January Poems #4: Henry the Thread

One day in Advanced Poetry, Lorri Jackson pulled a loose thread from her black button-up sweater and let it fall to the classroom carpet. I picked it up, said it was a nice thread and asked her its name. "Henry," she said. And so the name stuck to the thread, as the thread itself stuck to the back of one of the pages of my ragtag collection of her poetry (and remains there to this day). The poem that follows has nothing to do with Lorri (even in light of the concluding lines), nor even the thread, though it was the point of inspiration.

He's tired of stroking
pastoral cityscapes deep
with hills and seepage

with brushes dipped in
urine samples, wants
nothing more or less

than less hunting through
sticky stone dream maps
scowered and harvested

for shiny new tools,
better textures, lower
sub-basements to plant

flags of conquest in that
also mark his way back.
He's wired for rising

arms akimbo just to
shoot down whatever
birds are left singing so

he can hear the traffic
clear, the steady deciduous
strafing of a town shaken

to life for yet another
day's nails to be driven.
But Henry doesn't even

own a hammer, doesn't
want one, can't handle
any more cranking of

eyelids in the well-known
curl of early light so his
canvases can be splattered

with old news, moldy
aches, alliterations in
beading swarms: A Spine

in Decline? A Collection
of Rejection? A corpse
in a Copse? Magicians'

slights of hand more than
slightly out of date when
nightfall is the fabric of

choice spread over windows
and sockets of lofts, cellars,
blackened bars to establish

nicer lines of hiphopness
without actually having any
vision. Doesn't matter. The

pictures of brick facades
eaten over by fiberboard
and snow, dead weeds and

char, are noosed around him,
arranged by date of birth and
death, volume of plasma

sprayed, gallons of too
personal pronouns spat
up for the sake of carving.

They cover the holes in
the panelling, show him
where he's been and will

not be going to, even on
autumn evenings when he
fetals under his quilts,

shaves in thunderstorms
and makes himself a god
who can't stand pierogies

and only bathes on Saturday
nights 'cause there's nothing
on TV that's just above

lousy. Henry circles his
wagons, his rooms, his
angles, simply to touch

all his walls at least once
and even rip squares out
of nine or ten frames to

plaster together another
second hand for the
first-hand floor plan

always growing up and
out, never over or under
to become something other

than a sun-faded member
of the union of shadows,
an ever-blending memory

of sheets pretending to be
lucid. No majority of blight,
no emotions flipped out to

slice, no wall-outlet electrical
impulses translated into
Swedish will set up the

substantial threat of his
being understood and hence
less worthy to be a baret

bearer on the front lines,
digging his fox holes beyond
the point of breathing,
the duty of all avant-garde
gophers intent on living
until importantly dead.