Passion for Stinkin’ Plants That Will Die Anyway
84 degrees in the shade and I
drag my tooth-just-extracted self
to the garden store so all the
folks at church will see that
I am really making an effort
on the parsonage to… why
am I here? Oh, yeah, to buy plants
One purple, something pink, posy, daisy,
varietals, variegated, annuals, manually
cartsweatpushed to checkout
Then to the smoldering car
Four windows down and still
sweat pours through cleavage
pooling in my belly button
Home, quick, dig, plant, hose
A real Choo-Choo-Charlie effort
or is it “I think I can…?”
I start stripping at the door,
long line of socks, shorts,
shirt, until
(still in underwear)
I drench clenching teeth
in cold water shower.
Was it all a mirage?
No, merely stupidity
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Fireblossom at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads wanted our passions. Well, the point behind this was more like Protestant guilt to try and “homey up” our new pastoral residence, but hey, the passion is what you make of it! Amy
Moustache Man
Your moustache tickles me
You tickled me from the start
The enchanting, spirited glow that
dissipated sad old shadows
You were a daddy when
one was really needed…
more than a stepdad, a friend
who liked the Simpsons, too
When I think on the day I first
noticed you, I recall your smile
The kind that made others grin
when you walked in the room
Now, as the moustache is iced
with hints of vanilla grey, you
are more delicious than ever
We sing in harmony, always
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
I finally got around to writing a rhapsody for Kerry at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. And what other subject but my Lex? Also at my poetic hangout, Poets United. This pic came from the day we renewed our wedding vows, just before our 15th anniversary. He and I were both on our second marriages (thank God we’re United Church of Christ; a lot of denominations frown upon divorce, even those that lead to this type of better outcome), and he’s my “last husband.” Period.
Peace, Amy
Yes, it’s true, I’ve joined the “700 Club”! Oh, wait a sec… actually, this is a poem that Pat Robertson would do well to read, since he’s all about putting down anyone and anything he doesn’t understand, and using God as an excuse. He makes the phrase “bully pulpit” come to life in a new way… So let’s talk about love, shall we?
Love is Not/Love is
Love is not the flip side of hatred
Love is not a sexual act
Love is not what your parents told you
or what your friends brag about
Love is not locked up or meant to be hoarded
Love is friendship to the nth power
It’s giving up what you cling to in the world
for the sake of helping another
Turning your back on Honey Boo-Boo in favor of
cradling abandoned crack babies in the NicU
It’s holding hands that are colder than yours
Love is vast as creation
Warmer than bread fresh out of the oven
More beautiful than your granny’s eyes
Each day we are given the chance
to show love to others
Love is the only thing that can heal our fractured world,
and it starts with each one of us.
Fling wide open your arms
Dance to the sacred rhythm
Unlock that latched love and give it to the world
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Poets United, where Kim Nelson was looking for poems about locks. I wrote this earlier today before encountering her prompt, as though the planets were in alignment! Also “in the margins” at my poetic Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. Peace to all, and let the love begin. Amy
The WiRE Part I
Here on Roo’s Island, beneath the rot-rusted trolley bridge (unstable, but no one had actually plunged to their death in years); here at the calm elbow bend of turned benches in Rock Park, Jordan could bear life as it was, in the Now.
Her Agency shift just finished; sorting the castoff crapfeed of the rich, separating Styrofoam from oily bits of foiling and whathaveyous. This place was her reward, her retreat, her parkit.
Although The Big Thing had laid waste to millions of people and many species of wild animals, plus many rabbles of butterflies – the heartbreak of that lay heavy – they thanked the Creator for honeybees whose hives still functioned, for bats that survived. There was still the shabblestone lane, a hazard… once smooth red brick, now jagged, tearing at her tragictrashed sneaks. Her shoes were sturdy and loyal, but they were also more duct tape than canvas.
