Friday, October 7, 2011

Jason E. Hodges- Three Poems

Windows    

Drips of rain slid down my window
The hospital’s window in the room of my waiting
Waiting in my room
Waiting and watching for what is to come
Looking out this pane of glass high in the skyline
It holds my refection all too well
Showing me off without any shyness
My life as real as reality gets
Stranded stares from nights of unrest
Lines of time now show in my face
Wavy from the water and rain
Running down the window’s outside
But not nearly wavy enough
Distorted but far from disillusioned
Of the task ahead of me now
For the rain keeps falling outside and in
Storming on both sides of the window
Once again storms have blown into my life
Breached the levees that have held in my mind
Moaned and creaked from the stress I’m under
But sometimes it’s good for the dam to finally give way
Spill into the spillway of new beginnings
Holding no more hidden secrets of hiding
For one day it has to stop raining
And the sunsets of hope will set in the sky




Seeing The Unseen

Seeing the unseen is sometimes difficult
What matters most to the writer
Should be
The art of the unspoken word
The only thing that matters at all
Speaking and thinking the new idea
The dream that lives in your head
If written on a napkin
For only a waitress to find at the end of her shift
When her legs want to give out
Write it
Uplift her
Move her
Or the busboy scraping unwanted food for minimum wage
Wondering how he will pay rent and tuition
Wondering how he will eat as he throws good food away
Write it
Express it
Give him hope tomorrow will be better
Your audience will find you
This is the life I’ve chosen to live
Writing for the world of the blue-collar
The world of the scarred not of the scarring
Scratching the earth with my poet’s plow point of words
For living your life on a path not of your choosing
Is not living your life at all
Ruled by the ruler
From the kingdom of timecards
The land of quotas and cubicles
Is a land not really alive




Those Dirt-Hearted Blues

The strings of my guitar bend and moan
Stretch with sound
Slide with the glass bottle that covers my finger
Melt away into the backwoods of Mississippi
The back woods of The South
Melt and flow into the sweet water of the delta
Mix with the fog that creeps in on the dance floor
Slides around long legs a dancing
High heels a stepping
Men and women movin’ with all that they got
To the sound I’m playin’ tonight
My fret board covered in sweat
Dripping from the hot air around me
And the lights casting the stage
My guitar sings out
Speaks so clearly to the people in the crowd
As my fingers move with all of my feelings
Good?
Bad?
None of it matters tonight
For tonight is takin’ what we're given
The worries of that day smear into the night
Into the notes I’m a playin’
Notes carried on the exhale of a cigarette
Up to the tin roof that shakes from the bass drum behind me
Notes carried from the first sip of the last drink of the night
When the dew settles on the bud of a blue morning-glory
Waiting patently for the new day to arrive

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