WHY WARS?

Why wars? A mess of massacres,
hills and ravines of horror, bullets
tearing through human lives, bombs
blowing up bodies that lie on
bodies, torrents of blood pouring
like a river through flooded fields.
And for what? For forever? Why
wars?

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

WINTER AND I

Winter and I live the same lives.
Winter is grey, I am grey. We both
are freezing. Winter blows the snow.
I am the snowman. The ponds of
winter become thick with ice. I too
am ice-laden. Snowdrifts are three-
feet high, and I am buried by them,
even as I sit inside my room. Winter
finds its way inside of me, even as I
don my heaviest sweater. Where is
the blue sky that I love? Behind winter’s
sky, I think. Can I endure the months
ahead? Will my heart ever thaw?
Snow and ice will melt come spring,
but will spring ever come back to me?
Will the fragrance of lilac blossoms
ever again lift me to the whiteness
of the clouds? I can only huddle as
I pray.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

It snows and keeps on snowing.
It is late October, not mid-March.
Ice ages of the moment, you left
me frozen and in chunks. My
home is the gulags of your
leaving, no longer your
embrace that was my warmth.
Sixty below is beyond
bitter, but nothing is as cold
as winter of the heart.

WAR is an acronym for
"Without Angels' Ruth."

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

WOMAN

I would have made Woman if God
had not. Of course, we need
to complete the pair to procreate,
but there is much, much more.
Ineffable qualities when mingled
and mixed create a mystical whole
greater than the sum of its parts.
Their subtle differences evoke
and complement each other.
When melded, they forge a new
form made of love of heart and
body, of spirit and soul. When
holding hands, two become one.
When Man hugs Woman, they
become huge;  passion becomes
their hunger;  they feast on one
another, but not to devour;  rather,
to make myriad ways of touching
and pullulating that flower loves
coruscating the heavens, creating
more and more galaxies filled
with countless other lovers, a
shower of sharings, a cosmic
apogee that never misses
even a single kiss.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

Wounded Knee, you are to me
a sacred spot. A cavalry,
a Calvary, we ought not
forget the thousand screams,
the streams of blood that
flooded prairie grass.
Babi Yar, you're not so far
from Wounded Knee. I'd
have to be without eyes
or ears not to hear or see
the enormity:  the mangled
bodies, the twisted forms,
that speak, that wreck
of evil, and of seeing and
not saying no. My Lai,
our lie, women and children
dying, lying on our lies,
covering culpability, a quilt
of carnage, but where is guilt?
Cambodia, your killing fields
now flower with blood and
bones of beings fleeing tyranny,
thousands falling near you
and me as we sip our tea
and munch on sweet cakes of
propriety. El Playon, los
paisanos pobres know no
place but death. No dearth
of death squads here, no
fear of duplicity, my
country's complicity in
these atrocities--my country,
tis of thee, sweet land of
liberty--El Salvador no esta
aqui, porque, like Wounded Knee,
the savior is you and me.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

Yellow and mauve, weavers and their cottages, harvests and wheat
fields, The Potato Eaters, The Cafe de la Care, Vase with Twelve
Sunflowers, the Yellow House, The Night Cafe, Fishing Boats on
the Beach at Saintes-Maries, The Poet Against a Starry Sky, Gauguin's
Chair, Memory of the Garden of Etten, delusions and hallucinations,
"acute mania with generalised delirium," Theo boarded a night train to
Arles and arrived on Christmas Day, "le fou roux," an ear cut off, an
asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, cypresses and olive trees, Two
Peasant Women Digging in a Snow-covered Field at Sunset, The Sower, Sorrowing Old Man, Dr. Paul Gachet, Wheatfields with Crows,
"melancholy and extreme loneliness," 2,100 art works, 860 oil paintings,
on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver, according to Theo, Van Gogh's last words were "this sadness will last forever."

