See a rich goblet of gold
Empty and ready to receive
Ancient in style, yet shining bright

This antique treasure of old
Belongs to you. Trust and believe
And claim your prize in calm delight

In your mind
Become the goblet
You are precious indeed
Your lasting worth decreed

Feeling your worth
Made from riches of earth
Fully fulfilled every day

Spark of divine
Your wealth is a sign
Of life surely flowing your way

She who goes forth
in search of dark empty spaces
To shine bright
A superficial kind
That aids in part on much of life

Interested more in mystic beauty
Than measured worth
Purely because
I don't yet know her.

You frantically retrace
Every imprint
And

Feverishly


rebuild



every
                
            sand
      
        

                         castle.






Lest the tide washes it all away.

Everything on my wrist is real,
            the scares from my youth

to the stitches cut out of me on the street.

         But none of you will cut me further than


                                   I fell in the past, I rose up..
  

And now my heads up high..

You'll never put this fire out, the smoke
                  smoothing you..

Getting closer to the ground so my words
             don't suffocate you.
      but my foot greets your words cos that's where
            your words had worth on the ground.

The audacity that you could even raise above,
                          to think that you ever had a cut
that was deeper than I'd self-inflicted.

I'll stand under the lamp posts in the dark,
       easy target, but I'll see you coming.

Thinking I'm alone, but I have friends in the dark.
            you never had no moment to rise,
  you got swallowed in the dark.
                    Tied to a chair, coldness held to a temple
that you never prayed to, but you wish you had now..


You walk out a new man, respecting that
             I'm the  fire and the smoke,
                            and if you want to breath
                    
                               you better **** the ground and make

sure your words stay down.
I'm in the light
                           but I have friends in the dark.
        I'm on probation but shades have different
                               pockets that I fill deep..

Know pardon my words I have things on my
                  wrist that are life lessons,
    you ain't nothing but something to burn at my bequest.

Done the same thing every birth
Kept thinking we of some worth
We had no direction
Until we got your connection .
We know Swami Bapa we are of no worth,
But pray that we know your worth.

PLACES IN THE HEART

I believe in royalty.

So one thinks of King, Queen,
Prince, Princess, Duke, Duchess,
Marquess, Marchioness, Earl,
Countess, Viscount, Viscountess,
Baron, Baroness.

But none of the above is
royalty I would ever bow to.
In fact, all, by their titles, are
charlatans.

I believe every member of the
human race is royalty. Royalty
has nothing to do with blood
lines and crowns.

Places in the heart that every
human being has, not palaces,
are the provenance of royalty. I
bow only to the regal, all my fellow
human beings on Earth.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

He put the gun back in the safe and said to himself “I don’t want to end up like Kurt”.

-JP