As real as Monopoly Money....

I'm on Mediterranean Ave, buying sleeping gas, and a bulletproof vest to rob Community Chest. Inside info from Dimples. Cut her out of the money by putting 2 in her temple. Off to the projects, the Marvin Gardens. Special discounts when buying guns by the carton. The back up getaway is on Pacific Ave. Her brother will drop me off, I'll plant a bomb in his taxi-cab. Rob them, he'll drop me at the Waterworks, his car blows. I'll swim a half a mile to Reading Railroad. Give *** Jack some chump change, $500 for the caboose on the train. Low profile as we go through the ave's; Vermont, Oriental, Kentucky, and also Virginia Ave. Robin hood theory, throw out bundles of cash. We can't Stop, we'll be taking a Chance. Getting locked up in the Jailhouse, 25 with an L ****!

Jump off @ St. James church, to stash my firearm. "What if it's closed", I'll crack the burglar alarm. Walk in, see the priest, and for our sins we confess. For the rest of this mission, we'll need to he blessed. With this economy messed up, pockets they lack. Time doesn't pay the crime, they've added a Luxury Tax, to avoid the Electric Company where people get fried Jack. Walk down Indiana and blend with the panhandlers, to No. Carolina, where I'll steal us a Pathfinder(Nissan). Then we'll go, it's a quarter after 4 we got to get to the B&O.; Listen for the Jamaican yelling bloodclot. He'll extract the rest of the plan from his dreadlocks. Park Pl. will take us straight to the train station. Hide all your valuables, it's headquarters for freebasing. "What about the cops watching from the Free Parking Lot"? We'll sneak up the back street called Tennessee, and dress up like some ladies, to hide our identity. "Ooooh that's smooth and just might work, to make it to Conneticut in heels and a skirt". Get on the Shortline to Advance to New York, and lay low at St. Charles Pl., on Ventnor and Illinois.

We're at St. Charles Pl. getting undressed from the lady clothes, and the rest of the plan to pull a hit on the Parker Bros. Rifles issued at target practice, to get what we wanted. When we Pass Go, they'll pay us $200. To rent a room on the Boardwalk Hotel Top floor, to shoot the Parker Bros. as they walk out the front door. We'll lean out the window and have them centered. Since the scope is telescopic, we can see where the bullet entered. BOOYAH, the scope is off, so we missed their heads. Broke down the weapons, while we was running downstairs. Stole their Rolls Royce in front of the crowd. Still in pursuit of the Brother's for laughing aloud.......GAME OVER!

my wall was only made
stronger by your scorn
by your judging red eyes that
burrowed deep into
me.
my wall became taller
when you tried to figure my
heart for a criminal.
my wall became because i let you build it.
and now it is a house to
many birds that sing.

War is everywhere.
Not only among our countries, but
in our communities, our schools, our homes.
From the bully down the block,
to the programs on our televisions,
it's everywhere.
But no one else seems to see it.
In a matter of two weeks
I witnessed mall shootings in Oregon,
attended a funeral to a man I knew,
along with hundreds of other people
to support a family who's lost.
In Conneticut, family after family was left
broken,
because of the missing pieces
starved,
of love from someone who wouldn't come home,
robbed,
of any sense of safety ever again.
And we,
all of us,
sit idly by
guns in the nightstand of our bedrooms,
gory video games consuming the lives of
children. Young, innocent children.
It makes me so sad to watch this all happen.
To hear all these voices, asking for change,
but no action.

a mere flicker

my time with you
may be limited

but your touch
will be softly eetched
in my mind
as long as I'll remember

An act of an adrenaline *****,
Who climbs like a monkey,
Unencumbered by fear,
                                      he is a seer of distances,
                                       and close to the sky.

A bit of a fish or something that
covers fish flesh or over my eyes,
to see the truth not conspiracy ruse,
oh Lord, drop the scales from my eyes,
fill me not with hate, distrust or to despise,
                            others who breed trust, in them with lies.

Found standing on a rock formation, high above a body
liquid green and cool blue, dark mysterious plays with light,
seeing feeling the movement sounds of syncopation, the wind
carries a rhythm, which grounds my life and
                                                             in the large and the small,
                                           lets me know I am not alone after all.

Not connected to some guy in Conneticut who has a theory,
Not applauding an NYC teen for going where no one is allowed to go,
Knowing that I am able to rest at His behest, as He was able
to invest, His son.

In every life, for every generation, for every day is a trial,
                    and for every trial there is God.  And the world
measures with scales of injustice, you can't climb out of whole,
you can't protect yourself, from the ways that drag and
sway your soul.  Away.

The years I spent at Andover were the worst years of my life.
I was a kid from Kansas, a very smart kid, if I do say so myself.
So smart, in fact, that my father had planned years in advance
that I should attend Phillips Academy (aka Andover), because
he could live out his fantasies vicariously--albeit unconsciously--
through me. My dad had grown up during the Depression dirt
poor, but he also was very bright and was determined to escape
the hellhole he had survived through sedulous work and Her-
culean effort, and thus became very rich. I, of course, had never
heard of Andover. I was content to go to public schools in Topeka,
Kansas, had many friends, got virtually straight-As, and enjoyed
immensely all the athletic teams I had played on. Also, I was elected
president of the student council in junior high. But all of that didn't
matter to my dad. Andover, and only Andover, was my dad's plan for
me. I had never heard of Andover, but dad had. He used to spend
countless hours reading books about rich and successful men
while lying on his bed at night. So, in due course, I was admitted
(not an easy thing to do) to Andover, and dad flew with me to
Boston, then rode in a cab with me some twenty miles north to
Andover in the town of--you guessed it--Andover, Massachusetts.
Andover is the oldest boarding school in America, founded two years
after our country was, in 1778. Paul Revere designed and made
the school's seal. George Washington sent his nephew there.
The campus was breathtakingly beautiful. Dad had met John
Kemper, Andover's headmaster, and had noticed what kind and
style of shoes he was wearing, so dad went out and bought me
the replica of Kemper's shoes. How weird, I thought. I received
at Andover plausibly the best secondary school education in the
world, but at an exorbitant social and emotional cost. A small
number of my classmates, principally from Greenwich and Darien,
Conneticut, though intellectually brilliant, were simply mean.
They were "the drops of poison," if you will, that turned Andover's
ambiance into an emotionally corrosive environment that affected in
an insidious way students and teachers alike. I managed to endure
this horror;  others did not. I chose to attend Columbia, not Yale,
because four more years at Yale would have been like spending
four more years at Andover, anathema for me. Columbia was liber-
ating. It's Core Curriculum made you learned for life, and living in
and exploring for four years New York City, the veritable capital of
the world, made you a citizen of the world for life, even if you decided
to reside somewhere else after graduating, which I did. I live now in
Boulder, Colorado, far away from Greenwich.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks