Jason E. Hodges's Blog, page 15

The Pond

Most times
This pond
This spillway
Is filled with water
But today the water is gone
Men work
On the edge of its muddy bottom
Clearing brush from the runoff canals
When it does rain
The nearby oily streets of the city
With their multicolored surfaces 
Catch all of heavens teardrops
Then send them rushing for the storm drains
Filling the underground culverts
Swollen cement canals spew dirty water
Like outstretched tongues
From gapping mouths
These flumes will flow with fury
Gush into the pond ...

If Lady Liberty Could Cry

   Lady Liberty stands with her torch Watching over the city The people now march on She was frozen Helpless to help The day A man was begging to breathe Pleading for his life His life he pleaded for As the air was squeezed out of him Stop Think about what could have been running Through his mind His wife His children His family Stop Now And think!!!  All for selling loosies If Lady Liberty Was made of flesh and bone She would have wept that day Eric Garner lay dyin...

River Phoenix Back Then

I ran into River a few times
On the streets of Gainesville
In the crowds we both moved around in
In a scene stitched together
By threads of music, art, and skating 
I also crossed paths
With his little brother once
Back then
His brother went by a different name
Name change or not
Weren’t we all different?
Back then
When River was being born into this world
I was being conceived
Nine months and seven states separated us
Until his family made their way to Florida 
The times I was around him
An...

Quotes from : Jason E. Hodges

I’m not afraid to die, but I’m also not afraid to live
 
Writers that are pouring their soul out for the world to see will cast a perfect reflection of themselves in their work
 
I was just a drifter, a writer of what I saw.
 
My life has been a storm of change. Some I did not want, but all I have weathered.
 
Some live it, some wish they lived it, and some never know it’s there.
 
You know you’re getting somewhere as a writer when the rejection letters mean as much as spam in...

Last Days

My soda can’s exterior sweats
Like a condemned man awaiting his sentence
Waiting for the guillotine to drop
It sweats
From the dry heat inside this break room
Liquid beads slid down its side
Like tears falling from an eye
Yet
It’s freezing
Just beyond the windowpanes
Squared glass framed visions of the outside
I wonder
As my break is coming to an end
And I have to
Go back to the factory’s floor
Will this be my last day?
The wind is cold outside
But
At least it carries hope of something different
Hope of a...

Let Me Die

I see this kid today
In the heart of the city
He says he’s eighteen
But he looks much younger
Hell, everyone looks younger now!
As we sat on the curb talking about skateboarding
I notice the words, Let Me Die
Carved into his forearm
There were also
Diagonal lines cut underneath these words
Red and puffy
The pre-infection stage
They were standing in a row
These lines
Like little toy soldiers
Ready for battle
Though
I’m not sure if their host
Their canvas
Realizes how long of a battle it might be
I kn...

Photos Of The Web

Photos used to capture
A time
A place
Not alter one
Now
With the power of the internet
The power of computers
Someone’s photo is nothing more
Than an altered reality
An elusion
A mirage
Water only drinkable to the ones that are fooled
With the click of a button
All imperfections are removed
Wrinkles
Blemishes
Age
Weight
Hair color
The scars of life are gone
Leaving folks looking a lot like
Some of those TV evangelists in the 1980s
Faces plastered with makeup
Filtering what the camera would see
Plastic s...

Lilith

Lilith took a stroll and never came back
Some speculate
It was for this reason or that
I think she was just tired
Of being stuck in that garden
Where everything was perfect
So much so
No one had to think for themselves
They would never see the beauty in mistakes
In flaws  
I think, she thought
She wondered
What was just beyond
The edge of that garden
Lilith needed more than Adam could give her
She needed to see where the horizon ended
And dawn begins in the morning
Like Kerouac needed the c...

Looking Around

Looking around I see
Objects
From my past
A piece of broken brick
Picked up off a dirt road I once lived on
By my child
Now
Twenty years ago
A wilted white flower lies
Bent over backwards across its top
Like a ballerina balanced
In the hands of her partner 
A fired clay turtle
Brought back from the Bahamas as a gift
From my neighbors
For watching their house
Years have drifted by and I’ve lost track of them
Three families have come and gone over there
And now the bank owns it
Cobwebs in the windo...

Hank

He took a ride with Coe
Jackson heard his voice blowing in the wind
Both happened on the dark roadways of Montgomery
But I don’t believe this is the only place you can see him
For Hank
Is more a feeling of defying the wrongness of the world that surrounds us
As much as when it surrounded him 
Yeah, you’re more likely to see him
On the mud soaked streets of Montgomery
Leaned up against
The crumbling brick buildings of that city
Waiting for the fog to fall from the night
But really he’s everywher...