If ever we wish for Peace on Earth, it will only be achieved through the praxis of love. It is strange to me that all the philosophers through the ages--from Socrates through Arendt--never realized this truth and therefore never espoused it;  rather, in varying ways, they talked in political terms of all different kinds, but never evinced the emotional, the quintessential core of which is, of course, love. Just to give two, but heinous, gargantuan examples, are the centuries of slavery and genocide throughout our world, examples that make me wonder what exactly is the true nature of us as human beings. Here we are in the year 2020 and we have over 50 totalitarian nations (out of over 200) on Earth. And we have in the United States a human being in the Oval Office who is patently a racist, a liar, a cheat, a misogynist, and, in short, a criminal who cares only about himself and not a scintilla about any other human being. Love? You will not find it at the head of our present government, nor in the despotic, tyrannical, totalitarian nations that dot our globe. But love is within each of us, and can be evoked in all of us, but only by our collective will. Read, if you will, my commentary, PEACE ON EARTH THROUGH LOVE, which you can find on MEDIUM by typing in "Tod Hawks -Medium," then scrolling down to my commentary. Thank you in advance for your interest.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

What does it cost to gaze at the moon,
how much to spend to know splendor
of heart, what loan most I take out
not to be lonely, can I buy love and
pretend it a gift, will the mansion I
inherit be filled with rooms empty, is
there no tune to free me from sorrow,
can I not share sunrise with others,
need I pay to be with my brothers?

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

There are reasons why
some men are shy
and women too,
when wearing silk,
lie on their beds
alone and cry.
No mother's milk
to satisfy
the cruel thirst
for love and touch.
The rule first
is to beware,
when wearing silk,
of men who stare
or fingers touch;
this much we know.

So you Republicans hate Blacks, Jews, Latinos, Asians, yet so many of you go to your churches on Sundays and pray to God. About what? About what Jesus preached? About how he said to love one another? Hardly! You may mouth these sacred messages, but do you live them? I think not. VOTER SUPPRESSION is equivalent to heresy. Republican politicians across our nation, under God, in over 40 States are bringing back RACISM in full force. Are you not repulsed by this immoral retrogression? WHY DO YOU NOT SPEAK OUT!? My only conclusion is that you are gutless. You are moral hypocrites. You are racists of the first order and human beings of the last.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

There is a tender way to touch you,
not more than a brush across your cheek.
I seek a gentle kiss so not to miss your soft
and red-rose lips that meet mine, the glory
of your golden hair that falls upon my face
as I unlace your flowered blouse to place
my fingertips upon your silk-like skin to begin
to love the rest of you. I lay you down on soft,
blue sheets, your head upon pillows made of
wild willow leaves softer than robin's feathers.
I bare you beauty slowly that glows like a candle's
flame in a room that is at once so dark and bright.
The light comes from your luminous eyes that smile
at me as I reveal the rest of you from waist to knees
to heels and toes. No one knows the tender touch
I bestow upon your gentle being that I alone am seeing.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

There is something faster than the speed of light. It is omnipresence. We seem to be born and we seem to die, but both are merely transfers on our infinite journey that has no beginning and no end. We search for the unknown when we have always been omniscient. We ponder the possibility of other forms of life when infinity is teeming with them, infinitely smaller and larger than we. And then there is the corollary, omnipotence, which we most often misconstrue. We build our bombs bigger and better to destroy more, to **** more, and inescapably now ourselves, the grand ******* of what has always been the true omnipotence, love. Some on Earth have embraced it. A few have embodied it. When will we jettison our telescopes and microscopes and feel--not try to find and see--what's real, which has always been love?

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

There's somethin' awful wrong with the world,
been that way for a long time. This planet we live on,
it's the only place we's got. You can't walk from
one end of it to the other, 'cause it's round,
and you ain't gonna find nothing better at the
end of it, 'cause there ain't one. Yeah, you can
dump all your junk and garbage on the side of
the road, but after time, there's ain't no place
to do that no more. And the water that used
to be crystal clear now's muddy, and the air's
*****, too. The folk with all the money don't
give a **** about us. We barely knows how
to read or write good. We're poor as dirt.
That's the way it's been forever, and that's the
way it is now, and that's the way it's always
goin' be. 'Course when another war comes
along, we's the ones that gets shot and killed.
There's somethin' awful wrong with the world,
been that way for a long time.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

