What scares you?
That I might breathe the air,
gaze at a flower,
lie on the grass?

What frightens you?
That I might speak to a child,
hug an old man,
admire a young woman?

Why are you so full of fear?
That I might consider kindness,
think of goodness,
remember love?

Copyright Tod Howard Hawks

My dog, Soxie,
seems like a dog,
but I know different.
In '48, he was the
"Black Burrito"
stationed in Costa Rica
doing undercover work
in the jungle. In '54,
he lived on the Left Bank,
sorting out Sartre. In '62,
he took his Ph.D. at
Columbia in the social
dogma of Mao. In '72,
he was a speech writer
for McGovern, who almost
chose him after Eagleton.
In '86, Soxie became a
Dungian psychoanalyst,
offering therapy to heads
of Humane Societies
(a double misnomer)
to assuage guilt. In '91,
he had an affair with
Madonna and got rabies.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

Cherries black by water
flowing, berries blue,
the hue of Father sky.
Bluffs and buffaloes
a long time ago, the
Great Spirit permeated
land and lives. Eagles
flew in hearts of men;
honest words were spoken
then. No token treaties,
no entreaties, arrows flew
like truth to hearts of
antelopes. No interlopers,
no antebellum prairie schooners,
no sooner had they come than
bison hooves were no longer
heard. They herded cattle,
making chattel of red men
and women and children.
Wild dogs knew better.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

Is a candle
more a candle
when its yellow wax
is flowing?

Is a fire
more a fire
when its orange flame
is glowing?

Is a man
more a man
when his feelings he
is knowing?

Ask a flower
ask a woman
when her petals
start unfolding.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

We shall keep the poor poor.
We shall be on them like
a master's whip on the backs
of slaves;  but they will not
know us: we are too far and
too near. We shall use the
patois of patriotism to patronize
them. We shall hide behind our
flags, while we hold only one pole.
We shall have the poor fight our
wars for us, and die for us;  and
before they die, they will **** for
us, we hope, enough. In peace,
we shall piecemeal them, and serve
them meals made of toxins and tallow.
For their labor, we shall pay them
slave wages;  and all that we give,
we shall take back, and more, by
monumental scandals that subside
like day's sun at eventide. We shall
be clever, as ever, circumspect and
surreptitious at all times. We shall
keep them deluded with the verisimilitude
of hope, but undermine always its
being. We shall infuse their lives
with fear and hate, playing one
race against another, one religion
against a brother's. Disaffection is
our key;  but we must modulate our
efforts deftly, so the poor remain
frightened and angered, but always
blind and deaf and divided. And if,
perchance, one foments, we shall
seize the moment and drop his head
into his hands, even as he speaks.
This internecine brew we pour, there-
fore, into the poor to keep them drunk
enmity and incapacitation. Ah,
eternal anticipation! Bottoms up,
old chaps! We, those who rule,
shall have them always in our laps.
We are, as it were, their salvation.

Tod Howard Hawks

Sing to me, o southern hill
where my mother lies,
she near the river
where other children
only her eyes could spy,
her fingers feel.
Willow trees, arcing oaks,
pillows made of amethyst and
amaryllis, beechnut spread,
linen spread by old Mill Creek,
cattle grazing, hazy August
afternoons, all alone was she
except in fantasy.
No love from Mother,
her Father farther
away than Ozymandias.
Tears she used
in her high tea;
no spoon had she.
She wept beneath a yellow sun,
a sister to the gentle sea,
the golden waves of wheat.

Tod Howard Hawks

Are we all not idioms,
peculiar to ourselves
in construct and meaning?
Are not all of us
syntactical anomalies?
Do we not all have elliipses,
lacunae, egregious gaps
in our beings? Lack of
parallel construction in
our lives, dangling like
participles, a pronoun
without its antecedent?
Are not our lives run-
on sentences handed
up by unconscious wishes
and unmet needs? Too
bad we could not be
more declarative and
less rhetorical or
imperative.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS