How did we forget to know
The souls of all but human beings?
When did we stop listening
To language different
To the one we speak with ease?

Those elders knew, they were involved
With nature, not apart
They worked together
Until the witch hunts,
And before capitalism ate art...

And medicine, and childbirth,
Marriage, communities;
Profit would too much be capped
If common people lived their lives
With love and empathy

Because some they feared the awe they felt; the danger sensed in crushing
Waters, crumbling rock, and the power
Of biting jaws and ripping claws
Over small **** energy imposing

So they taught us to ignore the souls
Of rocks and stones and moss and trees...
We're taught to value human life
Above all that nurtures us -
Even clearly animated beings

And still amongst these human lives
Are some more valuable than others,
Categorised by colour or class,
Gender, size, way of life,
Or simply their choice if lovers

They re-wrote the myths of first beginnings
To omit other beings, except where they placed
Them only as antagonists
To bring ruin and shame upon our bodies
And eternal servitude we've faced

Modern Christianity pervades here
And other poison ideologies -
Not Jesus' way but the opposite...
Organised religion serves only to prop
Up our capitalist economies

~   using
our intelligence
to manipulate
people   ~

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.