My Poetry in Motion
12/23/23
Poetry is rhythm in motion.
Words are hurled and spattered on a blank sheet of paper, like paint thrown onto a crisp white canvas. As a writer, I have always loved poetry. I have a long history of it too.
When I was in 6th grade, I wrote my first poetry book. I was 12-years-old. It is called The Winter, Summer, Spring & Fall Poem Book by Lisa Barr. It is full of different types of poems, all about the different aspects of the seasons, with little crayon drawings throughout.
Here’s one for Spring. It’s a Pyramid poem:
BASEBALL
Glove, coach
Fun, exciting, easy
Bases, catches hits
In the springtime in May
Let’s all try to make home runs!
A Catalog Poem:
SUMMER
I see swimming
I see green
I see trees
I see no school
I see camp
I see water
I see the sun
I see fun
I see sunburns
I see tans.
Then, there is a Triplet poem:
Roller Coaster
We took a scary ride,
Then we decided to hide,
After we felt like we died!
And a Haiku:
Clouds
Those fluffy white things
That are found up in the sky
Are like cotton balls.
Oh, it makes me laugh and almost cry going through this cute book of mine right now. It was found in my parent’s house when my brother was cleaning it out after my mother moved into assisted living. A real treasure.
When I was an 8th grader (14 years old), I started really struggling emotionally. I was in journalism class and we did these yearly literary books that contained poetry and stories by kiddos who also went to Euclid Jr. High. I had a lot of poetry published in those. By then, I was no longer writing about the four seasons, but about suicide. Dark and dreary. I was trying so hard to get out the emotions onto the page before they destroyed me.
As a 17-year-old, I started a Gothic band called Sacred Ashes. I played bass guitar. My guitarist, Will Carlson, and I, would work on lyrics to songs. Basically, poetry. It was something I fell in love with—writing music and the lyrics. I was good at it, too.
As a late teen, all the way throughout my twenties, I wrote and performed spoken word poetry at coffee shops around town. I was the featured reader at Penny Lane, up in Boulder, Colorado, several times. I got a third of the profits coming in, as a featured reader. They charged $3 at the door. Modern-day beatniks and other poets and artists, came to sit at tables, while they sipped on their hot espresso drinks, listening with their souls to poet after poet. These performances I will treasure for the rest of my life.
As a featured reader, you got free drinks at Penny Lane-whatever you wanted-at the coffee bar. The first time that I was a featured reader there, I had a bunch of espresso drinks–a cafe mocha, a cappuccino, a vanilla latte, and possibly more. This put me in a caffeine tizzy. I was jittery as I walked the stairs to the stage. Not my best performance, as you can imagine! I tweaked on caffeine swimming through my veins until 4 in the morning! I learned my lesson.
In my mid-twenties, I traveled a lot to San Francisco to visit my good buddy from high school, Terra Klystra. She would accompany me to cafes in the Haight Ashbury District, to perform my poetry on damp refreshing autumn evenings. I got a standing ovation at one coffee shop. I felt totally alive. I was in purpose.
I self published three poetry books. The first one was called Inner Treasure. My good buddy, Stacey Dallas, the keyboardist from my band, Sacred Ashes, worked at Kinkos Print Shop in Boulder a block from Pearl St. Mall. She got a discount, so, I printed my books there. The owner read my book and told Stacie that if I signed and gave him a copy, then he wouldn’t charge me a penny. He told her the next day that after getting a copy of my book, he went home that night and painted what each poem meant to him. He had not picked up his paintbrush or paints for several years. That was the universe showing me how much of an impact I made on people with my words. It made me cry as a 23-year-old.
I wrote two other poetry books. I lost all the copies of the yellow one. I foget what it was called. It was the biggest one, with over 50 pages. I’m sad that I lost all the copies. There was a lot of good stuff in there. I dedicated that book to Jason Lucero, my good buddy who ended his life on his birthday with a heroin overdose, the year I turned 25. I was in agony and wrote poem after poem capturing my grief. He was a good friend.
