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Best Poems Written by Alison Hodges

Below are the all-time best Alison Hodges poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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A Place For Morose

It’s time to put aside my pen and pout awhile.
Forty years of dreams squashed like a beer can
under the wheel of a wild vintage car.

It’s time to sulk, to bathe myself in self-hatred.
Brooding on my past failures to create,
a box I created and can’t escape.

Let the gloom of the night roll slowly over me.
Showing the failure, I was born to be.
Hang on the cross for all eternity.

But just as Prometheus, bore his daily due,
Liver picked, torn, a bleeding tatter.
I return expecting a difference.

Please allow to me my daily state of morose,
doesn’t last longer than a cigarette.
Now ready to strive forward once again.

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Ambivalent

I’m both painfully shy, and brazenly bold.
The push & pull of opposing natures
that form my existence.

Living my life between the lines
Cold and factual yet scattered and emotion charged,
Faltering, yet ever steady;
loyal even when in full run.

Shuttering with precision,
accurately ambiguous,
softly roaring.

A cynical romantic,
a speechless poet,
practicing an artless art.

Inside and outside I quiver in an instant.

Details | Alison Hodges Poem

The First Dance

Can you dance with me?
Can you match me step for step?
Are our souls in sync, 
Our bodies a natural fit?
Does the music playing harmonize our soul movements?

The precarious titillation of those first steps.
Matching skill for skill
While looking earnestly for grace.
Counting the beat
While listening for the inner rhythm
So necessary to the development of the dance.

Should I stumble,
Can you turn a misstep into a newfound movement?
When you artlessly spin me a bit too hard,
Can I capture the force and turn it back again?

Can we play this through,
With grace and laughter,
Tears and awkward bumbling?

All these questions before the first step is taken.
Perhaps the dance begins before the dancers take the floor.

Details | Alison Hodges Poem

Mara Calls

All things can tempt me from my chosen chore.
A cup of hot chocolate or ancient lore.
My dog, his belly up, thinks we should play.
with simple things Mara lures me away.
My poetry waits, carved upon my heart.
Waits faithfully for Mara to depart.
A single poem slipped under my door.
Pen to paper, to screen, to paper once more.
Then wait! At my door someone is pounding.
Three friends enter, their chatter abounding!






2/21/2020 All Things Can Tempt Me Poetry Contest Sponsored by: Beth Evans

Details | Alison Hodges Poem

Skeleton Woman Pursues

She Follows me now, everywhere I go.
Just one step to the side, and behind.
Her presence permeates my every thought.
Her wide-mouthed scream,
sounds in every word I speak.
Her bound hands in prayer are lodged within my heart.

We are forming a disquieting companionship.
Are we leaving, or just arriving?
Her unquiet calmness
gives life and death to each moment,
a mad mixture of erotic harmony and discord.
Coexisting, where all things are possible,
yet nothing guaranteed.

A hole has opened between our worlds,
and within the chaos and confusion that pours into my existence,
lies a promise, a hope, a chance.

Details | Alison Hodges Poem

Endings

The waves they break against the shore
And all around the water pours.
To cleanse again the blood drenched land
And wash away the blackened sand.

But that’s the way it all must end
For this time man has truly sinned.
The clown that laughs has cried inside
And living men had really died.

Now the walls are crashing down,
Mother Earth has stained her gown,
The Unicorn has lost his life,
And mankind seems to have lost their sight.

Perhaps when man cries “I have seen!”
And Mother Earth’s white gown is clean
Perhaps the Unicorn will live again
And things will be as they have been.

Now the walls are gone at last.
The water’s taking over fast.
While I upon a clifftop stand
Remembering the promised land.

Details | Alison Hodges Poem

Labyrinth

With well-chosen words he called to her to come closer.
Behind his blue eyes lay labyrinths filled with laughter.
The treasure now revealed, titillates her heart with joy.
His comforting touch lays claim to all her hopes and dreams.

Make a choice, endless longing or an effortless joy.
She chooses joy, binding herself to her destiny.
Surrendering her free will to the foretold future;
bracelets click shut around her wrist; chains clanking up steps.

The labyrinth that had called her, filled with joy, now turned
seemingly a bit darker as she entered its gate.
Lost in his twinkling eyes, lulled to an unending sleep.
Dreaming of passion so intense it overtakes fear.

She was hauled out of her dreams and into his grey world.
Dark slid across the labyrinth; obscured her frail frame.
Her shadow-cast lover by her side, his touch frigid.
She wept loudly in fear as her destiny claimed her.

Details | Alison Hodges Poem

What Substance Will Our Thoughts Incarn

What substance will our thoughts incarn?
What will we flesh it out with?
	Our thoughts,
			Our past,
				Our dreams,
					Our hopes,
						Our fears?

The frame is set, the choices now are ours.
Which pens will we pick up?
What colors will we select?

Will sunlight dabble her hair
or will deep forest shadows dance across her face?
Ice glistens on her eyelashes and fire shoots from her eyes.
Moonlit skin with dark passion upon her lips,
glittering ice across her spiderwebbed garment,
a scar running its course across her shoulder.
Faded tattoos of past lovers mingling along her hip line.
Shoeless feet, well-traveled; 
old blisters healed to calloused edges.

What substance has our thoughts incarned?
What have we fleshed it out with?

Details | Alison Hodges Poem

I Love You My Deer

The times you choose to show yourself to me
are so ill-timed for my lifestyle.
The times you are lost in the trees and brush of the woods
I smile, and know that you are there.

Sometimes, when driving our little gravel road,
I am surprised you haven’t tumbled down the steep hill
and plop ------- on the road ahead
Legs tangled in your antlers.

The sighting of a herd of you,
a herd being six or seven,
lights the twilight with gratitude
as my heart holds a lighter beat.

My life is full of your presence in my woods.
There is no where I would rather live than here.
The times you are lost in the trees and brush of the woods
I smile, and know that you are there.

Details | Alison Hodges Poem

Raising Skeleton Woman

She arose from within me,
in the quiet contentment of a day, filled with dogs and digging,
white fluff falling from the trees and blowing in the wind.

I did not see her coming,
had no intention of calling to life her clattering bones.
Her frail long-fingered hands simply rose from the soil – beckoning me.

Terror and curiosity battled in my body.
Soul and mind, in argument again.
                               I sat very still,
                                            and called for her to reveal herself.
..Then, with a suddenness born of recognition,
                               she tore into my world,
fully formed and filled with an angst whose depths I could not comprehend.

Her deep guttural breath slithered along the grass and up my arm.
        I spun in terror 
                 and excitement.
A lavender scent gentled over me.
Then golden eyes narrowed to small dark slivers.
        Drawing me closer
                     Pushing me away.

Her heart rumbled, as she rolled across my soul,
Compelled, repelled…a chaotic discord of emotions.
Fearing the revelation but fearing the uncertainty of unknowing more.