A beating heart, a dream
A dying soul, shedding tear
Fueled with anger, blasphemes
A cast out, breeding hate
Not against man, not against God
Just a selfless strife
On the ways of man and the ways of God

Death is just one breath away,
While living far from lies,
True to self, and the others' lives
Vision so bright, invisible to man
But to this product,
Of blind hatred.

"Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis;
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis."

Eater of Gods, this creature will be
The tortured, tolerator of pain
All his dreams gone, dead in vain
Yet breathing, to take your breath away
Not to avenge, but to clear
All the fake that is in us.

Taking a step into my heart,
I will find the light in my darkest fight.

it's not the sound that you miss
or the view
or even the touch
or the lips
or the sound of the walking shoes
rushing forward in a stamping blitz
halted by the shadow's looming lightlessness

its not any of this

what you miss is knowing

knowing that you're not standing next to the wind
or particles drifting through your hands-
but knowing
that someone is there
and they have no plans of going-

a sink with broken eggshells at the bottom
skin turning flush red from the inside goo
always making you itch
because everything is so nervous
if it wasn't there would be no purpose
no jackknifing or tossing
no thrashing or abrasive arm wrestling
to feel a stillness inside your stomach
like an eye of a storm
patiently smug
because  the turbulence is never
in
only around

the debris will never hit your cornea
no splintered pupil
always wanna be tender
but I think brave is best

No more nations. No more wars. No more killings. We all
have almost 8 billion (8,000,000,000) friends on Earth. We
just haven't met them yet. Why not a pandemic of love, a
worldwide picnic of peace, not for a week-end, but for a year,
or maybe forever. We live on the only planet in our solar system,
the one tiny planet we call Earth, that allows human beings, and
other living creations, like animals and plants, to live. Our solar
system is the only one we currently know of that permits our kind
of life to exist. There are, on average, 8 planets in each solar system,
but there are an estimated 100 billion (100,000,000,000)
solar sysrems just in our one galaxy, the Milky Way. Further-
more, there are an estimated 2 trillion (2,000,000,000,000) galaxies
in the universe. So do the math. Approximate the number of planets that plausibly could sustain life in the universe:  take the number 1 (the mumber of planets in each solar system that might be able to sustain life) times one hundred billion (100,000,000,000),  the estimated number of solar systems in each galaxy) times 2 trillion (2,000,000,000,000) the estimated number of galaxies in the universe. Whatever that end product is is beyond the capabilities of my computer's calculator, and is, for certain, mind-boogling. The end product gives each one of us a mind-
bending sense of enormousness of our universe and informs each one of us how many neighbors we have yet to meet. Why is the speed of light so fast, you ask? It is so fast, so when we discover how to travel at the speed of light, or even faster, we can scoot around our universe and meet all our new friends. Picnics galore! Think of all the hot dogs and hamburgers and scoops of ice cream we can share with them! We have lived our lives myopically for millennia, and we remain blind to the potential of the future. It is out there waiting for us. Put your assualt rifles, your hydrogen bombs, down and pick up your piece of interstellar peace, a veritable Cosmos of peace, but please go easy on the mustard and relish.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks