at high noon
at a small college near the beach
sober
the sweat running down my arms
a spot of sweat on the table
I flatten it with my finger
blood money blood money
my god they must think I love this like the others
but it's for bread and beer and rent
blood money
I'm tense lousy feel bad
poor people I'm failing I'm failing
a woman gets up
walks out
slams the door
a ***** poem
somebody told me not to read ***** poems
here
it's too late.
my eyes can't see some lines
I read it
out-
desperate trembling
lousy
they can't hear my voice
and I say,
I quit, that's it, I'm
finished.
and later in my room
there's scotch and beer:
the blood of a coward.
this then
will be my destiny:
scrabbling for pennies in tiny dark halls
reading poems I have long since beome tired
of.
and I used to think
that men who drove buses
or cleaned out latrines
or murdered men in alleys were
fools.

being poetic sometimes just comes to you naturally. the words flow through you onto the paper in a beautiful rythmic way and they paint an emotional landscape of thoughts and feelings but then someone sees it finds all the flaws all the things that made you feel it was yours that made you feel unique ruined. you feel exposed, hurt, scared. you hide from yourself you won't let your muse out for fear of having your art distroyed altered and corrupted. so you change you pick up a brush you dip it in the paint and you let the flow begin again. your strokes are thrown at the canvas where you feel the anger, your strokes become detailed and gentle when you feel happiness or calm emotions. but then someone sees it they see only the flaws they tear it apart and you along with it. where the lines are jagged from your anger and disappointment they only see uneveness and imperfection. where the shading is uneven from the sadness and the pain they only see imperfection they can't see what precious beauty lay deep inside the painting and the use there words to hurt you to make you feel like you were wrong like your not doing good enough. so you swear never to touch a brush again you will never let yourself flow with emotions like that ever again you tell yourself. but then you change you learn to play the piano you learn to make your fingers glide across the keys in the same was a figure skater glides across the ice. and with each key stroke you heart beats a note that flows out through the piano like blood through your vains. it feels natual it feels good it makes you feel alive you let go. everything comes out everything you feel and think flows through your fingers the notes of your heart beat expressed through the notes of the piano. the feel of the ivory on your finger tips becomes unnoticable you beome one with the flow of the music your heart beats in time with the rhythm of you soul of your music. and then someone hears it they come in and they take a seat and for a while they listen then they stand up and without a word they leave the room and you continue to play you let your flow continue you pay no mind to the person who just left the room. they return they have brought people with them and they sit quitely and say nothing. you stop playing you stand nod to each aknowlegeing their presense and then leave because the music wasn't for them it wasn't for them to judge even though as you leave you hear the people talk about how amazing they felt you were you no longer care they approval or disapproval means nothing its no longer about your art being good or being acceptable its about being...

for Pradip Chattopadhyay

What is the magic that pulls us ever back
To gather in a circle of remembering
And sharing in the glow of friendship
That time and miles can’t dim.

Why do we make our plans and get the things
We need to guarantee that we will get here
Out of the hubub of still busy lives
And the lethargy of quiet ones.

What is the reward for walking native streets
And looking at the things that made us “us”,
When most of us have sunk our sturdy roots
In places very different from here.

Who have we beome as life and time
Have lifted us and pulled us down-
A few to never rise again-
But most to stand astride the life we made

And tell the world and one another
That the soil of Longview nourished us
And helped us grow to be the trees
That make the forest beautiful.

That Cowlitz County lumber cut straight and true
And built a sturdy framework
That the young can climb to find their way
To make the world a better place.

We stood up proud and did our job
Now we can enjoy what we created
And share it once again with those
Who were with us at the starting of our journey.
ljm

You haven't done a single thing, all of this is me.
I've beome the person i never wanted to be.
I'm so tired of failing, now i'm sailing away.
But wipe your tears darling, we'll meet again someday.
Remember that i love you, i always have and will.
Even once my body has fallen cold and still.
I'm sorry i was a disappointment but i really tried.
I always smiled away my fears but inside i had died.
I don't think it's over, i didn't lose the fight.
Now i can watch over you every day and night.

Red seeps out from my arms,
Tears leak down to my cheeks.
What have I done?
Is this...
Really who I've beome?
Staring at the red pooling at my feet,
I'm already in so deep.
I can't escape this horrid scene.
Why did I have to be so mean?
Why can't I be nice for a change?
Instead, I'm over here acting like a firing range.
Please forgive me,
And with those final words, I was finally free.

How do you spread peace across Earth? First, start with your heart. It matters not where or how you begin. Love is in everyone's heart. Your heart has infinite seeds of love in it, as do the hearts of every other human being on Earth. Toss these seeds of love everywhere. It is amazing, miraculous where they may land, and wherever they may land, they wll sprout. Those with megawealth, those who control global corporations, those who compesate their unconscious lack of self-esteem, because they were not loved enough, if at all, as they were growing up, beome not the bestowers of kindness and caring and magnanimity, but are twisted into despots and tyrants and dictators. Throughout their entire lifetimes, they know no love. Hydrogen bombs and all other weapons they know, because they absorb and pervert worldwide the invaluable recources that could feed the starving, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, educate the unenlightened. Humanity has spent millennia killing each other. Now it is time to take the real power on Earth, Love, and live and love as one. Fling your infinite seeds of love from your hearts everywhere and watch them sweep over all of Earth and watch Peace on Earth bloom forever before your eyes.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

I am not a Christian
But I am trying to beome one.

Said Soren Kierkegaard

What of that day a came to seattle to visit? What bearing will I let it have on me and on you. We are iregular people and we are drawn tot he familiar sounds of death and resentment. We have no honest intuition to share. If you could see the music in my fingers  you would be scared and asumsed and would cry all at the same time. I feel it as adrum beat in my mind ba ba boom, She said. When did my words and mind and grasp and launguage beome so ******. To think of the world all like this at once, i understand the increasing need for addiction in our youth. I am of the youth! I said it! I am difinitive and a light to all the dark lowley soon-to-die air brethers. They need me, they all need me. See there t is again shittty thought and a ****** exicution. I am rabling again aren't I, you who is reading this, pay attention when I talk to you. It's more about the stream of thought now than the actual quality of my writing. Because good writers are good magicians, right? Good writers don't talk about themselves in such a revealing way. They would be out of a profession, and passion then wouldn't they? They cannot see behind the secenes can they? I understand fully and fully wel that I am incapable of using my mind to the highest capacity. I understand that and I will simply move on from my understanding to the immagined, created hillside in the disutopian future of calky, grainy perception. Where all is understanding the outer demensions and sci-fi **** that scratches at a truth many do not wish to open. Just filling u a page right now I am going to stop.