CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

If one was well enough to do everything one needed to do, to get relief one sought,

then one wouldn’t need the help he needs in the first place, would he?

Life is Catch 22 of the universe

He said, “I don’t understand why you insist on helping him,”

“I want to,” I said, “It’s a feeling I have and want to.

What difference does it make to you?”

While we waste time on bullshit,

Epiphany strikes suddenly, a new sight, an oversight

The answer to the question to make evil disappear

warnings served years ago come into play with global warming

Ignoring criticism about forefathers back in the day of humanity

Helps me glimpse the truth that we’ll never get away

Now technology makes it impossible to hide away

Know our religion, know when we pray

Tracked by GPS, our cell phones, credit cards tracked, petition signing

Usage tallied and compiled daily

Threats to control humanity

Spread the word today

Trickle down abuse flourishes

Foster peace in a world of abuse

Propagate hope, knowledge widens the scope,

Many see trickle down abuse encompassing earth

Come see, you know whom I mean!

They ~ the big they, you know who they are,

They will not give us back this glorious great land.

They fight for coin and silver.

Slowly we go to slaughter, 

Like pigs, goats and cows,

We kill ourselves in their sham.

Forced to pay more than our share of taxes

It’s only paper you know, 

No more gold in Fort Knox.

All the gold owned privately

Who's in charge of our government?

Symbols lurk every place you see

Small, insidious, devious concerns surround us, 

Controlled by society, daily news, 

TV, our jobs families, forget our conscience

Our desires prevent our seeing

Facebook and twitter rule you can’t see

Enough to spin your head, dizzy,

Can’t comprehend why Facebook

Warns you not to add more friends,

You can only add so many each night

Isn’t adding friends a boon to Facebook?

Every day it becomes more difficult

to understand the world I’m living in

They are not going to give our land back

If we don’t fight for our rights,

if we don’t take earth back from the usurpers

who have stolen our planet,

We can’t inherit the earth by common assent,

agree our land is not sold for gold,

this land is god’s gift,

is not ours to give or buy,

but to love and care for 

like we do our children …

This land is your land,

This land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

Review by author, publisher, poet, writer, and musician, Thomas Hubbard

Book review by Thomas Hubbard
Tupelo Honey & other tales, by Joy Leftow Published by Aquillrelle, 2017
164 pages
ISBN 978-1-365-84019-7

Don’t stop with ”one more pill...”
Nearly everyone who writes poetry passes through a period of pure autobiographical poems, usually defining themselves as “isolated” because of gender, race, religion, appearance or some other personal trait. The first piece in Joy Leftow’s collection, Tupelo Honey & other tales, is such a poem. BUT, unlike most victim poetry, it is a well crafted, literate work incorporating “rap” that actually expresses cogent information.
So Joy Leftow has indeed been there, and may still revisit occasionally. She has also developed much farther, turning out poems that look into others’ lives. Leftow’s title poem for this collection is “Tupelo Honey,” a heart- wrenching glimpse into the troubled life of a methadone baby who is also HIV. It’s been said that good writing produces a “word picture.” This poem goes beyond “picture” to produce a photograph in words. Have a tissue handy.
In “American Train Trip,” Leftow touches on another poetry staple, a poets’ poem. She relates, with what must at the writing have been a quirky half-smile, a train ride that turns

into a poem about a train ride that turns into a poem. Careful now, don’t trip.

In this collection you will find poems of nearly every type, even a nature poem titled, “Summer Yields to Autumnal Equinox.” Another word photograph. What is really important about this collection and about its author is its range. Reading through these poems you will see most of the stops a developing poet makes on her way to mastery. And having finished your first reading of Tupelo Honey & other tales, you may well find yourself buying another copy, or two, for gifts to friends—because this is not a shelf book. It belongs on your bedside nightstand. You’ll wear it out.
~~#~~ 

ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE

You’re right, a moments’ delayed action

It could happen just like you said,

We could be dead in a split second

To end your life in an accident

Your best friend holds last sacrament

Inadequate to explain what’s evident

Not playing devil’s advocate,

There’s a precedent

Proving your point,

Religious is as religious does

Feel like I’m stuck in a sound wave

or a science fiction film

Even if you do what you’re supposed to
You can still end up dead or alive

Desires Proliferate

Live in the closet of my love.

Live together in love

Live alone in society

Live in the lap of luxury.

Live on the dark side of time

Live in reality and live in a fantasy world

Create regions of legions in my mind

Dream conversations that never occur

My mind is a blur

Anticipate reversal, life’s controversial

June frost instead of blooms

A foreboding sense of doom looms

Casts a spell and dispels the gloom,

Sweep the room of yesterdays away
Use a brand new red broom to chase away my blues

Freedom Rings Righteously

Make your own reality

Make it more than fealty

Give you your guarantee

You have my loyality

It’s ok, we’re not royality

Anyone can be an appointee for all it’s value

Be absentee for all its worth

Stand there and set yourself free

We all want to be free too

See the world

How many feel free, are free because we want to be free

How can we be free?

