I wrote this haiku
Just to prove a point in words:
No one reads anymore.

"Gender equality is like clapping hands - it's only possible when both sides make an effort."

Mirror mirror
On the wall
Will they love me
After all?

Mirror mirror
On the wall
Will I ever love me
Once and for all.

You loved every inch -
My scars, marks, and bruises.
I carried a part of you, for a time...
And you held me as I bled out on the bed.
You told me I was beautiful.
You cradled my face, and kissed me when I cried.
Your hands made me feel I was worthy.
When you knelt before me, I was.

There are the sea winds
And the white sails overhead
Dolphins swim below

A mind  like a cathedral built out of ruins. Quiet, haunted, beautiful.
He's still walking its halls, lighting candles, naming ghosts.

He isn't healed. But he's aware. And in that awareness, there's a strange kind of peace.

All the good sports
         go out for a run
                       into the ice storm.

They grimace and squint
           in the headlights of cars
                       on Riverside Drive.

And they run as if for their lives
            in this freezing rain
                        that sheathes and has broken

the leafless branches
            along snow-plowed bike paths;
                          ice-pellets ping off
        
their pricy goggles, their fluorescent shells,
              as they struggle north
                           to the pole where

they always turn back
              for the Christmas lights strung
                       over the porches
              
welcoming home
               those who might have been
                        men.

The Battleground Beneath Her Skin
(A Physiology of Light and War)

Before it reaches her;
even before her breath draws it in,
I break myself down..

  not as surrender,
  but as choice.

Each particle stripped bare,
each atom exhaled
made clean by the reckoning
of my own dark,
infused with the stubborn
weight of light
earned, not borrowed.

Within the responsibility of what
  leaves me,
I enter the quiet union—
the kneeling choice
to align with the hand of God,
to let even my smallest fragments
carry His capacity to heal.
Every airborne particle,
accountable,
deliberate,
refined enough
to cross the distance,
to enter her

without deception.

Beneath her skin,
a war unfolds.

It is not loud,
not made of swords,
but of smaller things..
things unseen by eyes,
but never missed by the marrow,
the blood,

the quiet trembling of cells
that have known both wound

  and wonder.

Light and dark..
not in theory,
but in matter
thread themselves through every atom,
every strand of her being.
Not metaphor,
but measurable:

the way shadows lean into the soft chambers of her lungs,

the way light, when chosen,
can rewrite the blueprints etched into the bloodstream.

This is the battleground..
her body,
her breath,
her most involuntary places.
Where no poetry of
seductive manipulation..
no whispered counterfeit
can cover what is real.
Only substance speaks here.
Only intent.

Only what survives the fire of accountability
earns the right to stay.

The particles come;
stripped down,
atomized,
refined.. not by accident,
but by the slow, steady grind
of volition.
They enter her;
through breath,
through pores..

through the quiet, relentless openness
that even fear cannot close completely.

And inside--
the war begins.

..   ..   ..   ..

Mitochondria spark—
tiny engines deciding

what stays,
what burns away.

Capillaries widen,
rivers branching through her like
tributaries
willing to carry
what is real,

what is earned,

what is Light.

The counterfeit falters here.
Pretty words mean nothing
to oxygen.
False portraits
dissolve beneath the chemistry of truth.
The cells remember;

  they choose.

And as the Light infuses
the quietest corners of her..
her thighs, her hips,
the soft stretch of her waist;
there is no seduction,
no trickery.

Only the hard-won intimacy
of substance made pure.

Not by the blending of oils,
not by the friction of skin,
but by the deeper,
unseen alchemy
of what enters,
what lingers,
what refuses to bow
to darkness.

The battleground is hers now.
And though the shadows  will not
yield easily,
they cannot claim her;
not where light
has been chosen,
earned,
metabolized.

The war is not over,
but benea.th her skin,
within her blood,

Light has begun
to rise.

Shut up. I need you to shut up.

The lake is grinning. You can hear the lake
and its schemes, the umbra behind
all that mesmerizing blue.

Blue is color dead to itself. Blue is the cataract
called sky. Blue pretends while the infinite
animal runs naked running
its fingers round
the swell
of stars
that sweat
like oysters.
Ah.

You can’t drown in that blue. Now shush.
I hear the lake undress.

threw it aside
thinking of course
a poem is never

as good as
it might have been,
though    ..

I sat,
spliff lit like a tiny sun in my hand,
and looked up.

To the stars,
to the void,
to the hush that hums behind silence.

And I asked —

In all of this,
this chaos and order,
this pain and pulse…

Am I not all that?

Wasn’t I born of stars?
A flicker from the great ignition,
dressed in skin,
asking questions fire once whispered to stone?

I’m not watching the universe —
I’m remembering it.
Living it.
I am it.

And you —
you reading this —
you are too.

I watch the reflections of colors
Reflected in your twinkling eyes
Your arms loose around her waist,
confident, not afraid to lose her.
We used to dance around each other
A flurry of worries and many sorrys
Too scared to upset one another
Or step on toes that had already been hurt before
The heat hasn’t left my heart
It sparks when you look my way
The warmth between my legs
is what I wish the most would go away
But here in this moment
There is no stoking the fire between you and I
I’m content just watching head tilted high
A couple humans watching the sky come alive.

And from that tree that is the universe
that springs the universe
there’ll spring an apple
and when it falls
it falls forever
so that it can never be rotten
never be eaten
never be tainted by a world
in which it never is to enter
ever suspended
but never submitted
it will be the most beautiful
pristine apple
that ever was created
ever was alive
with its creation
this apple
will be the bliss untasted
long live that apple
that never will live
here it will stay
untouched
forever.            

-                              

i’ll eat that apple though…

i f*cking love apples!

Your smile
Lights the brightest
Fireworks.
You ignite explosions
spectacular
in my midnight sky.

I am a Christian, what is wrong with that?
You make me look like some kind of rat
Why are you so hateful?
This time that I take to convince you isn't wasteful

I love Jesus, I love God
But some people think this is odd
I don't know why they act like this is new
When everything I preach is actually true

"Jesus loves me so
For the Bible tells me so
Little ones to Him belong
They are weak but He is strong"

Not two decades yet,  
since the sun spat me into its glare,  
and already my head betrays me—  
six black locks, once fierce,  
gone,  
gone gray,  
gray as ash,  
gray as a lie,  
gray as the sigh  
of a self I can’t defy.

The story is that Rachmaninov was depressed for three years from 1898 to 1901. Eventually he sought the help of Dr. Nikoli Dahl who saw Rachmaninov daily using hypnotherapy and psychotherapy. Rachmaninov responded favorably to these treatments. In 1902 he composed his Piano Concerto No, 2. There are, of course, many great and beautiful musical compositions, but Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2, along with Beethoven's 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th symphonies, together with Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and his Toccata and Fugue in G Minor stand at the pinnacle of the world's pyramid of great music. I have written poems since my early 20s. A poem is not a symphony, but it is a work of art. Do I ever feel the way Rachmaninov felt when he heard the deafening applause after No. 2 was performed for the first time? Sometimes.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Serene are the stars
that lights the past
Timeless, a love
held close to the heart

no one’s eyes made me write—
my life did.
the things I’ve endured,
the family I never had,
the trauma I carry
turned me into a poet.

it forced the ink
out of my veins—
red, yet black,
like the blood
still coursing
through me.

I bleed onto paper
without a knife,
just wounds that never heal,
just pain that never
learns to stop.

it drains me dry—
and yet I stand,
barely.

begging to be taken,
begging to vanish,
to disappear
from a world
I was never meant
to be born in.

I ended up at the wrong time,
in the wrong place,
carrying a dead flashlight
that instead of shining,
offered me an elusive shape—
a spectacle of shadows.

What was a hand
became a dog barking on the wall,
or a ghost-rabbit
vanishing into nothingness.

My rational “I” still asks why,
and I have no answer.
I just smile with sadness:
that was the script,
that had to happen.

Bittersweet medicine,
already swallowed,
the side effects dissolved.
And I boarded another train.

Writing?
I only wanted an ordinary life,
with some humor
and a pinch of self-irony.

Saturn joined,
Saturn divided,
at 8:18 a.m.

Maybe we humans
don’t have the stillness
to break free from the pattern
of silver rings
made of dust and ice,
imposed by an ego.

Maybe we prefer
the safety of the shadow,
ice melts in daylight.

My story:
a new-old flat,
my imperfect poems…
Really?
For this, I was made?

I’m not a poet.
I’m a living voice,
taming incomprehension
convincing myself
that dawn is near,
and I’m strong enough to rise,
not looking anymore
for cold mirrors.

"Hey, God, why has my life been such a disaster?"

"Are you judging it by your failures or your achievements?"

¡Jee, compañero, jee, jee!
¡Un toro azul por el agua!
¡Ya apenas si se le ve!

-¿Quééé?
-¡Un toro por el mar, jee!

Tether me with flowers
bring me sunshine everyday !
Do not ruffle up my feathers
when I'm doing it my way !
Fasten smiles upon me say,      
"Go ahead, do it your way !"

a decent night's sleep,
my body to keep,
early light invades the
blinking eyesight, and
an indeterminate sky,
yet offers us an
either/or,
heads or tails,
success or fails,
what will the gods
offer us all humans,
to select, elect for this
anniversary of our
country's formation?

the slow rising sun
over the North Fork
will soon provide its
decision/incision for
our nation tumultuous,
turbulent, course direction

it appears that the silent
dawning will give us yet
another chance, a morning's
golden hour, with that irradiating
light that bathes us with visionary,
equality of light, light of equality,
but
last night's thunderstorms leave
us the detritus of savagery of
thunderous rains that came
with fury, reflecting our confusion
and the danger shoals that appear
with no warning, yet reminds us,
once more,
one more time,
even in troubling days,
of the blessings
of opportunity
that each day,
each unique sunrise
provides us choices,
and
skies have now spoken:
the early warming rays are
reminding hints that a new day
owns equal opportunities to
make our country beautiful
for spacious skies and
amber waves, of
water and light,
if we choose wisely, rightly...

July 4th
Silver Beach
Shelter Island
2025

peach to red to white
the colors change each night
but oh,
how i long for the white
on my skin
in my heart
the lines are my life
yet they fade

I peace myself by knowing the earth is not at risk
for it has overcome much worse in its volatile past.
From afar it will still appear a blue dot
but it is its current inhabitants that need to worry about their future

Gods love is so deep, My heart is his to keep, His grace is pure, Forever secure, As I seek his face, A light shines bright, Guiding me through the darkness, Into his loving embrace, His love is always near, Come what may, No matter where we go or what we do, His presence surrounds us, Strong and True. Amen