it was our very first meeting
but i already imagined,
how we’ll be cuddling
in years we won’t be counting

The man on the moon, you see
He has a few friends

He's perfect and broken
And is kind to no ends

I believe he is lonely
Floating gently in the sky

Even if you whisper him your secrets
He'll never tell you why

His pain is unmatched
Yet he's beautiful all the same

Even when he looks at perfect stars
He casts them no blame

And I find it comforting
Looking to him at night

For he taught me even in dark
There is a way to find some light

One should not be too straightforward. Go and see the forest.
The straight trees are cut down, the crooked ones are left standing.
Kuulilya, Indian philosopher third century BC

WHEN YOU KNOW THE NEXT KISS

When I see you, I see me.
When I see you slowly getting
older, I see myself doing the
same.

You are my mirror. Your
wrinkles are my wrinkles. When
your hair slowly grows grey, mine
is slowly greying too.

On any given day, I am oblivious
to this synchronicity. I am sure I
am your mirror, too, but, like me,
you say nothing.

We have, by now, spent years,
decades, making love, laughing,
eating, taking trips together, holding
each other until the tears stopped
flowing.

We are, as it were, parallel partners
on a long, long journey, the end of
which neither of us knows.

So kiss me many, many times,
and when you know the next kiss
will be your last, keep your lips
pressed against mine forever.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

Step 1: Smile.
Step 2: Forget why.
Step 3: Keep your voice steady
when your soul is not.
Step 4: Pretend it’s fine.
(Everyone else is.)

Step 5: Fold your feelings
into paper birds.
Set them loose.
Watch them burn mid-air.
Clap softly.
Repeat.

There is no final step.
You just keep going
until you don’t know
what breaking feels like anymore.

Infallible. Imperishable.
Unwavering. Immutable.
Neither subjected to limitations,
Nor to transformations.
Death and decay -
None of them in your way.
The permanence of the divine
And the permanence of the stability.
Amidst the ever-changing world,
There is unchanging eternal reality.

My paintings come to life
Springing off the paper
Pulling their self in to the real world
that I pay to escape

dancing around my room
they leap and frolic
before my sleeping face and dormant eyes
my dreams full of colour
felling that my art is with me

For so many reasons;
When the wow creativity
Of the young, new baby poets,

Bursts all over me,
Making me question
My egotistical perception,
Not a slap, but a belly laugh!
At the old fool, who once thought
Ever so secondary briefly, momentarily,
Unofficially, of his own esteemed self-worth,
Only to be reminded, deaf~dumb & blind~sided
By the fresh air, the aggravating sight of new insight
The delicious!delight  of reading the whole of all night
The explorations, the baby hallucinations, the trembling,
Insights of the explorers of the old, not re!newed, but, but.
Made anew, re~viewed with perspectives boldly unknown,
With crazy wisdom to expound, here, you! right here, right now,
I leave you and return to delight, taste, new extra languages, that
                                               I must
                                         learn not to speak
                                       but to peak, even to
                                     Cry, Laugh even Smile  
    
                              In all my new native tongues



Friday, July 18
5:39 AM,
2025
In the sunroom

Dictated in one fell swoop, not a moment to lose, dispatched while
Still laughing at myself...

you saw the earth hidden beneath
hidden with

the fallen leaves

so wrap my body
with
pink ribbons

as i say sorry
for polluting the soil

i was born in

Play it slow-
not for romance,
but because the strings are blistered,
and every note splits the sky
with fire.

Stroll through the panic,
it’s routine:
duct tape on the windows,
radio on low,
a list of missing birds
tacked to the wall
like fallen saints.

You said you'd carry me,
but the world’s gone grey,
and the olive tree’s
just smoke now.

There’s no audience left.
Just wind
and its thousand-watt warning.

Still, your spine curves to the rhythm
like a fever dream from Babylon,
hips like warning sirens,
ankles sunk in ash.

I want to understand
what we ruined,
but only at a pace I can stand,
only with eyes closed.

There was a time
we dressed like lovers.
Now it’s mylar blankets
and filtered masks.

We knew the promise;
we broke it anyway,
above it,
beneath it,
inside it.

Someone keeps whispering
about children,
as if hope still blooms
in poisoned soil.

Play it slow,
with bare hands if you must.
But don’t pretend this isn’t a requiem.
Don’t dress it up in velvet or vows.
Just let the music float
and burn,
like everything else.

When you are tempted to doubt my love
don’t …
When the uncertainty starts to creep up
stop …

I am deeply flawed
but my love for you is not
it’s as pure as it gets
I love you with all I’ve got

I love you with all my heart
deeper than the deepest ocean
higher than the highest mountain
purer than the purest gold

do my mistakes erase all we had?
have my foolish actions destroyed everything?
Have we lost the love, never to be found?
is it too late, have we lost it forever?

What can I do to make up for my sins?
what price can I pay for my transgressions?
can I ever be forgiven?
or are my iniquities too great?

Please forgive me…

I've been seeing more shooting stars lately
Lately as in the past three years
Maybe it's because I'm out here
At nighttime, slowing my car down on a country road
and turning off my lights
So I can see the sky better
Making sure there aren't any stars blazing in my rearview.

i place my head beside her thigh
as if to sleep in her warmth,
I say Twosday,
she says,what?

I repeat, Twosday,

Yes, she say, it is,
pausing to consider
and connect
my dots:

Ha, you’re writing a poem!

“head connected to my thigh bone,
drawing from within me,
the necessary ingredients to
inspire, perspire,-and respire
this agglomeration of the
in and out of your surroundings
contacting pulses”

I think, ah,
she’s got it,
but all I say and
state with definiteness,
by repeating,
and  breathing out

Toosday, Twosday!

So many colorful shards,
so many scattered books,
my Father left behind.

He connected the dots
with me, in space and time,
listening to the wind
when it was raining.

Absent and so close,
he used to say:
“Listen to what’s on the ground.
See what lifts us at night
when the birds go silent.”

He gave me more unrest,
he was the left hand
forced to write
with the right.

He believed in me
when the system
sent me away,
dismissed me.

He had hope
without medals,
standing steadfast
in the last row.

Now the body crumbles.
There is a memory
full of holes.
A counting echo—
he remembers,
he doesn’t,
it’s fine,
still hard
but his voice lives…

Time is blending
into a rusted chain
of events.
Tenderness,
resistance
to the falling apart
of departure.

He won’t come back.
He won’t recover.
The body is warm,
life doesn’t want to escape
the shrinking shell.

Sharp words cut helplessness.
Many nights still come
until the final return
to the embryonic state,
to point zero.

I am here,
into this deep night
being the witness to breath,
awake in the dark gentleness.

It will get dark soon.
The white, yellow, and pink
houses will turn grey,
then black. The cacophony
of car horns will turn into
the chorus of locusts.
Summer's night will lay
a sheet of tranquility over
a city harassed by exigent
matters that matter not.
Soporific silhouettes will
soften the cityscape,
allowing us to escape
the frazzle of the hot day,
exchanging the frenetic
for the peaceful, the welter
for a sense of the well-being.
The susurrus of the evening
breeze blows the exhaust
of our polluted lives into
a distant day. Children play
in yards back and front as
laughter wafts through
neighborhoods like the sweet
scent of brotherliness, not the
fetid odor of finance and
foreclosures. There is a
sense of closure to this day.
As the sun sets, our eyelids
close, and we pray for the
soft rain for forgiveness,

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

I can still taste the cigarette,
The flavour grafted to your skin.

You held my face,
Yellowed finger tips.

Beauty indescribable,
Ash stains down your shirt.

Every word you whispered,
All smoke and hurt.

Rain comes with clouds,
with you i feel complete
Isn’t it amazing, what we found?

of course, looking on
the bright side can
ruin your eyes  ..

Чёрная роза — эмблема печали,
Белая роза — символ любви.
Чёрное с белым навечно связали —
Вместе мгновенья они проживали,
Белую розу надежды — сорви.

Чёрная роза... колючки цепляют,
Чёрную розу подарят судьбе.
Чёрную розу в беде вспоминают,
Чёрные розы всегда погибают —
Чёрную розу приносят в мольбе.

Белая — трепет надежды и веры,
Чёрная — память о боли и снах.
Вместе плетут они вечные сферы —
Вместе они — две судьбы эфемеры,
Чувства летают, как птицы в мечтах.

Чёрная роза, зимы дуновенье,
Белая — бездна в любимых глазах.
Там зажигаются искры мгновения —
Тени сомнений, огонь ожидания,
Жизни круженье в весенних садах.

В каждом цветке — откровение и тайна,
В каждом — дыхание, свет и покой.
Чёрное с белым — их связь не случайна,
Вечность у Бога. Природа — дуальна —
Жизнь — нам подарок в юдоли земной!

В сумраке ночи рождаются дали,
В свете рассвета — надежды огни.
Славим любовь —
Тьма сомненья качала,
Чёрная роза — эмблема печали,
Белая роза — символ любви.

ᴵ one day, you came and
took all the plants that wilted
and made them blossom

ᴵᴵ you took all the plants
that I can't make flower and
made them bear good fruit

ᴵᴵᴵ when my kindness to
myself wilted, you showed me
your garden of it ⚘

More and more
This feeling grows gradually
It makes me feel sore
So brutal

AHHHHHHHHHH
why do I have to wait
longer and longer
These moment that I hate!

There are reasons why
some men are shy,
and women too,
when wearing silk,
lie on their beds
alone and cry.
No mother's milk
to satisfy
the cruel thirst
for love and touch.
The rule first
is to beware,
when wearing silk,
of men who stare
or fingers touch;
this much we know.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

For a moment I took pleasure
On the fact that you existed
You were there
Silent
Withdrawn
But wise
Oh so wise

I felt I could talk to you
As if I talked to the moon
And God you could understand.

hush—silence;

a regimented, simple production.
the clock makes sound, birds chirp, people are people all around— i see them, i am not of them, i let them pass through.

a car packed for a camping trip—the same trunk filled for the tenth time, most likely.

a certain focus—a gaze fixed somewhere in the distance between near sight and far,
a view undistorted, undistracted,
eyes conjuring hypnosis.
deadlines as games, percentages just a form of play, pressure nonexistent.
the order—a construction, all pretend, yet, more real than anything else.

momentum fuels momentum—
whole, and,

at peace for once,

mainly

Epilepsy

Of some oncoming seizures,
Auras make us aware:
We're ready and expecting,
So they're easier to bear.

EEGs appear at times,
As they're like the Richter scale:
When there is a big seizure,                  
The lines might seem like a whale.

A brain electrical fire,
Times can get out of control:
When there's a grand mal seizure,
Get on the ground and then roll.

In hectic epileptic times,
When seizures finally end:
We feel our lives regain strength.
Bit by bit we feel them mend.