You were first seen in a painting in the Trois Freres cave circa 13,000 B.C. in what in now France. Like all beautiful women, over centuries you changed shapes, styles, names. You became lyres, then lutes. You played dyads and chords. The Persians callrd you "barbat." The Arabs called you "oud." When the Moors flocked to Iberia, they brought you along. You spread to Provence
where you influenced troubadors and eventually the rest of Europe. But wherever you traveled, whatever evolutions you underwent, you always retained your sonorous tones. You became the French "mandore. You became the German "mandoer." You became the Spanish "vandola." You became the Italiam "mandola." Your path was tortuous. Eventually, though, you became the mandolin, but you still had highs and lows. Your first high was in 1744. Your first low was the end of the Napoleonic Wars of 1815. Your next high was the Paris Exposition of 1878. And further, from the late 19th Century through the early years of the 20h Century, was the "GoldenAge" of the mandolin. But after World War I, the mandolin gradually sufferred another decline supplanted by the advent of Jazz. You, a mandolin, beautiful women you have always been, have lived a long, long life, and it's not over yet. You contine to bring beautiful, musical sounds to all music lovers around the world. Your lovely life may never end.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

You are of the material. I am of the heart.
But you didn't mind making love to me until
4 in the morning, nor, in fact, did I. But I did
propose to you that morning;  indeed, I gave
you my Nacom's ring to wear. You said you
needed time to decide;  after all, you already
had a husband, but that triviality had not
stopped you from calling me Friday morning
asking me to join you for lunch. "Do you have
time?" you asked. I said, "I'll make time!" I
said. It was 10 years earlier when you asked
me--demanded, really--to leave Columbia
and return to Kansas to be with you at KU.
I said, no way, so you found a fellow there
who was to be a doctor, and doctors, if they
desire, can make a lot of money, and that
money can buy a lot of things, material things,
I mean. So you married him instead of me 10
years ago, and 10 years later, despite all the
material things you had accrued--a huge home
in an upscale suburb of Denver, a fancy car,
and God knows how many other material
things--you called me out of the blue ostensibly
to have lunch. Old friends we were, were we
not? I had to wait 6 weeks for your decision.
Finally it came. I heard the first six words
you spoke, and then my mind went numb:
"I like the lifestyle I have...." You had grown
up rich, as had I, but you never changed I
found out in a most painful way. I thought
the reason you had made passionate love to me
until 4 in the morning was because you
realized after 10 forlorn years that it was I you
had truly loved, not this money-maker
medicine man. Well, I was flat-out wrong.
I guess what you wanted were multiple,
great ***** from me, and that's what you got.
I got ****** in the worst way I could imagine.
Don't ever call me for lunch again, I thought,
even in a hundred years. And, by the way, I
took back my Nacom's ring, and my heart.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

You don't get it, do you? You still think your money
is your merit, your mansion is high fashion, your limousine
the only car you'll never have to drive , your wife only a
trophy. These falsehoods are like thick pieces of prime rib;  
you suffer from emotional and physical gout. I shout, but
you don't hear me. You are spiritually deaf. Your worth is
deep within you, but buried by layers and layers of fat
and fatuous values. At the Country Club, you are not
bothered by blacks and latinos and Jews. Your only tenet
is to keep your left arm straight. You consecrate Red Label
instead of red wine. You cheat when playing poker, but it's
OK because no one notices. You take a shower, but use
no soap. What the ****! Who cares? I am above all
others! I'll take a Mulligan on that last shot. Boy, get
me another ball!

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

You got 20, 30 minutes, so start singing
your songs.

You got 20, 30 minutes, so start writing
your poems.

You got 20, 30 minutes, so start writing
your novels.

You got 20, 30 minutes, so start acting
your parts.

You got 20, 30 minutes, so start making
your money.

You got 20, 30 minutes, so start saying
your vows.

You got 20, 30 minutes, so start raising
your children.

You got 20, 30 minutes, so start saying
your  goodbyes.

You've had 20, 30 minutes to live your
whole life.

That's it. That's all.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Closing your eyes,
seeing the past,
a kind of reliving,
but clearer than ever.

Moments of torment,
days of delight,
fragments of failure,
sunlight of success.

Your memory a mirror,
looking past is now present,
that which was blurred,
now is truth uncovered.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS