WORDCHASM » Jen Hodges

Jazz, sweet

Jen Hodges — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:50:42 +0000

Baby
if you were music
you’d be jazz,
sweet jazz.
Piano janglin’
like your fingers tanglin’ in my hair.
Trumpet blowin’
like your arms goin’ ‘round my waist.
Bass thumpin’ riffs
the way you kiss my lips.
Snare hissin’ a beat
the way you make my life complete.
Dig it, baby
if you were music
you’d be jazz, sweet
jazz.

atmfakmf

Empath

Jen Hodges — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:43:42 +0000

I have run the gamut of feeling

I have nothing left

I am emotionally void

bereft

I play my part

the world a stage

concealing my despair

my rage

I long for life’s sweet end

my one consolation

I revel in rejection

isolation

I purge the very things

that I consume

my destiny

will be my doom

atmfakmf

Miss Anthropy

Jen Hodges — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:33:47 +0000

I live for myself only.

I stare into space.

I think. I dream.

Alone does not necessarily

mean lonely.

I have no obligations.

I stare at the clock.

The seconds tick by marking time

but it means nothing to me.

I have nowhere to go. I am free.

I do as I please.

No one requires of me, no one demands.

I shrug off their kisses, their hands.

Alone does not necessarily

mean damned.

atmfakmf

Unrequited

Jen Hodges — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:40:44 +0000

You are Maud Gonne
to my William Butler Yeats
a cold, impassive Jekyll
to my frantic, desperate Hyde
the proverbial thorn
embedded in my side
an avalanche that sits
and waits.

You are the hung jury
to my repeat offender
you are my iron lung
a phrase on the tip of my tongue
a song the words to which
I can’t remember.

My Scylla and Charibdis
a name to which I cannot
put a face
the missing link
to the origin of my race
a step
off of a precipice.

Money I do not have to burn
matches to my dying waif
stigmata
to my failing faith
a lesson I will
never learn.

atmfakmf

Breakfast in the Madhouse

Jen Hodges — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 22:22:31 +0000

Breakfast in the madhouse
is no different than a diner.
There are bacon, eggs, toast.
Crowded tables,
the cacophonous hum
of constant conversation.
But if truth be told,
most of us are only talking
to ourselves.
And the silverware is not silver -
it’s plastic.
There are no knives to speak of.
Sui – Homo – Geno – cidal -
from sharp objects we abstain
like priests
and at bedtime our pillows
become confessionals.
But at breakfast, the madhouse
is no different than a mess hall.
Like wounded soldiers,
we line up
and they ration out the sanity -
as breakfast, a moment’s respite
from wars that never make it
to the evening news.
And it is sometimes surprising
that even sociopaths
like pancakes.

atmfakmf

Here There Be Dragons

Jen Hodges — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 01:17:24 +0000

Sailor beware.

You know not where you sail.

You sit sightless

and stare at my face.

You read my body like Braille.

Deal the cards.

My life is an open book

in which I write

and just as easily erase.

Come close.

I don’t bite

that hard.

atmfakmf

Metamorphosis

Jen Hodges — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 00:28:27 +0000

by Jen Hodges

This body is not my home.
This shriveled shroud of skin
houses only bone.
I have the power to transcend
the sensual things.
I’ll be emerging soon.
I am a fantast
a phantom
asleep in my cocoon.
While my soul develops wings.

atmfakmf

graffiti love

Jen Hodges — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 02:19:58 +0000

mister

don’t steal into my heart

like a vandal

and spray paint

your graffiti love

on the walls

don’t saunter down the steets of my brain

flashing that million dollar smile

don’t lean against my eardrum

and whistle for a taxi

don’t carelessly splash through my blood

as if it were a dirty gutter puddle

in city mid-summer

mister

don’t scribble your

graffiti love

on me

and call it art

atmfakmf