Hank Jones

Hank Jones Poems

The Best Poem Of Hank Jones

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The first time I saw the moon I was five.
With a purple sky of black clouds
and a serpentine line of comets,
the night slithered and crawled in a way that seemed to deny
any kind of rotational pull, and instead, the night left me with
a great big balloon of sap and drool.

The second time I saw the moon I was eleven.
The sky was still purple and had black clouds, but the
serpentine line of comets had gone over the hill, and the night
no longer slithered. But in a way the night was better because now I could sense the rotational pull, and was left with spry fermented stalks.

When I was twelve, I no longer saw the moon.
Cold tile smeared in urine and feces gobbled me up, slapped me up
and he zipped up, never leaving and spurting me out of the world of comets and black clouds.

Instead, the balloon of sap and drool
and the tall fermented stalks
are just visitors that Time has roughed over,
like old addresses you knew once, if
you were well.

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