Back in 2004
they released a movie about Hank
another one
in this one
Hank
Bono
Tom Waits
Taylor Hackford
John Martin
Hank’s baby mother
(the woman with the white hairs sprouting from her chin)
Hank’s wife, Linda Lee
and
Sean Penn
told the man’s story
the parts we didn’t already know
the parts edited by the writer
the parts obscured by the legend.
Sean Penn, Hank’s friend, said it best:
“It’s about making mistakes in a messy world.”
Maybe he borrowed those words from Hank.
It’s possible
Hank was less a poet
than he was a poem
and every breath
from the ugly ones he inhaled in that house his father owned on Longwood Avenue
where his hairless ass caught the razor strap
Henry Senior wielded
once, twice, a thousand times
through the gentle puffs he exhaled from the last bed he laid in in San Pedro
as every wrinkle and every scar on that big, heavy face of his
finally relaxed
told a story
usually about drinking, writing and fucking
or about how a man
goes out into America
mostly the part of America known as Los Angeles
in search of trouble
or to create trouble
because there’s no poetry in being comfortable.
Stories about things that are nice
are not really stories at all
and Hank tried very hard not to be nice
but
trying not to be nice is not the same as not being nice.
The dirty old man
who was called “a good duker”
had a soft heart
buried beneath all of his mistakes.
Hank died on March 9th
before the world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.
They made a movie about him
Born Into This
it was a good movie
about one helluva poem.
