For Peggy Goetz’s prompt at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads , a poem about going outside (mind, body, spirit, your choice!). I’ve been trying to hang with the Real Toads during NaPoWriMo, because it’s a small group of intensely focused poets who gracefully critique each other’s work). This will also appear on the sidebar at my first and always poetic home, Poets United (proud to be a member!).
Inside, Out
It stirs within him
The call to get out
To explore the
yet to be, yet to see
He stretches,
not wanting
to leave home yet,
but knowing it’s time
The way to the door
is dark, narrow,
but he’ll squeeze
through the gate into…
Bright lights
Much noise
Something pushes him on
Then a woman’s cry –
sharp as a thumbtack and
bright as an Easter bonnet –
sings across the hall:
“It’s a boy!”
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Babes in Boyland
Modeling’s a groove
Tyra taught us to mooooove
and stretch and maybe
we’d get in a video on TV
Clothes fitted to each curve
The more verve you show
the more photogs you blow
The more rich guys you know
the more places you go
You fight the urge
to binge and purge
Pout you lips in a kiss
It all comes down to this:
I’m the seventh blonde-
wigged nurse in pure Bond-
girl form or maybe
a Robert Palmer baby
Justin’s lip-synching
when he’s not drinking
Oh, wait, he’s winking
AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEE
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
NaPoWriMo #4, for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, which asked us to write to a clip of Justin Timberlake mouthing the words to a Killers song. Watch the clip, see what I wrote, and then follow this LINK back to the Garden to read others’ work!
Riley turned me on to Top Model, and the more this little proto-Feminist watched, the more I was fascinated and repelled by the lengths to which women will debase themselves to become models, Barbies in search of their Dream House. It’s a fleeting career at best, and these girls undergo breast augmentation, booty augmentation, lip augmentation… everything except self-esteem augmentation. Riley could have been a child model, but I wouldn’t have it. Glad to say, Tyra has proved me right! Peace, Amy
An Existentialist Speaks
We’re all in it
apart
Alphabet pasta bits
swirling in chicken broth
A sand dune of human grains
awhirl, subject to
the wind’s whimsy
A night sky filled with wandering stars
Stasis in motion
We do what we must in our
earthly bodies without regard for
The Big Judgement fairy tale
Some argue that life without God
is meaningless
a void
They seem so sure and
squint hostilely at
my assertion that
all of that “redemption” crap
is pointless as a salt lick
on the I-90
Mom thinks I’m worse than
an atheist; she’s worried
I didn’t pay attention in
catechism class.
She’s right.
Here
Now
Lost in the stars
We’re all in it
apart
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
NaPoWriMo #3, for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, where Kerry asked for poems about Existentialism. Also, Three Word Wednesday gave us Argue, Lick, and Squint. Kim at Verse First for Poets United wanted poems with a “body” theme, whether a group or a single body. I hope I gave her both!
Existentialism is far from my own path, but I can see how people become isolated, believing there is no God, no consequence in the end, no hereafter, and no particular reason to have faith in anything. I can’t get my mind around it completely, but I gave it a try!
SHADOWS OF GHOSTS*
The shadows of ghosts
are most feared
among the living
For the phantoms themselves
are but empty illusion
Yet their inkblot trails,
once perceived by mortals,
are evidence that
unfettered souls are still privy
to the whispers of men
Shadows of ghosts,
silent witnesses to
humankind’s
immoral deeds
on this earth
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Open Link Monday at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads; also at my poetic haunt, Poets United. Image by Wikipedia Commons.
This poem flew out of my pencil while watching “Elizabeth: The Golden Age.” Many good things to say about this movie, except that it reprises Elizabeth’s putting on armor and rallying the peasantry once more. Having said that, Clive Owen, Geoffrey Rush, Abbie Cornish, and especially the luminescent Samantha Morton (as Mary Queen of Scots), and Elizabeth herself in the person of Cate Blanchet, all did very well.
* The phrase, “the shadow of ghosts,” has nothing to do with the poem (plus it’s singular in the movie), but I had to give credit to the screenwriters, William Nicholson and Michael Hirst, for penning it and inspiring this poem. Peace, Amy
WILD CHILD
From Day One, I was
a wild child.
Well-schooled but wayward.
Never pleaded for parental pardon.
Worldly wise wisp
wrapped in ribbons,
wants to be unspooled,
twirled, awhirl with
winsome, wastrel wiles.
Wishes for what she wants;
wants more than she gets;
gets what’s coming to her,
all the while knowing
there’s way more in store.
Her wickedly wanton waylays
wend their way into herstory.
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Wrote this for the “Wild Woman” prompt at Ella’s Edge in the Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. Also posted at Poets United, in the Poetry Pantry, and for Sunday Scribblings… their prompt was “energy,” and if this doesn’t fill the bill, I’m in big trouble. ALSO, Poetic Bloomings is celebrating 100 posts, and they wanted a “celebration of self.” Oh, yeah, honey!!
NOTE: I was feeling pretty down until I read Ella’s prompt. I summoned my inner Sherry Blue Sky, Shay/Fireblossom, Lady Nimue, Jae Rose, and a few more … and before you know it, I was as Edgy as Ella! Thanks, you wonderful wild women, o ye of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Rants. (Don’t look now, but Gretchen Leary is catching up to us!)
Finally, about that photo. It was taken in Bermuda at the Princess Hotel, where I was artist-in-residence for two seasons. Didn’t know it yet, but I was newly pregnant with Riley when this was shot. My girlfriend Bev, from the cast of their Dreamgirls-type show, is with me. (I still have the skirt, for Halloween costumes. I’ll wear it as a head wrapping!) Peace, Amy
Five Years Old, First Circus
Loud, it was and smelled like
popcorn, cotton candy, candy, cigars, and
poop, but amazing all at the same time.
When you’re five, you like everything, almost.
Two men, the daredevil flying trapeze artists.
Two glittery women, dangling from ropes with their teeth.
Clowns, slipspilling silly – but scary:
Chalk faces; crayoned, exaggerated expressions.
I hid my face when they came near.
Boss in fancy suit and spotlight and mic.
Dogs jumping hoop after hoops like
they were hopping on and off a skillet.
Treats were trash, but I stashed an apple.
Kid next to me threw up on her mom, red, white, and blue.
Cherry soda, vanilla ice cream, and Lik-M-Aid.
After the show, Dad showed he had clout. Round back,
behind the tent, an amazing surprise:
A baby elephant, sporting a small seat.
Dad lifted me up and
I and only I was allowed to ride Burma,
the pride of the Lions Club Circus.
To feel her soft, upturned ears, lay my head down
upon her warm neck. I sang as she swayed beneath
my skinned-knee skinny legs.
That was the first time I ever connected
with someone who’d traveled so far,
halfway across the world, just for me.
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
True story.
I’m sure other children got rides later, but I was so enthralled and focused that I didn’t notice. I thought Dad was king of the world that day.
OK, you all know I have a major phobia about clowns, with the notable exception being my friend Monica, whose character Imagin is simply pure and sweet. Maybe it’s because she is a woman – as much as I knew what “drag queens” were when I was quite small, men who paste it on for little kids scare the poop out of me. If anyone out there is a clown, let me know – you may well help me past my phobia!
Imaginary Garden with Real Toads’ “Kay in Alberta” presented us with a challenge that, thank the Lord, has NOTHING to do with St. Paddy’s Day… I also laid this on the shelf at the Poetry Pantry at Poets United. I’m probably more Irish than most of my neighbors, so I say, let the German-American and Polish-American and African-American and other Hyphenated-Americans drink green beer and barf in the street. Most of my Irish-American friends reserve that behavior for the other 364 dasy a year – and they are always prepared in the event of hangovers of nausea! Happy Kermit Day, Amy
Snow Bizness
It is March in Wisconsin
and, any day now,
no matter how green the meadow,
how tawny the wrens who
flew in for Spring,
nor how green
the ivy grows,
we know our TV screens
will sketch the sad
Doppler Crayola scrawl:
One more blizzard.
Snow bury-
ing our lawns,
shunning the calendar,
sticking thick thorns into
Madison’s collective psyche.
As suburban assault vehicles
zigzag on the Beltway
(drivers oblivious to the concept
of SUV rollover ratings),
our guts are twisted and we
tend to cluster in bars,
seeking solace in our famous
Wisconsin micro-brews.
Shallow coping mechanism, I know,
but until we are assured the
stout-stemmed ironweed and
apple saplings are in bloom,
we await our twisted fate…
moods indigo, yet somehow
Madison’s
eccentric
people
never
seem
to
leave.
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
De Jackson of Whimsygizmo fame was gatekeeper in the Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, and she gave us a huge list of words. A veritable cornucopia; in fact, I was only able to use most of them: Sketch, screen, march (well, March), Snowberry (um, snow bury-ing, groan), tawny, meadow, stout-stemmed, cluster (not tempted in any way, shape, or form to pair an obscenity with that word – see, I’m all grown up now), zigzag, leave, twisted, indigo, shunning, ivy, sapling, and thorns. I didn’t use elder, shallow, or adaptation. Dang!