Do we leave society …

Follow the whoremongers, degenerates and warmongers running society

If you set yourself free and I can be me and you can be who you want to be as long as it’s safe

Don’t want to go up against the law, stay within the law, be free inside of me ~

free to be the best me I can be

I want world’s reality to be better than ever

This song is a prayer to make our world better

May the lord above and spirits guide us to heal, be righteous with ourselves and others, order ourselves never to presuppose – truth is different to each of us

I hear if I want to be free I can be but is it reality

Do we each make our reality as advertised

Life makes reality daily

Is reality chance or choice?

Who has the answer? …

Thoughts in my head run rampant with fever.

We’re featured on life’s marquis

Worried I won’t get to see the Ganges

I’m the new queen bee of poetry

Every day create new reality

Live to create

Leave the Dead Sea behind

Live each day a new day to create carefree whims

If you want to live free, live free

Free yourself be yourself we’ll live together free in a new land we create in the valley of our dreams

I’VE GOT TROUBLE IN THIS LIFE

Life’s rife with strife,

got my share of strife

impossible to ignore life’s blights

nightlife trying to hide jive,

strife despite gripes to deny

life on test drive, clamoring to survive

outlive the overdrive,

contrive to connive to stay alive

don’t attempt to outlive the clouds into which we dive

only to insist our offspring live the lives we try to give them

nine to five aint all life’s meant

work all day & strive to survive

day after day, fill our lives with what we must do to survive

Our lives are not always such  

a pleasure drive

I’d much rather do what I love

Instead of what I have to do
I’ve got double trouble in this life

No Looking Back

No sorrow or regrets

Get with the flow

Get where u got to go

Get where you want to be

Sounds pretty hip-hop to me

Battery operated society

Words fade into the past

Meanings and connections lost

Let the world know, it’s time to grow

Leap forward into a world we don’t know

Time to plough through the garbage

Quid pro quo, it’s our planet here

My words like music, fill your ears

My lips, soft like rose petals touch your lips

Words fill you with sounds I don’t hear

Rhymes I spout fill your heart

Be political, keep making art!

Live in Poetic Entrancement

I’m not a rapper or a rhymer

I refuse to be defined except as poet

I’m a social climber, not on a timer

I’m an old timer, been through a lot

Since born

I’m a writer, half-assed extrovert, an undercover introvert

I write all day till my hands hurt

Use a keyboard and mouse to type

Send out memos to me and everyone else,

Letters, reminders,

So busy I go crazy

Live in a bluesday concert of my making

Try to avoid being hurt is like trying to avoid living

I indulge in frozen fruit parfait I make

Grab it!   Life’s for the taking do our best to make it matter. 

Proclaim! … Black Lives Matter!

I cry for lost dreams. Houses made of stone and glass, all wood inside the fame and fortune never gained, the way my heart has been maimed, my life tamed and bought at the corner store. Dreams estranged ~ caught up in the buzz of busy bees living day to day in a maze on a pension fund money I earned, not charity, driving safe in the slow zone. No airs or golden chalices standardized morphing of reality leave me to blaze on a hot day with no underwear. I fear the living dead. Live in my head less than half of it never comes to be because I am alone, lost on a phone yet I want to be like Annie Malone and be me. I want to be her, still, I see neither is he.

Change your tone; don't use your phone while we're having this conversation.

I want to be Annie Malone – the first Black woman in the US to take the world by storm.

Found her accidentally on the net while searching for my old colleague Annie Malone.

Blown away in awe, – Annie Malone was ahead of her time, born August 9, 1869 – A chime went off in my head to read…

American businesswoman, inventor, and philanthropist, Annie Malone came from a simple life. Annie manufactured products revolutionizing hair care for Black women. That’s my goal – be a hero, a superwoman, a spokeswoman, for groups who appreciate a different kind of Annie Malone, a noblewoman, a strong secure woman, a give society-her due woman instead of suffering anxiety,

Gavin’s notoriety or mine. How much sobriety do you need to see the vitality? Like royalty live by the misconception that insanity is the rule of the day. People say they want different, yet prefer compliance, ignore morality impiously siding with the majority, and fear authority. Standing in a minority is gaining seniority. Gives me hope that one day we’ll be a supermajority and redevelop the meaning of authority. The Cherokees are the original owners yet were thrown away for currency.

Finally, accept this is life and I’d rather do this than push up daisies

Keep all kinds of lists because the To Do’s persist

in running my existence while I attempt to stay cool ~be a shamanist

Get more abstractionist as I age, when I was younger, psychiatrists said I was too literal

Couldn’t see me being lyrical

I preach everyone’s crazy only some of us don’t recognize how crazy we have become to survive.