The last poetry book I self-published in my 20s, was called Silence is a Gypsy. It was when I was 28 yo. I wrote some of the poems in a psych ward in Rome, Italy, after falling in love with a married man named Marco Pagenelli, who was the chef at his family’s restaurant . His entire family embraced me (except his jealous wife) at their restaurant, which was just down the street from my youth hostel, called Hotel Sandy, which was just down the street from the famous Colosseum.
Here are some poems from Silence is a Gypsy:
Rooms with a View
In the blue room
The smell of flowers
Made me hungry for love.
In the red room,
My pedestal is empty
And full of candy hearts
And dancing silhouettes
Of soldiers.
In the green room
Gardens tell the time
Of the land
Beneath my feet.
In the yellow room
Sun spots stain shadows
And bumble bees
Are a gift of tears
Stinging when the world becomes numb.
In the orange room
Thoughts are loud
And tangled
Like tangerine taffy
Strung on a rusty swing set at sunset.
In the purple room
The moon is always full
And the ocean
In my vanity mirror
Shifting like a liquid hourglass
With every mood.
That poem was written at a swing dance club on Lawrence St. just north of Downtown Denver. I wrote it on napkins at the bar, between dancing. The place was called The Blue Room.
I stayed in Rome, Italy for 4 weeks. It was a two week vacation that went astray after I had a full-blown manic episode while there. I ended up checking myself into a hospital, taking the ambulance ride there. I had lost everything I had brought with me, except the clothes on my back.
Ver’amore
(Translation in English “True Love”)
My last step into your sight
Was my last breath of solitude
For I carry your beauty with me
Unbridled
Perfect silence.
You call me magic
In the thunder of a crowded restaurante
And your eyes sparkle like mine
As I watch you begging God for understanding
Of this symmetrical reflection
That I radiate.
You are a statue of magnificent character
Poised
The centre of inspiration
Relieved to me at once
As a living Roman man who can cook.
I will leave you with part one, of my long 6 part love poem about my romance in Rome, called:
Mio Mistico e Magico’more
(My Mystical and Magical Love)
All of the walls hold the ears to my beating heart-
It is your eyes watching me in every shadow.
You are my truest of angels-my one and only.
In God’s tombs we met.
I wanted to know how you could feed women and make love in the falling snow.
You asked me to prove I was your lover and to find you an investment in the funeral home business.
I sacrificed my exposed rolls of film to look into your eyes once again.
I write my name next to yours with my fingers when I touch the stony remains of the fallen empire.
I kiss you in the dead of night when the birds are sleeping near the train station
And it is you, watching as I window shop, in perfect view of your large window-
One lamp filling the room of our romance with light.
Okay…I could say and write much much more about poetry. Stay tuned for more poetry postings! I’ll leave you with the last poem I wrote on December 3, 2023:
Crying at Gunpoint
My Father
Who lives forever more
I come to your throne
Raw, untethered
Like a sea of swelling tears
I love like a forever friend
Vivid, warm
A big heart
In an untouched meadow
Of buzzing bees and wildflowers
In the mountains that God made.
“Stop trying to control,”
Jesus whispers through a man in my ear
Deep into my soul,
Is a mode of operation for 50 years
A stronghold that binds my feet and hands
Survival
The hot lava of my emotions
Filled with vibrant pain of black and blue bruises, dripping off white canvas
My little girl
Clinging to her old ways
Her actions still hiding behind fear
Grasping violently
With fists in tight little balls
It hurts to
numb, to run, to hide
To freeze like a lake in the depths of wintertime
Dearest beloved child ,
Suffering is optional now that you are no longer there
But here instead.
I’m an empty cup
Broken, falling apart, but together
Like the Japanese taking brokenness
And making art out of scars
Filling my cracks with 24-karat gold
With sunshine deep inside my veins.
I am at your mercy, dear Lord
Open my eyes
You are the source of my strength
No man can fill your shoes,
(Even healthy ones)
You are revealing that I am your masterpiece
And through Your Word, I can do anything through Christ Jesus
You are my light, my love, oh, Heavenly Father
I surrender
I surrender
I cry at gunpoint
With the gift of desperation
I surrender.
(all poems copyright 1982-2023 by Lisa Jo Barr)
P.S - add a poem you wrote into the comments. Would love to read yours!!
