Show and Know - Kiss me now

Give me a little kiss will ya huh

I promise not to tell

No one will know

I won’t tell and show

Give me a little kiss will you huh

Don’t worry I won’t yell if you do what I tell you

Put your lips close to mine, Baby

I won’t let on, come a little bit closer

Put your lips right on mine Babe

Give me a little kiss, will you huh

Is a kiss love or desire

Put your hips close to mine

Feel the electricity flow

Through my fingertips when I touch you

Is it worth it? You decide

My love for you is deeper than the deepest sea

Softer than the softest breeze

Higher than the tallest tree

Don’t ask me why this prize was yours

Not mine to decide

Not what’s said but dread of unsaid

Written words make me become undone

Much more than spoken do

You don’t need this shit called love any more than I do

Move to the beat, broken souls reject

Healing, sift through broken bones

As though the answer lies in our wishes

We become lies we live

Buried in solitude, create a fortress

Make us prisoners

Of our own demise

Hearts like silver need polish

Troubled and cautious, need to demolish

Striving to forget unpunished deeds

Our souls create a fort for faith

Hide away, survive wounds, lost battles, day after day

Feel like I’m a rash or allergy, out of control

Think before you speak or

Forever hold your peace

Like shame from tarnished childhood

Secluded from the sun

There’s nothing won in fighting

Tell me give up

I’ll stop hoping

My love for you, stronger than a hurricane

More powerful than an angry storm at sea

Baby don’t make me explain

Feelings I have for you

My heart stuck on you like glue

Love like morning dew

FACTORY FARMING BLUES

Hear my song of woe

Look well; see the flow

Life’s lusting for survival

Rivals reaching for revival

In competition for resources

Desire to find recourses

Consumerism’s lust thrust upon us every step

Creates a schism in our humanity

Strive for sanity

Search for an end to succumbing

To become better before death comes …

Fame, riches, voices no one hears, too busy with wanting to get what they have  

Yet somehow never did

Passion and poetry flow in my veins, Poetry makes us see more than we want

Examine, consider anew

Like a sudden cloudburst, rain can’t be avoided

Get wet even if you didn’t want to

Hear my pleas, please, hear the crying of all factory-farmed animals scream, cry for help

Production methods for meat is a disgrace to humanity

Make conscious beings suffer in rounds from birth to death, lives unlived, shortened drastically, live in constant pain tragically

Brutality can’t possibly have redeeming qualities

Follow like the livestock we are, allow immorality to flourish

Need to be free from barbarity lest we become the suffering we imbibe

Our earth requires compassion

Consciousness and cruelty don’t get along

Pain sears through my brain

Soul Secrets rip through me

Stand outside my head observe

Bleak reality

Surrounded by pollution

Needing a solution

No absolution through brutal lives led to slaughter – is this nutrition

Who stands to explore alternatives to barbarous merciless sadistic tradition?

Create compassion, humanity –

Be the change we want to see …

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.
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