There was a time
when I was a boy
and girls mystified me.
There was a time
as I grew older
when girls were
about my age and
I was more excited
than mystified.
There was a time
when I was almost
20 and girls were
no longer girls but
young women who
hugged me and kissed
me and I was no longer
afraid of the night. The
stars embraced me just
like her lissome arms
did and moonlight fell
on our lips as they met
it seemed like forever.
There was a time when
I undressed her button
by button until she stood
in front of me panting
and naked and I picked
her up and lay her gently
on the white sheet and
through  her moans shared
with her our ecstasy.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

There will come a time
when time doesn't matter,
when all minutes and
millennia are but moments
when I look into your eyes.
There will come a time
when clinging things
will fall like desiccated
leaves, leaving us with
but one another. There
will come a time when
the external becomes eternal,
when holding you is to
embrace the universe.
There will come a time
when to be will no longer
be infinitive, but infinity,
and you and I are one

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

There will come a time
when time doesn't matter,
when all minutes and
millennia are but moments
when I look into your eyes.
There will come a time
when clinging things
will fall like desiccated
leaves, leaving us with
but one another. There
will come a time when
the external becomes eternal,
when holding you is to
embrace the universe.
There will come a time
when to be will no longer
be infinitive, but infinity,
and you and I are one

Tod Howard Hawks

THE SAVGERY OF THE BIRTH AND HISTORY
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The birth of the United States of America,
our democracy, was borne of the savgery
of slavery and genocide, and its history
and growth were perpetrated by the same.
It is an incalculable and unconscionable trav-
esty that so few citizens today know the
horror of this dual devilry, the history of our
country.

Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the
Declarartion of Independence, which included
in it the indelible phrase “all men are created
equal,” and became our third president, was
the owner himself of over 600 slaves. He was
one of eight U.S. presidents who were at one
time or another slave owners, the first of whom
was George Washington.

The Constitution of the United States, when
ratified, thereby legalized the brutality of
slavery, through the 3/5ths and Fugutive Slave
clauses therein, in all of the 13 new states.
Both the northern and southern states prospered
mightily through the evils of slavery, the northern
states through processing the cotton and shipping
it to England, the southern by growing it through
slavery.

Over time, the northern states gradually declared
slavery to be illegal, but in 1861, the year the Civil
War began, there were still 4,000,000 blacks in
slavery in the Deep South. If you happen to be white
and not black while reading this, give eternal thanks,
and while you’re at it, pray for atonement, because
our entire country still suffers greatly from the legacy
of slavery, which we now call racism.

If you were a slave, you had no legal rights. If you fell
in love as a slave, you probably would have done what
most human beings do when they fall in love:  make
love and probably give birth to a baby, whom you would
also love. But if your slave master had a whim and wanted
to **** the mother of the new baby, or if he wanted to ****
her 13-year-old daughter, all the slave master had to do was
to decide which whim was greater in him, because he
could do either with impunity, and did. If any slave said
a word, he or she was subject to 60 lashes while tied
to a tree trunk.

If you were a slave and dared to begin to learn how to
read and write, and if you were caught doing either or
both, you were whipped to near death. And if you had
the incredible courage to try to escape this hell on Earth
and were caught in your attempt, either you were killed,
or wish you had been. (Read about Harriet Tubman and
Sojouner Truth, for starters.) And, of course, your slave
master could sell any of his slaves whenever he wanted
to.

You, the reader, may glean from this brief overview some
insight as to why we, as a country, are still struggling
terribly with what we now call euphemistically “race
relations.” Only 160 years ago, we called it slavery, and
it was LEGAL.

Now genocide. As our new nation grew, it grew obviously
westward, which meant, of course, the United States committed
genocide against countless nations of indigenous peoples who
had lived on this continent for centuries before Columbus showed
up in the Caribbean in 1492. Treaties they had signed with the U. S.
government were routinely broken. The final campaign against these
proud and heroic peoples took place between 1860 to 1890,
culminating in the massacre of Wounded Knee, where old men,
women, and children were slaughtered.

If you have the guts to witness the detritus our government left
behind, take a trip to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the
southwest corner of South Dakota, the poorest place in the
United States today:  rampant alcoholism;  widespread clinical
depression;  a suicide rate of children 12 and younger, three
times the national average.

If you are a reader, you might want to pick up Howard Zinn’s
A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES and
Dee Brown’s BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE.

