Club Indigo

image borrowed from bing

Club Indigo

“Hipness isn’t a state of mind,

it’s a fact of life.”--Cannonball Adderley

The Club was smoky-dark, 

layered with Lucky Strikes, 

Havana cigars

and a teasing whiff of cannabis, 

like stepping lively out of a time capsule

into 1940’s Harlem, those sexy ladies

in low-cut dresses down front, their

pushed up breasts lovely pink whorls

bulging up from rough-purple brocade bodices,

their smiling shallow eyes seemingly deep-set

behind mascara and golden glitter,

several vintage steam radiators popping

and snapping like hot fingers to the jazzy beat;

the tall chanteuse stood beanpole upright,

all light-skinned honey brown inside her

tight black dress, a deep purple osteopermum

clipped jauntily into her long corn-rowed locks,

her blood red lips moist from sensual warbling;

the music developing into West African rhythms,

all hand-beaten drums, deep alto saxing

and shrill frightening licorice stick--with

a fat bear in a green fedora at the piano,

chipping away at the boss brass lead.

I sat there alone at a back table,

open-collared behind red Ray-Bans,

sucking hard on a complimentary mint

to counterpoint the smoker’s pungent mist,

feeling a bit like a potato gnocchi floating

in a pan of chocolate froth, like a white

daisy in a field of dark daffodils,

yet deliciously doused in several flavors

of indeterminate joy as it became prolific,

tripling, going viral just as the torch singer

hit the high notes, the horn's bleating meshed,

the drummer slammed the snare, and

the piano player plinked the atonal keys,

leaving me weeping as tears of gratitude

appeared from behind tinted lenses,

thankful for my jumping jazz allotment,

safe there in the beautiful darkness

tapping the last note with my forefinger

as love honey-dripped over us                                  

and racism exited the building.

Glenn Buttkus

November 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets OLN

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