TOD HAWKS Poems

I will wander
into wilderness
to find myself.
I will leave behind
...

She's gone.
On and on
I think of her,
but in the end,
...

Early May.
Grass now green.
Lilacs bloom.
Red, yellow, blue
...

I read, it seemed, a thousand books. The looks I took through windows tall and wide did not hide from me my sorrow and sadness felt as I gazed upon the leafless trees outside. The Mayor of Casterbridge did not move me once; Othello did not touch me. The tears, the fears, did not abate as I sat in wooden chairs; I simply starred at winter. I did not know how blind I was, seeing with only one half of one eye. I'd go into the stacks to cry; a certain kind of comfort were all the lonely books that kept me company. No sudden symphony of enlightenment did I hear as I leaned against the shelves, themselves my only friends. The end seemed more near than spring seemed soon to blossom. I often was content to read the poems of William Blake and Tennyson and Coleridge and Keats in dark corners where no one stood but I. But as darkness grew to end the sun and color skies pure black, I knew it time to say goodbye to rhythms and to rhymes and begin my stroll along endless paths to sleep away my hidden horrors, and as well, my sorrows sodden.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS
...

I makes $7.50 an hour. I sweep up behind others.
I's gittin to be an ol man. My two uncles got lynched outside Greenville.
I quit school when I were 13,
but I served my country in Vietnam to kill our enemies.
...

I don't sleep much. I touch
the morning sky, then sigh
on my pillow. The willow tree
sees me and bids me good morn.
...

There is a tender way to touch you,
not more than a brush across your cheek.
I seek a gentle kiss so not to miss your soft
and red-rose lips that meet mine, the glory
...

Sing to me, o southern hill
where my mother lies,
she near the river
where other children
...