Thanks, De, for one more chance to comment on the weather here in Madison. I really do love it here, but, dear Lord, would it possible for the snow to melt before June?
This is also posted at my poetic igloo, Poets United. Peace and silky long-johns, Amy
Night Bus, NYC
Pummeled by brutal fluorescent light
of the crosstown night bus
All sections crammed, and damn, that
fella giving her the FishEye
won’t give her his seat instead
She leans on a rail, awaiting her stop
on the West Side, where Cuban Chinese is
on the menu – her roomie sets a nice
take-out table with chilled Dos Equis
“Broadway at 86,” robots the loudspeaker
As she bunches her keys blade-out
(you never know on a sweatsullen
Manhattan evening), she feels a grasp
The hand of FishEye Guy clasping her ass
She steps back, grinds the tip of a 5” heel
into his sandal-clad foot ‘til it bleeds
“Oh!” she chirps, “I’m so clumsy”
Time wounds all heels, but
hot-rod pumps do the job in a pinch
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
First, Three Word Wednesday posted a call for these words: Brutal, Grope, and Transfer. Then (much to my delight), Imaginary Garden With Real Toads’ Isadora put this challenge up… “Create a list of three words or phrases specific to the worst job you ever had and craft a poem having nothing to do with work. List the words, write the poem, and take back the power! Make sure to include your list of words or phrases in your post…”
My words were from my hellacious years of waitressing at a Greek restaurant that was actually Greek, run by a guy named Dino who was a sweetie (he called me “Amy the Sing-ger,” with a hard “g”), and all the folks were wonderful, and this was back in my hometown of Binghamton, NY. But waitressing was not my calling. This was before my PTSD diagnosis, so every rush hour I’d break into a sweat, forget orders, and neglect to write down prices, resulting in my being docked. (Yeah, like the Hudsucker Proxy… “Ya forget a price, they DOCK YA!”) I was THE worst waitress in the world… and I really didn’t care!
My waitressing words: Take-out, sections, and bus (as in clear tables). Actually, there was a fourth restaurant reference in there – did anyone catch it? Izy, thanks a bunch. You were right about “taking back the power.” Simply transporting myself to The City, when I was actively singing as well as working at a very cool marketing research place (where I met folks who are still friends today), was the start of heaven.
And yes, this is a true story. I had a bad temper in those days… Peace – and Cuban Chinese on your menu soon, Amy
LION-HEARTED MAN (R.I.P. Marques Bovre)
From a distance
(when first I spied him
setting up his gear in church)
I thought he was an old man
He walked with a cane
Could barely negotiate
setting up his guitar
but his daughter helped
The closer I got to Marques
the clearer the view and
I knew this was a man
not only young, but vital
His face shined, his eyes
danced, and when he sang
it was coming from an old soul
with a kid’s sense of fun
The band played many of
his songs, the heart of
the ministry, seeds
sown for the Gospel
But it wasn’t a cult of
personality; Marques
was too humble for that
He said he was a servant
Then came the diagnosis
Rumors of tumors, he
even gave them names:
Hobgoblin and The Creep
Hoped to see spring flowers
He loved Dandelions and
made me love them too
He struggled but always smiled
We lost him this week
A lion-hearted man who
knew who he was, whose he was
and where he was going
We had many months to prepare
for this day, this awful news
The truth is: You can prepare
for someone to be dying
but you can’t prepare for
when they are actually dead
Marques, brother, father, friend
We’ll sing your songs to the end
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Marques Bovre, singer, guitarist, composer, artist-in-residence at Lake Edge United Church of Christ’s “Worship at the Edge,” died this week at the age of 50.
There have been numerous fundraisers to help pay for his cancer treatments over the past year or so, which brings me back to the fundamental question: Why should ANYONE have to have fundraisers to pay for CEOs to have private planes and yacht trips to Bermuda? Health care is a right. Now, Marques would be the first to say he was no better than anyone else in this world (in fact, on his last CD, “Nashville Dandelion,” there was one song called, “On The Body Of Christ, I Am The A**hole.” That’s his wry sense of humor, and we loved him for it).
Please visit Marques’ site HERE. There are his songs, his story. He never proselytized, and yet a more fervent believer I never knew. If you like what you hear, BUY SOME MUSIC. Tracy still has medical bills to cover, in the midst of her grief. It will mean a lot to the whole family, and to me.
Rest in peace, brother. This poem will be at dverse Open Mic Night and at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads (man, Marques would have dug that title), where the garden is open for any and all new poems. Love, Amy
Sharp Little Pencil 