Following a three-day “manic panic” and the PTSD (Post-Trampoline Stupid Depression!) that followed, I’m back on an even keel. Even tried a new form today, which is the first poem, and answered a Wednesday prompt within 24 hours! Now that’s what I call progress. Peace, Amy
My Blue Plastic Nurse
Compartments are labeled, one for each day
I’m keeping track of keeping track of me
Pill boxes can be fun if you like play
Varied colors bring mental harmony
Blue, turquoise, tangerine, help color me
Curved, tubular, round; all help shape my days
Some score scarred, others numbered clinically
Count it wrong and I’ll be in stupor gaze
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For dverse, the amazing Gemma (an Aussie whose blog is Greyscale Territory)schooled us on the Huitan – basic structure being eight lines of eight or ten syllables, with rhyme scheme A B A B B C B C. A much more instructive post can be found HERE AT DVERSE. My first time with the form, and I must say, it was more fun than I thought! As always, this is also at the blessedly formless, shapeless void of pure poetic love, Poets United. But wait, there’s more!
Greenwich Village, Late 60s
The pulse of Bleecker
measured in bongo bangs
In the Beat poets’ Howls
and comic harangues
That mellow café scene
One coffee took all night
Pressure built over Nam
The Man made a fight
Scene took on substance
as poets and folkies
took on the rhythm
of Guthrie’s Oakies
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Three Word Wednesday, Beat, Pressure, Substance. Also at my poetic café, Poets United. Coffee’s always on and the conversation is fabulous! Peace, Amy
The Drifter
Maybe this town’ll be different.
Friendlier.
Or leastways not as bad as the last place.
I ain’t felt so low since my draft notice in ‘69
except for the three years in Nam (Hell)
and an awful lotta times since then.
First thing off the bus, I locate an empty bench
so nobody’ll smell my stench. Then out of the blue,
this lady says, “How do you take your coffee?”
Then she brings out two cups of killer Joe
and sits down and talks, tells me where the shelters are
and about an AA meeting two blocks over, it’s tonight.
Didn’t give me them damn Bible papers
or try to drag me to her church, just a nice person.
Hope there’s more like her round here.
Cuz it’s gonna take more than the Serenity Prayer
to keep me on the wagon. Long road.
Lotsa potholes. And a little hope…
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Three Word Wednesday (Draft, Locate, Serenity)
Photo courtesy of http://www.nccca.org, a Christian organization mobilizing to help the homeless, including veterans.
Sharp Little Pencil 