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
An actual fracking site in Warren Center, PA
The Marcellus Shale runs under my home, Binghamton, NY
Image courtesy of WikiCommons
Frackers (and the TPs who love them)
Takin no flak from
frack-attack NRA
plushies
Takin no crap from
gumflappin’ Tea Party
Rushies
Dittoheads filled with…
(no, that’s not nice)
misinformation
Sleazy pols with vols
pandering to their meandering
with dolls from the intern pool
Pools they listen to
more than constituents
Consequently, their
incontinent pieholes spew
FOX from their boxes
(the Constitution gets the axe)
Rights only for the Right
We get what’s “left”
Two Rights can make a wrong
Look at the NeoCon bromances:
Bush and Dick
Incestuous Koch brothers
On and on, while our tap water
becomes flammable, we suck
dino juice like it’s a teat
Money for war? Sure!
Forget wind and solar –
our gas is now Natural
So natural, it seems
the hometown of my dreams
will go down in flames
from its faucets
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
I’ve written about FRACKING before, but Sherry Blue Sky, a good friend and Canadian activist, produced an excellent report (click HERE) on how the frackers are taking over in Canada, too. Got my Irish up, but at least people rose up in protest… in the States, we think of Canada as a peaceful country, but their police have been learning since the Bush years and yes, through the Obama years: Rubber bullets in LaBatts country. What the hell is going on?
This is my cheery little Monday piece for the Open Link at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads! Peace, Amy
Mama Needs New Ones
Teeth trashed, vacancies galore, by years of
barely-there dental care; many are
little more than amalgam fillings
One side had no molars, no
balance in chewing my food
Migraines and TMJ the result
Still, the news hit me like a brick:
UPPER PLATE. Trash the few
remaining enamel pieces on the
sorry chess board known as
my mouth. Like the man said,
You can’t cheat breath.
In the office, equipment fences
me in, a gravelly voice says,
“Here we go” (WE?!) And me,
stranded in a loop-de-loop of
tentacled dental equipment –
over, around, inside – yikes
Everything was done in a snap
A temporary plate was shoved in
and it’s so thick it makes me
lithp, but I’ll get a final one soon.
Everyone notices I’m smiling once more…
Encore!
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Yes, it’s true. Years of second-hand smoke from playing in jazz clubs apparently didn’t help the enamel on my teeth, either. THANK YOU Philip Morris and co. But at least I can smile as widely as Julia Roberts, and somehow, I had come to miss that smile, as I tried in vain all those months to half-grin to hide the missing teeth.
This used the “baker’s dozen” words at the Sunday Whirl. Hop over and check out some great poetry from all over the world! Also in the sidebars at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads and the Poetry Pantry at Poets United. Peace – and don’t forget to floss, Amy
Pink, Above and Below
Pink
above and below
She knows this tavern
is a cavern of
half-truths and full-blown lies
Icarus and ice
Yet, this morning
la colorosa* bathes
the barstools and bodies
laid waste by last night
Sunrise brings the glow
of a knowing
that this day
there will be change
Her heart will melt
inthe pink glow of sundown
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Image by Oxag at Wikipedian Commons:
Sunrise at Angkor Wat (Worldwide Usage Permission)
* la colorosa means “pink” in Spanish – at least, in Puerto Rico.
Hannah at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads wanted color, a cave (and what better cave than a bar!), a hunger, adventure, and ice. Pull up a barstool and tell me yours. Also on the margins at Poets United. Peace, Amy
In the Palm of God’s Hand
I dreamed I was in God’s palm
Not alone – a hundred or more
sought the same succor
I explored this miracle
Felt a callus on God’s finger
Sensitivity for the laborer
No silken luxuries in this hand;
traces of humankind’s misdeeds
His right eye, littered with shrapnel
Her left eye wept tears
black as the rains of Hiroshima,
thick as dredged Gulf Sea Tar
One arm was tattooed with a number,
the other bore scratches of barbed wire
from Matthew Shepard’s execution
The pinkie, blowing off bit by bit
by IEDs and drone strikes
His nose broken by bar fights,
her cheek bruised from spousal abuse
A rainbow was painted on God’s cheek
The children on God’s palm cried
One sold, one raped, one homeless
Adults cuddled them, sang songs
to them, and God smiled
“You are my angels on earth,
the face of Jesus, the form of
the Divine Sofia, and the human
evidence of my love for all
“Wake up and help me heal”
When I awoke, I prayed thanks
for this visit, and promised God
I’d give my all, with a servant’s hands
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Not written to any prompt, but on the Open Link page of Imaginary Garden With Real Toads and sidebar of Poets United. This was an actual dream… and there was so much more to tell. Peace, Amy
I Beg Your Pardon… really
For my sisters, who have had to
put up with my leftie ranting and
defense of my gender-queer daughter…
I beg your pardon
For my daughter, who had to
endure a childhood with a single mom
who was not yet diagnosed as mentally ill…
I ask your forgiveness
For my husband, who has seen me
through hell and back, fat and thin, and
bears my depressions with understanding…
I’m sorry I’m a high-maintenance partner
For my dead parents, about whom I write,
who defend their actions, their hideous
alcoholism and abuse of their daughter…
I regret nothing
Finally, to myself, for all the mistakes, the
mysterious paths I’ve chosen, the years of
drugs, the booze, and the frozen career just thawing…
I repent. And I sharpen my pencil once again.
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Fireblossom Friday at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads asks for poems about repentence. I won’t go into the God thing here. I’m keeping it tangible and earthbound. Shay, you rock! Peace, Amy
The Migraine Speaks (much to my dismay)
Yes, that ball bearing behind your right eye
It is I
Thief of thoughts
Barbed-wire butchery
Trailing tacks and nails and
prickly pins
I’ll stick in your head
‘til you wish you were dead
I strike with little warning
and lots of retching and tears
and pulling of the blinds
I am your migraine
You are my prisoner
(until the meds kick in)
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
I have not shared much in the way of my artwork, but lately I’ve taken up drawing as therapy. The picture above was drawn during a migraine, so it was quite a feat for me.
For Imaginary Garden With Real Toads’ Open Link Monday, plus dverse Open Mic, and ABC Wednesday later this week… “M” is for migraine.
The Gossip Girls
Have you seen the way she dresses?
Half slut, half bag lady.
And always with one dangling earring,
one post. Is that a gay thing?
Well, she does march in the parades.
And all that gay rights nonsense and
on and on about the homeless.
Her husband is a saint to put up with her.
If I talked that way and dressed
like a tramp, my husband would
slap some sense into me, and I’d
have it coming.
Mine would, too.
I miss the old days when we knew
what was what and who we were
supposed to be… oh, wait, sssssh…
she’s coming.
“Morning, ladies, how’s everything
with you today?”
“Fiiiiiiine.” Butter wouldn’t melt
in their mouths.
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Kim Nelson wanted poems on gossip at Poets United – check out the link and read some other poets as well. Poets U. is a wellspring of talent. Also “in the margins” at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads.
PROCESS NOTES: As Alice Roosevelt Longworth said, “If you don’t have anything nice to say about others… come sit next to me.” I abhor gossips, quite possibly because I am the subject of same in some circles. Such is life lived out loud! Amy
I lost a week in there with oral surgery (no, they didn’t sew my mouth shut, but I know of a few people who wish they had!). But I used last week’s Sunday Whirl words, which I will share with dverse and Imaginary Garden With Real Toads’ Open Link Monday.
My friend Rev. Tisha is working on a program concerning violence against women. Please feel free to forward poems to me by email – either paste the poem in the message or attach. Here is an example, and I can only say that, as a survivor of a different type of violence, these girls huddle in a corner of my soul. Peace, Amy
SECRET TO SURVIVAL
Three girls
torn from the cradle of mothers’ arms
peering past bad circumstances
The secret
to their survival in exile was the stories
Pry open clues with claws forged of need
Pile bits
of memory, tiny green apples
as unripe as they. Their rash hope:
that spirits
would comfort them as they endured
man after man on a filthy mattress
The spirits
were their only treasure, clutching and reciting
concocted tales of their shared princess-like past…
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
PEACE IS POSSIBLE (a Fibonacci)
One
mindset
among many
will cause peace
to flow all around us
like a mighty, majestic river of unfathomable love
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
This is my prayer for peace, as prompted by Mary at dverse Poets. Of course, I did not make the deadline, so perhaps I will submit this for dverse Open Mic Night as well as the sidebar at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads and Poets United. And, yes, I managed a form to boot, using the word-count version of the Fibonacci Sequence (1-1-2-3-5-8).
The latest carnage in Kenya, at a mall in Nairobi, took many lives at random. And yet here in the States, gun violence continues to claim veterans, spouses, children, and people caught in the wrong place (or school) at the wrong time – also, a gun on hand means access to a fast suicide, rather than trying to reach out. The Second Amendment provided for armed militias, like the National Guard, and was conceived when one-shot muskets were the standard. I’m not against others hunting (as long as it’s for meat, not ivory), but the proliferation of high-powered rifles with huge magazines – and people with violent histories being allowed to own guns? Is Ted Nugent running for president or what? Get a grip, people. Peace, Amy
Sharp Little Pencil 