by Mike Henry

Dear Jack,
I bet you'd be surprised.
How you are a hero now,
when all you wanted to do
was play football and
love women and
burn trenches down highways
with mad sainted brothers and
reveal your own fevered
observations and creations
into the sinews
of the muscles
of pages
of long, serpentine sentences
that seemed like they
would never end,
just like this poem.
Just like your life.

It's thirty years now, Jack.
And we know it.
Are you surprised?

You started in boots that
tramped happy with hobos and
ended in sandals
shuffling a beat
to your buddhist prayers
as you got fat and
drank yourself to death
like a good american,
the stain of your life
still on your hands,
like your fathers palms
showed the shadows of ink,
india black, from printing presses.
I want my hands to be
stained like that, Jack.
Marked with the work
of my life, so I can hold
them before my face
when I am dying and see it.

I want to say thank you, Jack.
are you surprised?

I want to do as well as you,
and stay as humble.
Do you know there is a
Gap commercial about
how you wore tan pants?
I'm sorry about that.

[Mike Henry is Slammaster of the Austin Poetry Slam and currently serves as President of Poetry Slam, Inc., the national Poetry Slam organization. He also plays drums for the Asylum Street Spankers.]