The Scottsboro Boys, no joy in this poem, only a
remembrance of another instance of Jim Crow injustice,
charges of ****, not agape, no sir, these ******* *****
two white women and should be lynched right now.
**** trials, get some ropes, no hope for these *******,
no sir. Yet, there was a stirring, even in the 1930s, for
justice even for black kids in Alabama, trials aplenty,
retrials too, a shoe could drop in the courtroom and
you couldn't hear it. ****, let's get on with it! Where's
the rope, you dope! You're white and can't fight your
way out of a paper bag. ****, you're KKK. You do
what you please, at ease with dark nights when we
burn them as they twist dead in the wind. Who got
the ropes, you *******? Why you wearing that white
sheet? ****! You don't know how to burn a dead
******? Take off that white sheet now and get the
hell out of here cause you doesn't deserve to be among
us. You gone--out of the KKK! Get in your pick-up
truck and leave now and don't never come back. We'll
burn this ****** forever!

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

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

Baez, Dylan, and I sat on a big light blue sheet
in Central Park on a Sunday afternoon. I had paid
for the carriage ride. Dylan played his harmonica.
Baez sang "Diamonds and Rust." I wrote a poem.
The sky was azure blue. Children with their
mothers played on the expanse of grass. Hundreds of
people were jogging. Others were riding their bikes.
Frisbees were flying through the air.  We had brought
a picnic lunch. Turkey and avocado sandwichs,
oranges and grapes, chips and wine. "Scratch my back,"
Dylan asked Baez.  I told the two about my growing
up in Topeka, Kansas. Baez had her legs crossed and
Dylan lay back and rested his head in her lap. We
talked about Simon and Garfunkel, how beautiful
their songs were, and what a shame it was that
they had stayed together only three years. A
Golden Retriever pulling its leash came up to
Dylan's face and licked it. Dylan reciprocated,
scratching the dog behind its ears. Peace is a
gentle thing, and the three of us shared it for
almost the whole afternoon.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

I did not coin the title of this piece I am now writing.
In fact, I don't know who did. But I use it anyway for
two reasons:  first, it is for me one of the most beautiful,
poetic phrases I have ever read;  and second, it is the
title of one Johnny Mathis' most alluring love songs he
ever recorded. I grew up with Johnny Mathis. I fell in
love under his musical spell, as I'm sure millions of
other teenagers did in the 1950s.

As you no doubt know by now, Johnny Mathis is gay,
but I did know that growing up, and today, unless you're
a bigot like Trump, it does not matter in any sense. Actually,
looking back, I think the young, gay man, who is also black,
who helped millions of young Americans fall in love, is the
perfect joke against the pervasive racism that the imbecile
in the Oval Office has fostered, and therefore is one of our
nation's greatest ironies.

Someone once asked me "Tod, do you have any hobbies?"
I thought for a few moments and then said "Yes, I do. My
hobby is collecting beauty--beautiful moments, beautiful
music, beautiful acts of kindness." I have collected the
beauty of Johnny Mathis's singular singing gift almost my
entire life. His voice, in my opinion, is the finest, male or
female, I have ever heard during my life. Right up there
with Mathis is Art Garfunkel and his singing of BRIDGE
OVER TROUBLED WATER, which, I believe, will be
considered forever as the pop musical equivalent of Bee-
thovem's Ninth Symphony. (Garfunkel was two years
ahead of me at Columbia, but I never met him.) But Mathis'
song were romantic, whereas Garfunkel's immortal hit was
exquisite.

In 1954, the Warren Supreme Court unanimoulsy overturned
"Plessy v. Ferguson" (1896) and thereby rendered illegal se-
gregation, but look where we are today:  naked racist rhetoric
from the morally ugly Trump that has given millions of other
American racists tacit permission to come out of hiding to spew
their filth across the entire country (remember Charlottesville and
the comments of the chief racist in the White House the morning
after?).

Johnny Mathis, as you know, coincided with Martin Luther King's
rise (1955) to lead the Civil Rights Movement and, as no doubt King
realized at that very moment that every next step he took literally
could be his last, which became true when a single rifle bullet struck
King in the head as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, April 4, 1968.

Both these men were heoric, albeit in somewhat different ways.
Mathis eventually owned his gayness and kept recording his beautiful
songs, and King, knowing he eventually would be murdered, kept true
to his moral values. Mathis is alive today, as are the truths of which
King spoke and gave his life for.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Where is Voltaire now that we need him?

The Age of Enlightenment, also know as the Age of Reason, was a full-blown burgeoning of reason in Europe in the 17th and 18th centurys.

By 2020, we have just begun what I call The Age Of Unenlightenment, or Worse, an immmoral retrograde not seen since the days of Corligula, a dystopian era ushered into our global society by a sodden  driver named **** Trump who crashes through his pretentious entrance of **** Trump Tower on 5th Avenue. Now that myrmydon Cohen has just been released from prison because of the pandemic threat, let him clean up the mess in the morning.

In the meantime, the November elections loom. Costa Rica or New Zeland? With the Russians contriving and the Repuplications suppressing, **** Trump could get illegallally re-elected. If that were to happen, I would not wish to spend another nanosecond in this corrupt, criminal country. New Zealand or Costa Rica?

The Worse, you ask? Take your pick. Catastrophic climate change or nuclear holocaust. At least the results of either will not be rigged.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Love comes at us at different times, from different directions. In a parking lot of a hospital. Two cars parked side by side. A woman and a man  both entering their cars at the same time. The man says, "You are beautiful." The woman walks around the end of her car, smiling. The man says " I said that to you because it is true." "I'm in my early 40s," she says. The man replies, " When a woman is beautiful, which you are, age flies out the window." The woman smiles even more. Then man gets into his car and drives away. The woman will never forget this exchange.

Copyright Tod Howard Hawks

The way that winter comes at me,
as if a stranger from a side street
cold and dark accosting me. I turn
my collar up. He hollers, "You, there!"
Faster I walk, fear chilling me,
a lamp post but a grey ghost in the fog.
This ****, winter, mugs me. He hits me
in the face with frozen fists. He grabs me,
stabs me in the side with knives
of ice, slices at my heart, the home
of hope. Supine, frost forming on
my brow, I pray to boughs of willow
trees;  pines will sing my elegy. My mind
drifts like snowdrifts:  a mitten lost...
fingers, nose, toes frostbitten...
a lake of isolation...a sleigh with no
horse...a blizzard of insanity.
My blood thaws the frozen ground,
then freezes.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

The way that winter comes at me,
as if a stranger from a side street
cold and dark accosting me. I turn
my collar up, He hollers "You, there!"
Faster I walk, fear chilling me,
a lamp post but a grey ghost in the fog.
This ****, winter, mugs me. He hits me
in the face with frozen fists. He grabs me,
stabs me in the side with knives
of ice, slices at my heart, the home
of hope. Supine, frost forming on
my brow, I pray to boughs of willow
trees;  pines will sing my elegy. My mind
drifts like snowdrifts;  a mitten lost...
fingers, nose, toes frostbitten...
a lake of isolation...a sleigh with no
horse...a blizzard of insanity.
My blood thaws the frozen ground,
then freezes.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

The words give me their
poetry;  their melodies play
in my heart, their musicality
rings in my ear. I reach for
nothing. They come to me
of their own volition,
making gifts of their inherent
grace. The place they dwell is
sacred, their provenance sacro-
sanct. I am but the blessed
receiver of their beauty.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

Would that I could lie beside you,
sharing silence, feeling the compulsion
to do nothing, to say nothing--
but to be in your beauty. To share
breaths with you, the rhythms of our
breathings syncopated, complementary,
as if a basso continuo for loving.
That our toes touch playfully is not too
much;  that I might take your little finger
and kiss it is no abridgement;  that I
might savor your salt-sweetness is
no sin, but a sign perhaps to begin again,
in time. But now I am beside you,
and the world and all its heavens
is a wondrous place.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

Love is the sky and the ocean,
smiles and laughter from all places,
revealing hope, diminishing despair,
children brown and black and yellow
and white playing with all others,
making friends, falling in love,
babies beloved, helping those who
need kindness, sharing with those
who do not have enough, extending
arms that become hugs, creating lives
of becoming real selves, no bullets or
bombs, no fighting but delighting in
both differences and same searches
always for peace and well-being,
Seeing and realizing we are one.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Can you imagine the world on fire with love? Certainly it has been on
fire with hate, with cruelty, with wars, with killings, with atrocities, with genocide, with slavery, with murders, with corruption, with racism, with human traffiking (especially of children), with iniquities of all kinds.

Why not an Earth of Love?

The human beings responsible for the abominable aforementioned are those who were most likely never loved enough, if at all, especially at the earliest of their ages. Unconsciously they acted out, and continue to act out, their limitless pain on the rest of the world. We can change the zeitgeist of the world, but only through, especially--though somewhat paradoxically--by loving the very human beings orchestrating these maelstroms of unspeakable evil. The truth is to "rehabilitate" these morally lost souls would be to love them continuously--not to put them in pernicious prisons that only abet evil. I would contain them in what I call "Love Centers" where they would be loved, but never punished, for as long as it would take to change fundamentally their abhorrent behaviors
and beliefs. They no doubt would be contained a very long time to effect
these changes--for years, perhaps decades, even the rest of their lives. And
it would take, I believe, 50 to100 more times the amount of energy of each person who was qualified and decided to do this kind of work in Love
Centers than others now spend at their current jobs. This method of change
I propose no doubt would be met with mighty resistance, but in the end, it would come to be seen as best way out of this immoral abyss that all of us, worldwide, are all forced to live in every day.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

The World Picnic,
8,000,000,000 sisters and brothers,
7,000 languages and dialects,
no borders,
one ocean,
nothing missing
except wars, weapons,
racism and hate,
skins of all colors,
joy and love,
no money, just honey,
all kinds of music and foods and cultures,
dancing through the night,
laughter all day long,
clean water,
fresh air,
caring and sharing,
owning only
a right to be free,
a responsibility to be
kind to all others,
no jails and prisons,
but Love Centers instead,
helping, not hurting,
realizing the sacred in all,
liberty, equality, fraternity,
finally PLANET PEACE.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

The world within us is larger than the world around us.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

I have a strong sense that the world, and virtually every human
being on it, yearns for peace. If there were a worldwide vote to-
morrow, for or against world peace, and every human being on
this planet--I call them "Citizens of Earth"--voted, I know in my
heart that the vast majority would vote overwhelmingly for global
peace. So why isn't there "Peace on Earth" right now? Why is
"Peace on Earth' only on Christmas cards for a couple of weeks
every year? The answer is that the despots, the tyrants, the dictators
on Earth who wish to wage war are essentially demented, who tra-
gically confuse self-aggrandizement with worth, who are uncon-
sciously unaware that their profound lack of self-esteem is caused
from not being loved enough, or possibly never, during their  
lifetimes and therefore forces them blindly to pursue power and
wealth and fame in lieu of kindness and caring, which are the pro-
genies ol love and being loved. And there are just enough of these
tortured souls on Earth who think weapons of all kinds--from assault
rifles to hydrogen bombs--are simply playthings with which to brandish
their fraudelent sense of superiority over the rest of us. Why would it
not be possible actually to have a worldwide vote for Peace on Earth,
given the explosion of technological advances made in recent years-
smartphones and satellites to connect all 7.5 billion of us "Citizens of
Earth"--so we all could scream to these warmongers that we de-
mand world peace! Not wars, not killings, not ecological destruc-
tion of Mother Earth, not a nuclear holocaust that would **** all
forms of life on Earth. We cannot wait for the "right" world leader
to come along. We, the people of the world, need now to do the
right thing for Earth, and for all living creations on it.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

They're a lot of sick people out there, lonely people, homeless people, hungry people, hopeless people, people who drink lots of alcohol, sniff *******, shoot ******, swallow amphetamines by the handsful, starving children, children who are captured and forced into the worldwide, multibillion-dollar business of child *** trafficking, billions of people who are still treated brutally because of the color of their skin, the slant of their eyes, the religion they practice, people of color who are disproportionately thrown into squalid, for-profit prisons for years, victims of all kinds of inequalities, iniquities, and God knows how many rich people, mega-rich people, who wittingly and unwittingly promote, participate, and prosper in these malevolent practices abetted by known and unknown people who are never caught, never held responsible for their evil deeds, their complicity in these atrocities by people and politicians and presidents and potentates and despots and kings. And so many of us turn away from all these horrors, watching sit-coms on TV, playing the back nine, cheating on their spouses, making gobs of money, going to their houses of worship and mouthing chapters and verses, remaining unconscious of the implicit duty we all share in helping our fellow man and woman and child. Shame on us all.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Things cling.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Do each of you realize that you are sacred, that
every creation in the Cosmos is sacred? Why
have all who have ever lived not come to the
realization that all are sacred? The Supreme Being
imbued each with sacredness. It is your inviolate
worth, not the money you make, not the job you have,
not the title you hold, not the house you live in, not
the car you drive. Turn inward to realize these truths,
then embrace them. That's when you will become truth
personified, and your epiphany will be that you share
it with all else. You will come intuitively, inescapably,
to feel, to know, in your heart and soul, that love
is the offspring of knowing you are sacred.

Because the above is true, you would love
yourself, and love would be your response to all
situations. And when you give love, you beget love,
so, in time, the world would become a place of loving.
No more hurtful, lethal acts. No more harm, only
harmony. Love would be Earth's modus operandi.
This is how you make love.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

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

This place to lie as I shall die,
you beside me as I gasp my last breathe,
you've cared for me so much, your tender
touch brought me back so many times,
this sacred spot where your heart's love
like a dove hovered over me, a winged angel
whispering into my soul, you tell me will
no longer know the hurt, the pain, I lie
in your soft arms, I see into your mist-blue eyes
I shall never cry again, only smile knowing
our final kiss and embrace will last forever.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

THOSE WHO RULE

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, and 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

with 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

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

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, and 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

with 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

The pandemic, that ****, inimical plague enveloping our world. So it all started in China, or so they say, yet in what seems to me in a very short time, it has circled Earth. Really, that fast, and everywhere, even Okinawa? Moreover, does it not seem a tad morally "grostesque" that so many look to "profit" from the scourge? This is not the way I want our world to work. "Gee!' many will say. "The more corpses, the more money!" Life, any life, should never be predicated on monied worth. Life is sacred. It is not meant to be financially profitable. The indigenous peoples of Earth for the most part knew intuitively that human lives were not meant to be spent on the 103rd floor of some skyscrapper. They realized that all forms of life on Earth were inextricably intertwined, inter-connected. They realized profoundly that all are one. The way we have sectionalized politically our Earth into arbitary nations (over 200 now) is both ludicrous, as well as illusory. The wind, the waters--even the pandemic--do not recognize borders. The divisions of mankind have resulted, over millennia, in aggrandizement, which has inexorably lead to wars on top of wars on top of even more war. And what happens during wars? Millions and millions and millions of human beings have been murdered, a military pandemic of untold proportions. And what if we wanted to love instead of ****? You can't hug someone who is 6-to-10 feet away from you. You can't kiss the one you love with a mask over your face. But phamaceutical giants are all furiously trying to become the first to create a viable vaccine and thus make billions and billions. But that is not love--just the opposite. And what of all the poor human beings on Earth, so many of whom already have contracted the virus, or eventually will--how are they going to be able to pay for the vaccine? The coronavirus is not the only plague circling Earth. Uncaring has been doing the same it seems forever.

Copyright 2020 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

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

Tigers come at night and sweep through women's dreams.

Elephants and leopards watch as tigers grab their prey.

They say a tiger is in every man who roars when he's excited.

When tigers stalk, women weep in deep, deep sleep while shedding
tears of fear.

Women walk cautiously through darkened dreams and sometimes
scream when feeling they're the prey.

When morning comes, tigers leave alone the deer and boar.

Women survive night's long foreboding. They then awake and
leave their dreams in lands distant and forgotten.

Women do not remember tigers come at night when shine
of sun brings forth another day of happiness and hope.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

I have only time and dreams. I do not know how much more time I have,
but I do know that the time I shall have is, pardoxically, timeless, as are dreams. I shall use the time I have left to continue to dream--to dream not
about the impossible, but about the inevitable. I shall dream about caring
instead of uncaring, of helping instead of hurting, of loving instead of hating.
I shall dream of a world of peace, a world on which all the billions of human
beings come inexorably to realize their innate worth, their inviolate sacred
spirit, a moment in the not too distant future when all will not only join hands, but also join hearts, a spiritual ecology that will complement a climate ecology.
Instead of self-aggrandizing, we all will be accruing love--of self, and therefore ineluctably, of all other creations on Earth. At this moment, our
world is turned inside out. Our "values" are convuluted, contorted, twisted.
The world is presently contolled by inimical forces that bring torture and
terror to Earth, that think weapons and wars are their their sole prerogative.
But Earth's destiny negates this notion. This is not just my time and dreams, but the time and dreams of all. And sooner than later, the time will be now
and the dreams will be manifest.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Time is but a breeze
wafting through oak leaves
first green, then yellow,
finally brown and brittle;
a breeze blowing through
her soft, long hair first
brunette, then blonde,
finally grey;  a breeze
lifting swallows high
into blue sky, winged ones
aiming for the sun and
the morning star beyond.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

