about, prenatal care for those
who choose motherhood, help for those who don’t…
Life is good when handguns are melted to forge plows.
When women can wear hijabs and not encounter
disapproving looks from unveiled Anglos.
When Mom can choose to stay home because Dad
makes enough and has Union protections, or when
Mom decides the kids are all in school and can work
at something that exercises her mind and passion…
Life is good when the Christmas tree has more ornaments
on the tree than overpriced Chinese- made toys under it.
When the family gave more to charity than to Wal-Mart…
Life is good when every couple can hold hands and love
their lives together without condemnation from straights.
Life is good when the National Guard is back on US soil
and enlisted troops are all home, receiving VA care and
using their GI benefits to get an education…
We’re waiting for the day when life is good.
Until then, this dream is brought to you by your sponsor,
the Creator, who reminds us all that life is a gift…
use it wisely and with love.
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Sunday Scribblings, an alternate take on “Life is Good.” Also at my poetic heart and hearth, Poets United.
Boulevard Noir
I was a crumb, out of a job again,
feeling fallow, hanging out with the other writers at Schwab’s.
An obsolete automobile, titanic and shiny as a new penny,
pulled up; we were slack-jawed, admiring the grandeur.
In front, a bald chauffeur; his passenger, a forgotten icon, Silent era.
She offered me a job, plus room and board.
(Around repo time, one swallows one’s pride and hides
one’s rambunctious side, replacing it with unctuous politeness.)
I approached a mansion at the address she gave me. Rang the bell;
the stately old house echoed, hollow, eerie.
Her butler took my coat and placed my fedora on the hat-rack.
Who could know that, within one month, I’d be
avoiding her embrace in the palatial garden and
waltzing her around the grand ballroom at a party
“Just for the two of us, my darling…”
And who could predict I’d end up face down her in “cement pond,”
blood lacing the water around my bobbing, lifeless body?
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For The Sunday Whirl and at Poets United.
I missed church this week because I was down with the flu. So it’s only right that, I should post a revised version of a religious “food-for-thought” poem I wrote long ago.. Whether you agree or disagree, ALL comments are respected and appear unedited on this blog (unless you use the F word or something really tacky like that). Only hateful comments which are directed at OTHER bloggers will be deleted; hateful comments directed at me are fine, I don’t mind the heat and I love all haters (which just kills them!).
Also posted at Poets United, the poetic collective. Peace to all, Amy
ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE
When confronted with yet another conundrum,
the umpteenth tease to ensnare the “troublemaker,”
the Learned Ones asked,
“Should we pay tax to Rome?”
Jesus replied, “Give to http:Caesar that which is Caesar’s;
give the rest to God.”
If we wiped “In God We Trust” off every coin,
all forms of currency,
would God be offended?
Cease to exist?
Wipe a soon-to-be-designation “sinful city” off the map?
(Those pastors never predict; they only proclaim)
“Under God” inserted in the Pledge in the 1950s
assuring all that we were not a Godless nation
(like those Commies in Russia)
Would God disappear from our lives should we
revise the pledge, restoring it to the original?
If the Word is written on our hearts
why do we need it minted as well?
What reassurance does it give the poor man
who inserts In God We Trust into a slot machine
hoping to stave off foreclosure?
God is our Creator, and genderless:
This is my personal belief, not a universal truth.
Do schoolchildren, reciting the Pledge by rote,
paying no particular attention to one word over another,
believe in God more because God’s name is in it?
No Godless person am I
nor spiteful
Just pondering what I read in my Bible today
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Still under the weather – and yet, there’s that dizzy, “you ain’t goin’ nowhere” feeling of the flu that still gives rise to interesting thoughts.
First off, you MUST check out this link if you interested in (and, like me, vociferously object to) the Nazi/Fascist/Far-Right phenomenon of banning and/or burning books. Some might not like it (not because of subject, but because the title is something about “booksluts” and they use the “vee-jay-jay” word (yes, I have one, too. What’s the big deal?). There are some useful links. I BOUGHT my daughter a copy of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair when she was a teen. BANNED! SOCIALIST LEANINGS! Click HERE.
Please do check it out, but NOT until you have read this poem, for ABC Wednesday, and, of course, my poetic heartbeat, Poets United. Amy
I Never Lost Faith in Love
For all the sorry-ass excuses for men
who double-crossed my path,
through every mischievous menace who
left me drained and feeling inadequate,
I never lost faith in love.
Through many mistakes whose lips met mine
with divinely inspired kisses
(but the Devil’s own heart), plus
all the power of commitment God gave an ashtray,
I never lost faith in love.
For every hairy-dick tomcat
who yowled ‘til I let him in,
through every door that slammed in my face
once he got his share of the kitty,
I never lost faith in love.
On this earth, once I found the one
who is plush to my blush,
ever-after to my laughter,
I thank God every day,
I never lost faith in love.
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Catching the last breath of Sunday Scribblings, laid low with flu that comes and goes. If I hear, “it’s going around” one more time, I’ll… cough unproductively!
Sunday Scribblings asked for a sensation (in this case, I borrowed that of another), and Three Word Wednesday used Backward, Ease, and Omission. Seemed to go together… Peace to all, Amy
Tightwire With Glass Shards and No Net
Her uncomplicated memories of growing up
The ease with which she blocks out
who dad was and what he did…
Insisting he hung the moon and stars
Not a sin, but a shame, this omission.
She remains his prisoner, unbalanced,
dreams filled with violence,
legs kicking away at something,
she can’t quite see its face…
Look backward, angel.
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Also at my poetic collective home, Poets United.
Sunday Scribblings asked for thoughts about each poet’s muse. I believe I was one of the lucky ones; I also believe this may account for my poor grades in school! No blame at all, only gratitude for being so blessed. Peace, Amy
PS This is also at Poets United, the poetic collective.
I Met My Muse When I Was Two
Dancing, glittering over my playpen.
Sweet music singing when the record player was silent.
During school, whispering secrets to me
(so much more enticing than scribbles on the chalkboard).
Winding in a scenting breeze, gentle on my nose as I
walked the streets of a smelly, gritty city.
Capturing the intake of my every breath,
flowing through my body, creating peace within my harried soul.
Inspiring luscious, ludicrous, outlandish, lovely thoughts…
my Muse.
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Poetic Bloomings (a newer prompt site – check it out!) asked for poems using the most irresistible prompt: “There’s a moon out tonight.” Aaaaaah. Amy
La Bella Luna
Grab a jacket and take my hand, darlin’.
Tonight, Monona’s lakeside is calling out to us.
La bella luna want to bathe all lovers
in beams of reflected light.
Here by the shore, slight chill of the autumn to come,
we’ll stroll, serenaded by so many crickets
and the soft paddle of ducks, looking for a late-night snack.
Though full-faced Old Man looms above, silverfoiled and shining,
the lightning bugs are not overwhelmed.
Blinking gold, ruby, emerald… just out of reach,
yet so near, teasing us, same as they did
when we were kids lying in field of wild grasses.
City lights are low, revealing buckets of stars
spilled in horoscope formations.
We needn’t prove our love beneath this panorama.
We are no longer teenagers, needing it now, now.
The silver moon lingers in streaks of our hair
as we walk and whisper, my hand in your jacket,
you arm slung around my shoulder as we make our way home.
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
DISCLAIMER: Actually, we live near the shore of Lake Mendota; Monona is to the north of our skinny stretch of the East Side of Madison, WI. I felt the name “Monona” was a bit more poetic. Apologies to all Tenney Park neighbors!
THIS POST IS FOR ADULTS ONLY. PLEASE BE AWARE, IT’S ROUGH.
Bitter Fruits
Five years old
She fears flashbulbs
Finicky about swallowing medicine
“Let it float, like a boat,” frantic mother
urges. Finally, the girl
chews the bitter aspirin.
Flannel nightgown often found wet at dawn.
Fragile, frail, their final filly.
Til forty, fortunate to forget
she was her father’s favorite pet.
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
What can I say? Sometimes I have to tell the truth. Peace, Amy
For ABC Wednesday (letter F) and, as always, Poets United.
Sharp Little Pencil 