Jordan could bear it here, imagine a bluebird perched on the blind light pole, part of the lost heaven her Gram described for her daily, like a multi-faceted mantra. “Oh, the meadow,” Tilly would sigh, her delicate parchment hands navigating tea from pot to cup. “It was all so green, until the Powers got fractious and on a flashnight, there was a lion’s roar… but what do you know of lions?” Tears in her eyes.
“Jordan,” she continued, “you are the keeper of those days. Are you making accounts?” The granddaughter nodded. “Good. This – how do you always say it – this ‘crassdoggish’ world will need to know how things were before the Agency, before the quadrants, and most of all, before the WiRE. Promise me you’ll never tap into it, Jaybird.”
“Tilly, you’re my grandma, and you raised me well. I’ll be a Throwback ‘til I die. I’ll stay freeclear and keep peace.” Her grandmother poured more tea in a silent prayer of thanks.
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
I have been toying with the idea of this story for a long while, as I ponder our dangerous future and watch kids all but implant cell phones into their brains. The loss of peace has been weighing on me. Then Brenda’s Sunday Whirl Wordle gave me bits and pieces that seemed to string together with a common rhythm to give me that hardest part – an actual beginning. Thanks, Brenda, for the feast of words!
This also appears “in the margins” at Poets United and at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads’ Open Link Monday, where I am the second-newest toad in the whole danged place. Congrats to LaTonya for joining us; Mary had to bid us adieu because she has so much to accomplish. Mary will be missed, and we will look forward to what LaTonya is up to! Peace, Amy
BITTER HOPES (The Tsunami, Sendai)
When ground beneath her desk rolled like
a carpet shaken of its dust, a terrifying
rollercoaster, Yuki screamed at
something unnamed and horrible
She thought, “This is IT…
The final moment, or the beginning of many
final moments”
Crawling out of her cubicle,
scenes burned their way into her memory
Ten minutes before, she and Hayashi had shared a cigarette
and a kiss in the stairwell
Now, he was pinned under a desk, eyes glazed;
a picture of their trip to Kanagawa
where they regarded the roses
had settling on his chest
Was this the last thing he saw? His last good memory?
She prayed it was so
Then came a blur of
walking nightmare people
bottled water
pictures posted with notes
questions without answers
Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear disaster
And of course, government downplayed the severity of radiation
She and Kenji commuted inland daily from their home in Sendai;
Father enjoyed the view of surf.
Why had Kenji taken the day off?
She knew now her brother was gone, as well as their parents,
swept from earth as waves wiped the chalkboard clean
Alone Safe Not safe Scared
A butterfly chose her at random to grace her
with a dizzying dance of color and life
“If only I had the mind of an insect,” she thought,
as bile rose in her throat
“At least butterflies hold the key to hope:
Live free for a season, surrender peacefully to death”
Her only hope was that the world see, and learn, what her grandmother
had told her, as she revealed flowered tattoos of her Nagasaki childhood:
Men’s greed and technology will never defeat the ferocity of nature
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Fireblossom at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads wanted stories of loss. I took the loss of others and, in so doing, resurrected an old poem, because the last line haunts me. This was originally written (and much wordier) in 2011, before Fukushima. Turns out technology doles out terror in equal quantities… that also includes the effects of global warming. And humankind’s terror is reversible, but that is not in sight right now…
Peace, Amy
Living With It
I live with manic depression
My constant companion
Reflecting my moods,
flexible in social situations
Always ready for conversations
At night, as I lie in fetal position,
it spoons my spine
It dances in the rain with me; it’s
my partner trolling homeless venues
People say my brain ain’t right
I say, “Wrong”
I see things wide awake they
cannot conjure in dreams
Hear music of another world while
their ears are stuck in this one
Feel the breeze blowing
through my soul, sweet and
filled with love.
If all that’s wrong, well,
like the song says,
I don’t wanna be “right”
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
‘Bipolar’ sounds like you’re either up or down. It can be that way, but I prefer the term manic depression, rooted in depression with frequent upswings in energy when left untreated. Yet here I am, with proper treatment, claiming the best part – that “other-mindedness” of which I often write. I feel God has blessed me (God can be quirky), and I hope my gratitude is reflected in this poem. For Imaginary Garden With Real Toads’ Open Link Monday.
Peace, Amy
My Favorite Poem of All Time (Click above to hear it read by Amy)
Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Imaginary Garden With Real Toads
Masses
By Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)
from his Chicago Poems, 1916
AMONG the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and red crag and was amazed;
On the beach where the long push under the endless tide maneuvers, I stood silent;
Under the stars on the prairie watching the Dipper slant over the horizon’s grass, I was full of thoughts.
Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers, mothers lifting their children—these all I touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them.
And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions of the Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the darkness of night—and all broken, humble ruins of nations.
Portrait by Edward Lear, poet and artist
I Made a Bu-Bo (and other nonsensical blather)
Snickering up on the biggest owl
on the entire Gaia Marble,
the Eagle Owl
(some are longer than,
some are heavier than,
but the Eagle Owl is
generally considered, by those
ornithologically inclined,
to be biggest, so who am I
to argue with expertations
of the nth degree; their
degrees on their walls and
in their halls of edification
So I am snickering up,
that is, asneak, all the better
to pop the vroom lens on my
Kodak Not A Brownie But
Something Of Great Cost,
the camera, my only friend
since my husbandonment
left me too for spending
so much money on this
gadgetary nonsense
As I said (for I digress,
even upon egress), I am
snickering up sneaky as pie
to take a rotogravurical image
of the Great (if not largest or
heaviest, per said experts)
Eagle Owl, as rendered
(in ink, not in olive oil,
for this bird has little meat,
and the plucking’s torture,
especially if the owl is still
alive and quite ornith… ornery)
I say, as rendered by the Even
Greater Edward Lear, I thus
with my gravuracospity at its
heightedness, do snarkily step on a
bygone Snickers wrapper and oops
The Bubo-Bubo, as it’s called
in Eurasia, yes, boob that I am,
it flies off before I can get a shot
(with said camera, and not with
assault riflage of any repudiation)
My questation, a lost causation…
The owl, gone the way of
other fowl, and growlsome, I
retreat fleet back to my bungaloo,
buggered again by Naturama.
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, a tribute to May birthday boy, poet and artist Edward Lear/ I thought he was known only for his doggerel (including The Owl and the Pussycat) but now I know (thanks to the site) that he produced fine artwork, especially his collection of bird portraits. I decided to try the fun doggerel style of Lear as well as writing about one of his portraits. Hope I succeeded! This is also on the rolling right column of my poetic nest, Poets United (proud to be a member!).
The Eagle Owl is arguably (as poem says) the largest owl, found in Europe and Asia. It’s about halfway up the Endangered Scale. I like its expression because it looks like my late black kitty Missy when she put on her “mean face”! Amy
When Mama Zen
asked us for brevity
I thought ’twas the
height of levity
For how could I
ever think to contrive
the breadth of my soul
in a mere forty-five?
Yet brief it must be so
I bequeath to you, my-
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads has Words Count With Mama Zen, who sets the limit at 45 words or less. I may break most rules, question authority, and generally raise hell in politics, but… “when Mama ain’t happy, ain’t NObody happy!”
Also at Poets United, where they let me blather on all I want. Mama Z, thanks. This is a good exercise for me!
A bit of doggerel from your dogged friend, Amy
Last day of Poem a Day, or National Poetry Writing Month. It’s only fitting that I should “pass the torch,” in the form of a poem about our girl Riley, the artist. I’ve included one of her recent works, so PLEASE respect her copyright on this. For Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, an “A to Z” write. Enjoy! Proud Mom Amy, who also took the picture years ago, when she was three.
Portrait of the Artist as a Little Girl
Artist, budding
Crayons, drawings,
echo from goodgone hours
I just kindled logical moppets’s
newfound outlet
(preference, quietude)
Riley, shading timber umber
Visioning whales,
xysts, yurts… zebras
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Painting by L.R. Weinberger © 2013, all rights reserved.
Used by permission of artist.
Sharp Little Pencil 