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

We all are as free as the one who is still enslaved.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Of course, I hear with my ears. Of course, I see
with my eyes. Of course, I feel with my hands.
But if I wish to do all the above the best, I do not
use my ears, I do not use my eyes, I do not use
my hands. I use the keenest sense I have:  I use
my intuition. And when I use my intuition, I can
hear all falsehoods, I can see through all illusions,
I can feel all disingenuousness. The lies, the fakery,
the cons--the ways and means of many--become
naked and clear to me, and I eschew them. I need
say nothing. I simply continue to follow my inner
moral compass, and my destination, whether near
or far, always in time appears, and I am home.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Tone Grant was a classmate of mine at Andover. I remember speaking to him in Oliver Wendall Holmes library as he was writing a paper. He was cordial. He was also starting varsity quaterback for Andover's football team. His hand and arm that wrote his paper was not what got him into Yale, but the same hand and arm that threw footballs so well were. Tone became an attorney, then served in Vietnam and was wounded. Later in life, he became president of Refco, at one time the largest independent futures trader in the U.S., where he owned roughly 50% of the company. Tone, along with others at Refco, was indicted, tried, and found guilty of defrauding investors of $2.4 billion and was sent to prison for 10 years. He died while in prison. To me, Tone's life was today's perfect example today of a Greek tragedy. Though he vehemently claimed his innocence, it seemed to me that $2.4 billion was a lot of money to explain away if one is charged and found guilty of defrauding investors. No human being is perfect, but Tone, in my opinion, should have thrown that pass out of bounds instead of having it intercepted by law enforcement.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

TO SEE THE SUN

Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, says only guardians
become philosopher-kings. I disagree. Everyone is
a philosopher-king if ever one finds his inner-self and
adheres to its truths. Socrates says the sun is the
Form of the Good, the source of everything in the
intelligible world. In a figurative sense, Socrates is
right. With few exceptions, everyone lives in the
Cave. Forms, not appearances, are reality. Plato’s
best form of government leans toward the autocratic,
but Plato’s arguments are meant to provoke, not
dictate. Plato, and Socrates through him, miss the
most cogent message, I believe. Shakespeare,
through Polonius to his son, Laertes, hits the bulls-
eye:  “This above all. To thine ownself be true, and
it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not
then be false to any man.”

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

TO SHED MY TEARS

I'm sitting on the curb in late July between Al's
Barbershop and Harry's Hardware watching ants
making their way to the gutter where they disappear.
Busby, Nebraska is not a big town--in fact, it's not
even a small town--in fact, it's not even a town. It's
three blocks long, but Ethel's Cafe is open for break-
fast and lunch. And most importantly, it's on the
way to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation located
in the remote southwestern corner of South Dakota
where I'm headed on foot. I've been to Pine Ridge a
number of times. Something calls me there from time
to time. Not sure what it is--kind of like a spiritual
whisper. Only got 23 more miles to get there. I walk
wherever I go--reminds me of Wordsworth's THE
WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US. I say I'm going
to Pine Ridge, but actually I'm headed to Wounded
Knee Cemetery, about ten miles east of Pine Ridge,
where so many of the Lakota Sioux men, women,
and children were slaughtered, then buried, the
last massacre of indigenous people by the U. S.
Army in 1890. I sit on the ground and cry and cry.
The dry grasses soak up my tears as fast as they
hit the ground.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

A long time ago,
I used to lie on my bed
and look out my window
and watch the big elm tree
as it died slowly.

And I used to watch the cars
as they traveled by,
some fast, some slow,
from right to left, and left to right,
and wonder where they were going to
and coming from.

Once from my window
I hit a bus with my BB gun.
I was scared,
because I knew I wasn't
supposed to shoot buses,
even though it was kind of fun.

And sometimes I used
to hide behind my curtains
and watch the pretty
girls walk by my house
coming back from
the pool in the park.

But mostly I used to lie
on my bed and think,
and watch the big elm tree
as it died slowly.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

To create, to mate one with another,
to form a whole out of desparate parts,
is what the Supreme Being did. Why?
To try to let all know that each is connected
infinitely to all others, that though there are many,
there is only One. When we come to see this
spiritual paradox when we realize paradoxically
that this seeming paradox is no paradox at all.
We shall attain Enlightenment. We shall finally
become Truth.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

To be perfect is to be imperfect.

When you meet a person you do not like,
love her or him.

Everyone has the power to transmute
her/his hate into love by being loved.

Hate has turned the world inside-out,
so turn the world rightside-in.

Return hate with love.

Flood Earth with peace.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

THINGS MY FATHER TOLD ME (poem 1)

When I was a toddler, Dad called me "Captain" and literally gave me marching orders as his lay on his bed (in his own bedroom) reading books on how to make money and biographies of famous men. "Hut! two, three, four! Hut! two, three, four!" I began marching to his orders at an early age.

When I was five, I overheard him talking about me with his father-in-law. Something about sending me away to school back East when I got older. It scared the hell out of me.

When I was old enough and began playing Little League baseball, once (I mean only one time), he took me to Topeka's largest park and spent a while throwing pitches to me that I tried to hit.

When I began playing junior-high football, once (I mean only one time), he and I threw passes to each other in our big front yard.

Sometime in my 8th-grade year, he and Mom drove me to Kanasas City to take some kind of test. A couple of weeks later, he called me aside and showed me only the last sentence, which asked "Who's pushing this boy?" Dad looked at me, as if I could answer this question. I had no idea what all this was about and said nothing. The two of us stood in silence for several moments.

In my last year of junior high (9th grade), I was elected by my fellow teammates co-captain of the football team, elected co-captain by my fellow teammates of the basketball team, got virtually straight A's, and was elected by the whole school president of the student. Dad never spoke a word to me about any of this, let alone congratulate me, even possibly have given me a gentlemanly hug.

What he did do during those years was to write, without my permission,  in chalk on my blackboard that was in my bedroom the following poem:

"Sitting still and fishing
makes no person great.
The good Lord sends the fishing,
but you must dig the bait!"

That poem stayed on my blackboard for eight years. I was too scared unconconsciously to erase it.

In my sophomore year at Topeka High, I was elected by over 800 fellow classmates to become president of our class, a high honor I revere to this day. Dad said nothing to me, but he did have me apply to Andover and I was admitted for my junior year.

The years I spent at Andover were the worst of my life emotionally and socially. Though I probably received the best secondary education in the world, it was at an extremely corrosive cost. During the annual graduation ritual on the Old Lawn, I made a silent and solemn oath to myself:  Never again would I ever set foot on the Andover campus. I have kept that oath to this day. I surived Andover;  others didn't.

I chose to matriculate to Columbia instead of Yale. Four more years at Yale would have been like spending four more years at Andover, anathema to me.

Columbia was liberating. Its traditional undergraduate liberal arts
program called the "Core" made one learned for life. Exploring and living in New York City for four years made all undergraduates "Citizens of the World," even if one decided to reside somewhere else after graduating as I did. I now live in Boulder, CO. As an alumnus, I was one of twenty-five from more than 40,000 chosen to serve three two-year terms (1990-1996) on the Board of Directors of the Columbia College Alumni Association.

While Dad had wanted me to get a JD, then a MBA, then make millions on Wall Street, I have spent my entire adult life as a poet and a human-rights advocate. And too belatedly, I erased that poem from my blackboard.


MOM'S WISH FOR A DIVORCE THAT NEVER CAME (poem 2)

Mom spent her early years on the famous Tod Ranch located in the lush green Flint Hills, a mere 18 miles west of Topeka, one of best places in the world to raise cattle. But at an inordinately early age, she was sent to an Episopalian boarding school for girls in Topeka. By the age Mom turned 14, being so depressd, she furtively began  to start smoking cigarettes and contiunued  until she died.

Several decades before her death, a doctor said "Antoinette, if you don't stop smoking now, those cigarettes will **** you.  Mom's reply was, "I don't care. I love my cigarettes. They are my friends. They give me pleasure and never judge me. I can start up a converstion whenever I wish."

Dad had an eye for good-looking women,  began dating her, and then married her.  I found out about this, and many other things, from my social worker at Menninger's when I was in treatment there.

When I was about 4 1/2, Dad came home much earlier than usual, walked upstairs, and opened the bedroom door, only to find his wife in bed with aother man. That moment blew Dad out of the Milky Way, and emotionally, he never returned. As the social
worker was telling me this, I came to realize why I felt as a young boy what I would describe as a cloud of emotional radiation that
hung over all of us. The social worker had told me that Dad and Mom's father said that if Mom tried to get a divorce, they would make legally sure that Mom would never be able to see any of her children (I have two sisters) again. So that's why they had separate bedrooms, I thought, and that's why Mom spent the rest of her life watching alone TV shows all evening and read detective stories until 3 a.m. Maggie, the black woman who worked for us, became my surrogate mother. She fed me grits and poached eggs every morning, washed all my clothes, spanked me when I need a spanking, and gave me a big hug when I needed love.

Getting into theapy in my early 20s was the best education I ever received. It both saved my life and continued to enlighten me.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks