We are all on the same train.
The train is endless.
Though we look and speak differently,
we are all the same.
When the train stops,
some get on, others get off.
We travel through
sorrow and elation,
hope and despair,
ignorance and wisdom.
But our destination
is the same:  Love.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Lines and cubes, unparalleled construction,
participles that don't dangle, heads of horses,
Guernica in stanzas, feelings contorted,
crying while dying, iambic pentameters,
stiff arms straight up, screams wide open,
metaphors and ******, hanging on walls of
Museo Nacional Centre de Arte Reina Sofia,
blue pillows on the floor, broken legs and
arms, ******* and agonies, montage of
blood and brutality, peace and war, love
and kisses, hits and misses, curves and
angles, bulls beheaded, silence and solemnity,
silver-blue stars bursting through open
windows, helplessness and hope. Picasso
and I.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

How many of you belong to the AMERICAN FASCIST PARTY (formerly the Republican Party)?

**** Trump is the first (Lincoln was a Republican) to be elected president of the United States of America. During **** Trump's tenure, there were 1,716 mass shootings in America and close to 2,000 human beings killed.

The AR-15, a weapon of war. Heard of it? Have one? It's legal. Buy as many as you like. If you tried to shoot a pheasant with one and you hit it, you'd have only feathers.

It does the same to a child's body. A grieving mother in Uvalde, Texas had to identify her dead son by a sock he had worn to school.  The AR-15 had torn up the body so badly, the mother could not recognize her dead child.

The 2nd Amendment guaranteed a citizen's right to own a MUSKET, not a de facto machine gun. The right to own as many AR-15s as you wish, even one, is insanity, pure and simple.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Close your eyes.
Take my hand.
Place it softly
on your bare breast.
Now I lean forward,
brush your hair aside.
Kiss me tenderly.
Whisper love to me.
I'll do the same.
Take my other hand.
Put it on your naked thigh.
Let me feel your body arch.
I am above you now.
You smell like roses.
I kiss your entire body.
I kiss it again in case
I missed any curve.
I am in you now.
I close my eyes.
We are one.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

It's never mattered what others thought of me.
As I now look back on my life, this was true
when I was growing up--in grade school, for
example. I had some friends;  I even had my
first girlfriend, Virginia Bright, whom I met
in the fourth grade. I had a dream about her
and the next day I chose her to read after I
had. She invited me to her church on Sunday
evenings to learn how to square dance. As I
continued to grow up, I got elected co-captains
and presidents, but I didn't seek them out--
they just seemed to come to me. I remember
I used to say hello to--befriend--classmates
who were not popular, most likely because
they were of a different race than most of us;
I didn't even think about our superficial
differences--I just liked them. That's the way
it's been my whole life. Perhaps over the
decades I grew to understand that bigots,
racists, were the way they were because
as they were growing up, they never were
loved enough, if at all, and as a result, suffered
great emotional pain, pain so great they un-
consciously tried to repress it, but could not,
so they unconsciously compensated for their
lack of being loved by accruing megawealth,
achieving power, not to empower others,
but to oppress them, and/or by gaining
fleeting fame. I feel sorry for these people.
Everyone needs to be loved.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

To use a statistic to describe poverty
is to turn a human being into a number,
the antithesis of compassion.

Yet The World Bank, The International
Monetary Fund, The United Nations--
all use statistics when talking and writing
about poverty.

Nazis turned human beings into numbers
by using indelible ink when they wrote them
on the arms of those they soon were to ****.

One human being in poverty on Earth is
one too many.

My nouns are different:
starvation, hopelessness, illnesses,
slums, violence, death.

There are over 3,000 billionaires in the
world right now.

How much has each given to end world
poverty?

How many of them have held
in his or her arms the body of a child
dying of poverty?

Not enough, not nearly enough.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

We fight wars then write novels
and make movies about them.
Mentally ill people **** 19 children
with their military-grade AR-15s
then show horrendous videos on
the evening TV news. Murders,
rapes, tortures, and other atrocities
are reported on, and the corporations
that own them profit grossly from
the aforementioned grotesque.
I have better ideas. Let's stop war-
ring and start loving all others.
Let us rid ourselves of all weapons
from handguns to hydrogen bombs.
Stop profiteering from poisoning our
only home, Earth. Let us follow
true leaders rather than corrupt
politicians. Let us go to our hearts
that tells us what are the right
decisions to make, the right things
to do.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS