The sky is an artistic graveyard.

Many a hero and many a fool have come to their fate in its wave-driven clutches.

The number of syllables required to storybook danger is as dense as ozone.

The orange layer—a warning sign, posted by the forebearers of fun, who were categorically undone by the very forces they worshipped.

Birds no better than to fly at such temperamental altitudes.

But the dream will die if we don't try.

And so we hoist our ambition like a kite, hoping to stay aloft long enough to discover something more about ourselves.

Plastic bags with bombs in
distorted lies addled with sin
gunfire, controversy, gay meditation
Deaths first kiss gripping the nation

Europe in disarray, refugees fleeing war
people battle for their identities behind makeshift walls
grey stained weatherfronts, conflict that's never dead
panic reverberating as our streets run red

oh old friend what has the world become
infatuated with power massacre reigns beneath the sun
ignorant to the future our forebearers fought for
we blow each other up as sanity thaws

but amidst the battles, bloodshed and gore
hope still blooms, albeit crippled for
the answer's simple that'll leave all this behind;

*nurture your own faith and I will mine.

You've left this world
Now, your pain will cease
Your hurting is over
You will rest at peace

O'er the sea your soul will go
To the land of your forebearers
That you know
Free to walk the highland hills
And look upon us, Ron , until
We meet again

We will see you in the gloaming
As you nod, to say all's fine
We will think of you with comfort
To strains of Auld Lange Syne

You are home now and are waiting
We will all meet once again
As we think of you with fondness
To a haunting pipes refrain.

In a rush and dash,
you left the bustling and thoroughly coursed New York streets,
paved smooth by the administrators of your newly proclaimed home.
There I stood,
as I watched the Lyft carry you north,
as if on a cloud,
away from me.
And here, I find myself:
having left behind the sun and surf and sandy roads of my home,
which seemed so narrow but always felt a place rich with possibility.
Having left behind too, the parochial, working-class life of my forebearers, in search of something more.
In a city, foreign and yet familiar to us both,
we caught a glimpse of one another on a chilly night in November,
that sweet, sweet November.
Miles from the places we used to call home, Tehran, Bloomington, Boston, Philly... Nashville, Tampa, Chicago, New Brunswick,  
gone are the comforts of our mothers' kitchens and fathers' protection.
You, gracing the tiniest grain of sand with your presence as you carry your doctorates on your breast pocket,
and your mother's dreams in your hands...
Me, occupying the academy,
without rhyme or reason but ever searching for the latter.
Against the winter's breeze,
your tempest of black hair flows in the wind,
fluttering around your face like the Whirling Dervishes,
making me lost in the ecstasy of the Divine.
Clad in black,
and with no adornments nor jewels,
save the crimson lining your lips...
to my eye, your beauty has nowhere to hide.
And on that night, I breathed it in,
even as your mechanical chariot carried you away from me with deliberate haste.
A brisk wind caught my back, pulling me back to the pavement,
though as I strolled my mind drifted like dandelion seeds blown to the wind...
Back in Tehran, long faces wrapped in linen would grow despondent,
if only they knew my thoughts of you.
Sure as the pious, I knew:
a splendid love story began between us that night,
propelled by the tenor of laughter,
and the strike of piano keys,
and the belted lyrics of strangers sharing merriment well into the small hours.
My romanticized childish hopes swelled that night,
that a heart engulfed in a forlorn sea might make acquaintance with such a passionate soul...
As I strolled back to Harlem,
I couldn't shake the thought of your dancing silhouette next to me,
the feel of your hair around my fingers,
the warmth of your jean-clad leg pressed into mine,
the strength of your hand atop my thigh,
nor the magic of your smile which could spark the ire of miscreants
or calm the rumblings of a tumultuous sea.
Sure as the pious, I knew:
This was the beginning.
And only the beginning.
Suns rise and sink,
the moon melts and grows;
So too does our love.
Days and nights have since past,
ever spent caressing one another,
while the wheel of fate spins a web of love around us.
Tucked away in our cocoon, we are,
away from the eyes and envies of the world.
Resplendent in your timeless beauty, you are.
Know that the gentle kindness between us will never fade.
Know that the thought of catching your gaze,
even if only just once more, sustains me,
And it always will.

After Amadioha went into sweet nightmares,
he made us to breath through the chest of the sea. from the celestial bodies of the shrine,
We shone our forefather's smile with a mirage,
a little littered mirage spelling words in ellipsis.
these were the rose crumbs tailored in the sand castle of our glassful laughter, we're the Palmful morning in the eyes of our home in the abyss.

when a child cries, he forgets that the route to
his home is written on his body as a tattoo.
when a girl thinks of gathering firewood in the heart of the forest, she thinks of her thigh &
the bushes surrounding it, nature made it so.
We do not think of our skin as a poetic of agony,
We do not think of our eyes as poetry letters
but we draw lines and currents of imaginations describing how rituals made men insane.

We carried out those prilgrim for the boys,
our forebearers made us cracked our head up,
they carved pumpkins traces for this generation; for this humble journey mixed with fire & water.
Our souls, our dreams were the Shakespearean places you never had the chance to see physical.
they are the rituals of nature, a side Sithoulte,
a wonder land created like a paradise you don't stay often but in your dreams & imageries.

We are birthed here as debris & plump scars,
a tortured lips holding the past & the present.
We are the foundation of everything evil spirits,
We were born in the ritual of a grievous war.
to say a human is a benchmark of his own,
to say a man is a mango dropping without a choice of where and how to touch the sand,
to say a man is everything fretwork of agony;
to say a men are slaughtered memories...
but to this edges of rites & repeated steps,
We'll remain the gospel from every mouth.

Our ancestral hands shall still set a table,
to tell the girlchild how to sit in a public hall
to hand over the shrine to the  boychild
to tell man that he owns a woman as head.
to keep birthing good and ugly children.
our hope will always depict heavens glory
and, our darkest fears as the skin of hell.
And it must be passed down to the next
genes to tell the next & sand keep multiplying.
This is the ritual of mankind to remain alive.


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingFrustrations.

Would it not be wonderful if all human beings on Earth came to understand that each is as divine as the other--indeed, that all, all creations in the infinite Cosmos are imbued by their maker with the same indelible divineness of their same maker?

There are an estimated 4,300 "different" religions on Earth, each praying to the same God, but calling their same God different names.

Yet, there can be only one maker of the infinite Cosmos.

Why, therefore, do we continue this false notion, this illusion, through millennia, fighting wars over these illusory differences, killing millions and millions and millions of other human beings because we are unwilling to see truth, let alone embrace it?

These fake differences at best keep all of us on Earth separate, divided, and thus cause us tragically to see those of us with different skin colors, different physical features, using different languages and dialects, having different customs, at best appearing different from ourselves, and at worst, instigating untold killings of "others."

If ever you saw a beautiful painting, no doubt you would have seen in it many differences:  colors, forms, shapes, contours, all of which collectively you might have found at the least interesting, at most beautiful.

But what if you saw only a white canvass with nothing on it?

Would you find that beautiful, engrossing, mesmerizing, even to any extent satisfying?

But this is the canvass racists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, the KKK, the Proud Boys, and so many others like them, want hanging in their houses.

Hate, unconsciously of themselves because they were never loved, is their religion. And just like their religious forebearers of the Middle Ages, they are now fighting their Crusades against others who appear different from themselves, but ironically and tragically are not.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Lincoln came to hate slavery. When Lincoln was 19, his friend and he watched a slave auction in New Orleans. Lincoln's fists, his friend said, were so tightly clinced that his knuckles turned white. Suppose it had been whites who were slaves, not blacks. Suppose you saw your 14-year-old white daughter being ***** right in front of you by your black slave master. Suppose the woman you loved was sold one morning to another black slave owner who took her away from you forever. Suppose you tried to learn how to read the Bible and your black slave master caught you doing that, so he he tied you to a tree trunk and gave you 60 lashes on your bare back. Suppose you thought slavery was morally grotesque, but there was nothing you could do about it, because you had no legal rights of any kind, just like all your forebearers. What a shame you were born white. What a shame that the U. S. Constitution made slavery legal when it was drafted and ratified. Life is, after all, not fair, even if you're white.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

These are people
From the past
Appearing to gaze
Into our present..
We know some
Dates and places but
Not much else..
We must  be satisfied
With their gaze now
A unity of eyes
As their gift of plenty...

Of those things that glamour for clarity
Of those roads that sipped dead calls
Of those shadows that retrieved retributions panache of the smoke that chased blunt images,
We are here for the death of our dead ones,
We are here to breeze out bodies from the ghost of our forefathers giving out beggars of spirits.
We are here for the sake of humanism and individualism found among the seasoned weather.
We are here to head home from the figures of fingers crossed in the blossoming crossroads.
We are just here for your sake &your future.
We are this spiced pumpkin skin driving impunity,
Driving the heavens of our lunatic fringe benefits.
When these spirits visited our forebearers,
We called them runners of evil in the night,
In the morning,  we called them cats of love,
But the white brought a foreign god to us
We sold our shrine of mystic miseries to them
Now,  they took our miseries to make names
And we transport their stupidity back to them
Thinking that they will accept it back from us.
This celestial aboundment is foregone fire
Forging the spirit of the world into our curriculum.
We are the timeless wrong that the villagers sing of along the Abiriba-Nkporo road.
Black Butler of generational curse we brought
Intentionally trying to visit the future vintages.
We are the cause of our own blood spilling through the thin walls of our shadows and spirits.


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingfrustrations

Northern boys are strong and tender
By the campsite they regale stories
of their forebearers hunting Caribou and Reindeer
Adroit with knifes
high raised
I love you
A clover for a bed what a Quelle surprise
telling you their secrets
as vert as the hills
and marigold as the future

While feeling sacred on this All Hallow's Day,
I also feel pangs of the hungry, so wrought by
The profane, for the food wasted by us could feed
All the world's.... Yet, betwixt,
In the mundane it's only hurled.

Allowing our thoughts on our forebearers,
And a drink returned to the earth for them, as they,
The dearly departed, are us as well, we discern,
The depth of one's sorrow is the well's fathom
Of meanings and moments shared with them.

Thus, manners in which doings, not doings are done
Or aren't, brings life, light to them, or it doesn't.  
For grace, just a word, can't be sought, it seeks you.  
As words, while paths of study, can't lead to oneself,
For, intellect can not lead, as life does not follow.

Some half baked dubious ******* that I wrote on a train headed in the direction of Kortrijk:


''An endless stream of not arseds to hang your ***** washing on/Ya forebearers are all mutts, your pallbearers will be too/You are a kazzoo blowing *******, an idiot's tac nightmare/seen two or three of your alleged family members puffing their chests out down the backtrack, propa knackas/Ya ma is very particular, your sister is as cold as a fortnight in the briar dene (although a fine dancer when she sets her mind to it/
Getting older or more toxic? Shushhhh, be kind/started hearing normans and lennys settling betting slips while I'm on the netty/dettol and despair- the golden duo made good/I'll be bed ridden in time for christmas- flannel pyjamas and sentimentality/heard your kid slagging uz & saw demons in the mist on the windee (window, *******)/cutting my losses/tobogganing hopes/
the left side of my chest is 85 the last weeks/the streets in Brussels speak to me and are canny this time of year/I am not a francophone by predilection/making a secret pact with the universe not to mourn its passing/Every social situation is becoming like a casino for *******/Starting to feel a little bit more Panzram than Ghandi/Flanders is flat cos someone trod on it while under the drink/I might have fitted better into a bygone era- a bewildering lack of manual skills- what came first the dial up internet in your ma's back room or my cack handedness/Don't have owt to tell anyone anymore, don't give two shites nevermind one/Your step brother watches hollyoaks and eats ****** snacks while your step sister hums songs of unknown origin''.
A bumbling idiot's invented history of tyneside:
''I saw 3 cats attack a pigeon in heaton park as bobby thompson, aka the little waster, danced suggestively with the setting sun, a serviette tucked down his front to catch his dinner....................mike neville cried in the dark, while suckling away at a glass tizer bottle from the arcade chippy in whitley bay, that day there was no news on tyneside......T Dan Smith liked a snack as much as the next man...but what he really liked was to drink a pint of water everytime the clock struck 36- that way he could **** the toon into oblivion at his own behest or the behest of occult forces.....I found Gazza, shellsuited, eating a child's portion of cod and chips in St Paul's church yard, in his ruddyu red hand was a 6 pack of socks from winners (the flagship store). Abandoned between his feet were 50 notebooks from the fisherman's mission.....don't get me started on sting''.

You know what the world needs after it recovers from this pandemic
is a universal family picnic. You know we're all related, don't you?
There's a nice little TV show that shows different people where they
came from, using DNA and that sort of thing. But you know that
little TV show doesn't go back far enough to tell you the whole
story, to show you the big picture. I'm not just talking about ****
sapiens. That would be missing the big point, the point being that
regardless of our evolution, all our forebearers were still related to
each other even as they evolved as far back as 6 million years ago,
not just several hundred years ago, which is pretty much what those
interesting little TV shows talk about. The point is that we human
beings now don't keep in mind how long we've been related, even
as we have gone through the evolutionary processes. Now we have
the Internet. Now we are able to go half way around the world in
seconds, not months or longer. Ecologically we are forced to realize
we are all in this together, that we are one, but this critical realization
is true not just ecologically, but also genetically, and most importantly, spiritually. We have been connected, related, God knows how long, and
our survival is dependent not just in realizing our interconnectedness,
but acting upon it. So let's have a universal picnic, have fun, get to know
each other, laugh with each other, break bread (and some ice cream maybe) with each other. Wars are insane. They are anachronistic. They **** our
distant, and not so distant, relatives, as well as our close family members. Good old USA spends over half our money (taxes) on killing machines.
Crazy ****. Let's clean our air, our seas, our fallow lands. Let's cure all diseases. Let's stop profiting from others' pain. Let's stop hunger and homelessness and hopelessness. Let's stop killing each other and start
saving each other. And after we right all our wrongs, let's celebrate by
having a universal family picnic, maybe every month. There are about 7.8 billion human beings on Earth right now. Let them vote using smart
phones to see if they would like Peace on Earth. Let them govern Earth.
We are all Citizens of the Earth.  

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Cartwheeling at the order of the winds,
Power to the people with the tumbling of your limbs.
A last throw of the dice by your makers,
A Quixotic endeavour to undo the damage;
Damage wreaked by the furies of their forebearers.

That thing of varied tangibility,
Be it the West or the frontier or whatever,
Has long since gone a-gleaming,
The time when it was still proper
To pay ones respects
Having passed beyond memory itself,
Those phenomena so elemental,
So deeply interwoven in our days and fates
They were bestowed monickers of their own
Now simple chemical reactions and natural curiosities
Familiar and easily explicable,
Yet as we apprehend those still, starlit skies
Which engendered such wonder in our forebearers,
Our understanding of the heavens
Has not left us any less lonely or forsaken
Than those sad men on horseback
Who whispered a name plaintively into the zephyr.