Why?

Do you treat me this way,  -  a place for burial,  
Why do you treat me  -  like i’m nobody  - ?  
-  With you being someone  -

Don’t you feel? -
- how i’m breathing underneath your feet,

Don’t you feel?  -  i’m a living nest  -  the birthing of new life,  
-  With the seed in my womb  -  i’m crying!  -  Why?

I am starting to see the cracks in I.
The voice that I could not differentiate from.
The part of me I mistakenly identified as I.
Whispers its grievances like ghost rolling upon 3am.
As if my mind is its corridor to haunt.
Oh, no longer I, the one that associates itself with me.
The ego is the one who pronounces I.
Hangs off your existence like Corporate America preys on the poor.
The part of you and I that questions am.
The one voice that separates us.
Same as the fake border that pronounces mine, yours, and theirs.
Ownership that never fails to remind you.
It’s the voice that degrades you.
Same as the men who teach boys that boundaries only exist for state lines.
It’s the part of I, that am bears in the burdening of pretending…
Pretending that the notion that you must be this or you must be that.
The promises we keep to I instead of am.
These are the same silent alliances our egos share.
Parts of us that accepts submissively.
That trades profit for war.
That values trees as paper.
That mistakes water as a product not a right.
That part of I that tells you that the land belongs to I…
But you see, you are not I, you are not the ego.
The part of am reminds you that reminds that you –
That you belong to the land, but the land does not belong to you…

I AM

Got designer belt it’s black Ferragamo
And I’m still reminiscin from the time I said “la amo”
And everytime they come around me I am sayin “Vamos"
I Glowed up and I showed up while skrrting in a lambo

Fake friends they pull up and I still callem fammo
97 cents a sale profits going down low
Player with a victim mindset they wanna know mo
Actin like a guru played the shordy feeling down low

Played the game got brain and I prayed holy Trinity
Muhfucas denying my only abilities
Start a business then, deny its feasibility
Turn 18 then, deny my credibility

My life like the stocks, detached from reality
Meet me seem blessed look closer insanity
A young dude who cares, only bout his vanity
Wanna blow up no boom just raise my personality

Date one just to leave one and hop to another
A lot of hearts gon break this whole **** summer
Feeling tired like I just got out of a slumber
Leave em in their feelings while they askin for my number

Wanna make money while biking down the humber
Wanna get a time machine to make my life funner
Wanna lose my weight, but I am not a runner
Can't trust nobody these days so money is my lover

Hues of onyx fill the hemisphere,
                                   daylight sets artificially..

The glacier of life floats breathless,
          more mass underneath..

Beauty now drowns for profit...

Insanity exsists, in an individual and in humanity. You can get it rare,
medium, or well done. Right now, it seems humanity is ready to order.
Humanity most recently ordered WW I, WW II, The Korean War, The VietNam War, The Iraq Wars (Papa Bush and W), The Afghanistan War
(ditto), Syria, Yemen. ad nauseum. Insanity often results in killings, but
I would argue that it is self-induced, that had there been benevolent,
professional intervention, we could have prevented these mass muder-
fests. But hey, wars, especially big world wars, are money-makers,
and the money-makers are not the ones being killed. And then there are
variations on this theme:  catasphrophic climate change and the imminent
threat of nuclear holocaust. One can get carried away with this killing
stuff, you know. And, what would you like for desert?

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

There’s nothing profitable in poetry,
but everyone looks at the poet in awe,
there’s something about reading a
poem at the time, in the right mood
that sparks nothing that’s contagious,
but something illuminating.

cope with all the greed  injustice and brutality
we learn about day in  day out

with some luck
these are not part of our own experience
but second hand  from news and media

this does not make it better  though
when trusted public figures fail

how to react
    to priests and teachers
          who abuse the young
    to presidents  dictators  populists
          leading astray their countries
    to our elected politicians
          unable to resist the lure
              and money
          of those special interest groups
    to ruthless powermongers  businesses
          that only work for profit
          not the common good
    
resistance is not easy
the choice of weapons in this conflict difficult

yet if we not resist
not make the global and the smaller perpetrators
accept responsibility for their misdeeds

our living years will soon grow fewer
and we shall hasten our journey
     to the end of all our needs