This is black. That is white.
This is salty; that is sweet
This is acceptable, that is not – certainly not
On and on, the ubiquitous, despicable binary
What if it’s both?
Black and white certainly merge into facets of grey, each with its own weight, its own texture, its own meaning
Ansel Adams: If he had only captured the lines and borders, now there’s a shame
Leave the salt out of a cake recipe? You’re missing the contrast, the brightness of the sugar
One person’s “acceptable” is another person’s anathema, and we each shout the anthem of offense
And so we all know the unchanging ultimatum:
This is a man! That is a woman!
But what a waste to write off the in between, the third way
Those who see the world as dazzling
Scintillating
Evolving
Can we not embrace the traditional blue of the boys as well as the pink we have assigned the girls?
This is my way
That is yours
Our paths shared, intermingled, and ultimately celebrated
And no one, absolutely no one is wrong
© 2024 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For What’s Going On, Sherry Blue Sky asked us to go to town on contrasts, on comparisons… at least that’s what I got from her prompt. Please visit the blog and click on the poets who have contributed their unique takes!
Black suede booties, patooties
Kicky heel, two-inch and tapered down to a tack, ankle-high
Odd things, but soooo comfy
Black velvet Betsey bolero jacket
over a spandex mini
Those shoes spoke to that dress and said yessssss
But the best part wasn’t the shoes
Nope, it was the socks
Yeah, good old cotton rolled socks
Bright red to match her lipstick
It wasn’t the getup that got her the gig
In truth, said the bartender later on
it was the shoes, propped up on the bar
like they needed their own shot of bourbon
He said the socks didn’t hurt, either
(c) 2024 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
The Bushes of Central Park West, a nice little gay catering largely to older men, operated off the lobby of the Park West Hotel on W. 73rd in Manhattan. I lived upstairs – this was the place I lived at the time John Lennon was shot up the block, the place I cited in the past poem. Bill Dance was the bartender, a one-man one-liner joke machine, and one of the sweetest guys I ever met. Sometime, remind me to tell you the story about his stock company on the road doing The Wizard of Oz in the 60s. Bill was the one who got me the gig, and we were friends until his death in the mid-80s. He knew Christopher Kennedy and Jeff French. Such a shame, all 100% sweethearts. RIP Bill Dance. Amy
That neighborhood lives on in stories we tell, songs we hum
Scent memories: yeasty pizza, toasted bagels (H&H at dawn),
We lived above a Cuban Chinese joint – our noses serenaded every night, pork fat and chilis, Jeff stop in for beans and rice after you score a toke toke on the corner
Espresso so strong you could cop a buzz just passing by the cafe
And the babies
Fancy babies in fancy carriages steered by weathered warhorse nannies
Fussy babies in strollers pushed by au pairs in skinny jeans
That one chill baby, always with both parents – they’d stroll at their own pace, lived just up the block from me
Everyone knew them, we nodded or passed the peace sign in greeting
Then one evening I came home and
my neighbor was dead
shot
and suddenly the dad I saw every day walking with his wife and son became a headline
The personal became universal
He left a legacy of beauty, but in that moment
he just a dad no longer pushing a stroller, our neighbor, John Lennon
(c) 2024 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
True story. I lived half a block from the Dakota in those days, in a run-down hotel called The Park Royal., I played weeknights at the gay bar downstairs. My friend Jeffery French would come by, drunk as a daffy skunk. Eventually, he found the love of his life, Christopher Kennedy, who nursed Jeff at home as he died of AIDS. We lost Chris this week – a 35-year AIDS survivor. More about him to come, but this prompt from What’s Going On? brought so much back to me. Gonna go cry after I post this. Peace, y’all, Amer
One, the GOP
Screaming about baby killers and abortion
Screaming about how white people should be in charge/white erasure
Screaming about Second Amendment rights and the NRA
Screaming about drag queens at libraries/which books to ban/trans women in sports/trans pp in general
Next door, the Dems
Screaming about baby killers and the NRA
Screaming for diversity and social/racial justice
Screaming about how First Amendment rights should not not cover hate speech
Screaming about banned books in libraries
BOTH have sarcastic, insulting rhetoric (but their side is right, of course)
Both have media outlets devoted to their side
Neither want to hear what THEY think in the other room
Swearing, condemning… never listening to anyone next door
But who would be heard, anyway? Everyone is screaming.
(c) 2023 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil, for my friends at What’s Going On?
We were asked to write about how life is going on in your neck of the woods. Just last week, we moved to the rural city of Platteville, WI (a university town, smaller than Madison), Lex was called as a pastor to a UCC church here. I was invited to a political meeting, and the enthusiasm there reminded me of the equal passion of GOP voters. Now, no one was screaming! It was friendly, at times a little rowdy in the best way… but needless to say, anyone in a MAGA hat would have walked in and walked back out again. I took it a step further when I thought about larger rallies, the rhetoric, and the basic ethos of both sides of the aisle, with a miles-wide ditch dug in between. And a moat. Possibly with dragons. Anyway, you get the idea. GUARD YOUR HEARTS this election season. Last time around, 45 ate my brain – and had a side dish of my very soul. And I put it out on the buffet for him. He didn’t feel my frustration; only I did, and to the detriment of creativity and all things healthy. Fool me once, shame on him. Fool me twice, well, not if I can help it.
The Hill of Hope
Now, here in our cozy valley
Tie up loose ends
Pack the memories, but first
Take a trip down amnesia lane
When they were a baby, a toddler, a child
A teen coming into bright depths of being
He and me
Before we knew how to laugh even harder than before
And took each day not as a given
But as a gift, burnished, barely out of the box
All the trappings of a life thus far well lived
Now in yesterday’s newspaper (donated by friends who still subscribe to an actual paper)
Now paintings swaddled in kitchen towels
Now gimcracks tshotchkes doodads this and that
Tossed into wicker baskets and boxes
And so much great stuff
Given to friends family Goodwill
Soon
Climb to a new place, rise to the challenge
Unpack it all again and never miss
belongings we have shed along with way
And marvel at
what remains
especially the memories
© 2010 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
A prompt from a new blog, https://newwhatsgoingon.blogspot.com/ Lots of old friends from my Poetic Asides and Imaginary Garden with Real Toads days. I am happy to be back writing again!
We are indeed moving from the church we have served for 13 years to a new church, still in Wisconsin, but a ways away. It’s all good, the present church needs a half-time pastor and we can’t afford to take that hit, so they will hire a new pastor, someone bivocational. The new church has welcomed us with extravagant love. They are looking to live more deeply into their LGBTQ+ covenant. So even though we are cisgender, well, as my Jeffery said, “Yes, you get to play in our sandbox!” and then there’s Luka, so it feels as though the Spirit has led us to one last pastoral challenge!! All is well. But oy, the boxes and tape and all the rest. But after 30+ moves in my lifetime (seriously), I’ve got it down to a science of color coding and making grids of every room on graph paper. What a nerd.
Sharp Little Pencil 