Blues Franchise
Line from a letter, “Blues Franchise.” I believe it is a motif language rather than thought—intimately
Blues as art as theme as exhibition
Up on a midtown metropolis edifice
Billboard façade 50 feet tall thirty feet wide: BLUE SMOKE
Of a black femme-like face framed by her fingers tapered upward in the V of her palms
Looking off, her eyes below her painted on eyebrows
And Caucasoid wig solid black
touching off of a violet plunging deeper into the decorated pigment
A frame furls hints of blue in a spectral geometry
Framing tightly the face, reposed
A white strap over one deep ochre shoulder as background
Could be trans-shim or a delightful Caledonia,
red skein of a lipstick kiss imprinted invisibly in a nano dimension
Replications across the marquees of legions of subway cars
Her face on the mini billboard above the seat next to
The moving doors
Always looking somewhere else as the
Masses travel to all destinations
Blues smoke surrounding whatever stage as forum
For the franchise
Forever after for as far as the past goes.
Entering the negative space of a corporate behemoth
A lobby of the skyscraper museum or loft like enclosures
interlocking directorates of high art residencies.
Consumer beware of what you purchase with your eyes,
The presence of your body
*
Out of the blue
You
Out of the blue
And into the blues
You
Out of the blue
You
Out of the blue
Vanish into the blue
you
Copyright © 2024 by David Henderson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 19, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Henderson’s poem is like a Juan Gris painting. David holds up an instance of urban reality. As he rides the subway, he follows gestures. Images and actions slide down and crumble in front of us like a Thelonious Monk piano solo. The poem becomes music in your hands. In his persona, David is singing one tune after another. Walking down the street, he spontaneously doo-wops. As fellow poet LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka] said of him, ‘David Henderson is the world echo, with the strength and, if you are conscious, beauty of the place tone.’ And his language of love is his poetry, which plucks like Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. This blues, this sound of the sky, is felt in the last words of the poem. The blues enters and becomes Blues people kissing the sky.”
—Victor Hernández Cruz
David Henderson
