Baby Blue Cuff Links

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Baby Blue Cuff Links

“Whales, that mew & caw in ultramarine jazz--

oceanic rhapsody in blue, are hunted to the

edge of silence.”--Jay Griffiths.

I just perched myself on a slate blue metal folding

        chair adjacent to a Greek fruit stand

        in Seattle’s Public Market, & decided,

                  as a lark, to identify the dozens of blues

                  that I could see from that vantage point.

         A shapely redhead wiggled by in a pair

         of stonewashed faded blue jeans, torn

artfully at the knees & thighs, sporting little palatine--

blue heart tattoos on her knees. She looked

     over at me with her iridescent iceberg-blue eyes,

         as the sun shone on her ginger-blond hair, & she

             smiled a sultry greeting through perfect white teeth.

         She wore a short tattered tee shirt that was tie-dyed

      periwinkle & spindrift purple, slashed with Cambridge

teal sinuous lines, with a bare midriff

and no bra, a cobalt blue & red scarf

pinned into her long curly tresses, a

topaz barrette clipped in one side.

                            Across the aisle was a retro-record shop.

                            decorated with bluish album covers:

            Joni Mitchell Blue,

            Weezer’s The Blue Album,

            Blue Trane,

            a couple Blue Man’s Group,

            Massive Attack’s Blue Lines,

            Lou Reed’s The Blue Mask,

            Electric President’s The Violent Blue,

            Hooverphone’s Blue Wonder Power Milk,

            & Hats’ Blue Nile.

                              Across the street there was an Armed

                              Services Recruitment Center, festooned

                          with Air Force, Navy, Army, & Coast Guard

                          blue banners, flapping a blue streak in the

                     Mariner’s blue town breeze, with red-white-&

                     blue posters of Naval vessels cruising through

              gray-blue ocean waves, blue steel fighter jets flying

              in electric-blue skies, with orange & white Coast 

Guard cutters anchored in azure blue

tropical bays, over several mannequins

at attention, costumed in dress blue

starched uniforms, with Columbia blue

stripes on the legs, & gold brocade lapels--

one wearing a blue-chrome ceremonial

saber.

I don’t have the blues;

not today, at least, but then

tomorrow’s not here.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub