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TOD HOWARD HAWKS Oct 2020
SUNRISE

The eoan skies of early morning have always
captivated me, their milky blue soft presence
presages hope of another day. Stars that were
there just moments ago have disappeared. The
sun will ascend slowly. There is a sunrise in every
life. For most, it is fraught with keen anticipation
of good and happy times, a precusor of future
fruitful endeavors. But these propitious moments
are not shared by everyone. On earth, sunrises
never come to millions and millions of unborn beings.
Many call abortion a woman's productive right. I call
it ******. Yes, there are overriding reasons to take
a human life:  ****, ******, an imminent threat to a
mother's life. But never should it be used as a
convenient form of contraception, though, of course,
it is. A malady of many. Love is the motif of sunrises.
Loving is the message a sunrise brings as it continues
into day. Soon the sunrise will disappear as did the
stars, but its promise will be realized by billions as the
sun climbs higher in what is now a bright, blue sky.


HIGH NOON

High noon is when the sun is directly
above your head. The sun is at the apex
of its ascension. A man's high noon is
the precious period when he is most
promising and productive, the center cut,
as it were, of his adult life. His children
are growing and learning. His marriage
has found equilibrium.. His worries are
at low ebb. He is at the golden time of his
life, just as the sun shines brightest at high
noon. He is reaching stars that are not yet
in the sky. His is one of satifaction and
self-pride. Enjoy it he should. He has
earned his high noon.


SUNSET

Sunset is when the sun is falling from
the sky. For a man, it can be a time of
retrospection, a time to evaluate one's
life, one's successes and defeats. It can
be a time of an intimacy unlike that of
much earlier years, a close, quiet time
with the one he has loved for a lifetime.
The pain of sorrows and sufferings of
the now distant past have abated. He is
left in the glow of his yearnings and
earnings. He would wish to apologize
for all his mistakes and misgivings, but
he also deserves to be proud of his
many good deeds and generosities.
His is a time before night falls. His
sunset is a time for silent appreciation,
and yes, applause.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
TOD HOWARD HAWKS Oct 2020
I envision a different kind of world. I envision a world of love. If ever you were loved, love will be what you give to the world. You will never run out of love. The more love you give, the more love you will have to give. Wealth is not worth. Love, and loving, are. Our world is turned inside-out. Love will turn it right-side in. Those who hurt others are themselves hurting terribly and unconsciously, because they were not loved enough, if it all. Those who hurt others don't need punishment, they need love, to be loved and loved until ineluctably they feel loved and become filled with love. And love will become their currency, and everthing else will be counterfeit. Love, and only love, is the cure for our sick world.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
TOD HOWARD HAWKS Oct 2020
I have a pet. His name is Charlie. He's an insect, a kind of unusal pet, I know. But he keeps me company and I feel he deserves to be alive on Earth as much as I do. I tell him he's welcome to go anywhere in my apartment he wants, except on my face when I'm sleeping. One day he's crawling along my computer keyboard;  I wait til he gets all the way across. The next day, I find him in the bathroom sitting on the edge of the sink. I don't know how he gets enough to eat and drink to stay alive, but I'm no expert on insects anyway. What I do know pretty much for sure is that he hasn't killed a human being, probably never has intentionally been unkind to one. That's more than I can say about people who are mean in spirit, or worse. I love Charlie. I have never killed any other living creature since I shot a sparrow dead with my new BB gun when I was seven and a rabbit and a squirrel with my 22 when I was in the 8th grade. I guess I finally grew up.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet, an essayist, a writer of aphorisms, a novelist, a meliorist, and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS Oct 2020
I will be the next William Blake. In two hundres years, someone
will enter Oliver Wendell Holmes Library of Phillips Academy
and happen upon my self-pulished book of poems. aphorisms, and
essays titled I WRITE WHEN THE RIVER'S DOWN, which four
years ago the Head of School had told the acquisitions librarian
to order from me, because I had sent him a copy of it several months
before. And that person will sit down and start reading my poems,
aphorisms, and essays and say to herself, "This guy is a genius! I
have to show this book to my English professor. She'll love it." And
word will spread until my somewhat belated genius reputation will
have spread worldwide. I, of course, will not be nominated for the
Nobel Prize in Literature, because if you're dead, you're out of luck.
But Faber and Faber of London will nevertheless publish I WRITE
WHEN THE RIVER'S DOWN and several of my poems eventually
will be studied by students at Andover, among other places.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet, an essayist, a writer of aphoeisms, a novelist, a meliorist, and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS Oct 2020
What if each one of us were free each day to do, to give to the rest of us ourselves and share our real selves with everyone who walked by us on their paths of living, of being, of realizing their hopes and wishes, their dreams, their needs for being genuine, foregoing the facades of existence, showing only honesty, no cosmetics of I hope they will like me, even love me, my heart so desperate to be touched by realness, not by pretensions and lies, but only by truth, our worlds at once different and the same, craving the clean air of authenticity, breathing deeply opennesss and this is who I truly am, perfectly imperfect, my self-acceptance my gift to you and to all and to the world.

Copyright Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet, an essayist, a writer of aphorisms, a novelist, a meliorist, and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS Oct 2020
You said you wanted me, but when I
knocked on your door, there was no answer.
When I called you, the phone kept ringing.
When I used to hold you, I held you forever.
When we kissed, our lips melded. When I
caressed you, your moans were unending.
When we made love, there was no stopping.
Now my tears are like rain, my heart is a
storm, the sky is black. Where did you go?
What happened to us? My life is pitch dark.
Where did you go? My life is over.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Howard
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet, an essayist, a writer of aphorisms, a novelist, and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS Oct 2020
This is my home. Earth is where I live. I have almost 8 billion friends. I just haven't met them all yet. I have renewable loans of kindness. My collateral is love. I am a rich man. The solar system is my neighborhood. We play interplanetary baseball games Sunday afternoons. Beyond Pluto is infinity. We take hikes out there. It's fun, but one can get tired. I am worried about my home. My friends often get into fights, often so bad they **** each other. Friends are not supposed to **** each other. Children, little kids, don't have enough to eat, so much so they starve to death. So many of my friends have no place to live. They have to lie on cardboard boxes folded in half that they put on hard, often cold, cement sidewalks when they try to sleep. So many of my friends don't know how to read or write. When they get sick, there is no doctor to see. The air is hard to breathe. The water tastes funny. Often they feel hopeless, so hopeless they **** themselves to end their misery. They are your friends, too, but they feel you have forgotten them. What an awful feeling, what an awful life.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet, an essayist, a writer of aphorisms, a novelist, and a human-rights advocate for his entire adult life.
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