Poetry Break: Ad Age

A little over ten years ago, my friend Jon Whitlock and I gave a country-music concert in Tuebingen, Germany. I had written some lyrics that he set to country music, we took along a bottle of whiskey to look authentic when singing "Day Breakin'," and our concert hall housed a massive crowd of about 25 people -- mainly friends willing to humor us but also a few other misfits who had straggled in.

They didn't straggle back out, so we must have caught their European attention.

Germany might seem like an odd place to perform country music, but don't forget that Johnny Cash got his start there in the 1950s with a band that he named "The Barbarians" during his stint for the U.S. Air Force in Landsberg, Germany.

So . . . here's one of my country songs, first performed in Tuebingen, Germany:

Ad Age

If wishes were horses,
Would'ja take perverse pride
In the subjunctive forces
Unleashed far and wide?

Let wishes be horses—
Will'ya be satisfied
With the billions of courses
Where beggars'll ride.

With wishes as horses,
We'll just have to hide
All those wistful thought courses
We'd rather confide.

Our wishes as horses?
Nay, bridle that pride—
Such nightmares are sources
We'd best just deride.

Horace Jeffery Hodges
Copyright 1994

Jon went on to greater things. I'm still a stragglin', strugglin' gypsy scholar . . .