The Blue Butterfly

I am Blue

Like a bruise

Like the old

Chipped tea-pot

From which I pour

My favourite brew

Did you know that after a day

Or two

Or maybe a year or two

Or a century or two

Oh heck! Say, a life or two

The bruise gets blue

After it turns black

Like soot

Stuck on walls?

Leftovers from fires

That had once

Burned  fevers

Sap that churned

In once green veins

Now oh so blue!

But so what

Says you

Hell, the sky is blue

Isn't it?

Well, yes, that’s true

When it isn’t grey with cloud

Or colourless in the afternoon crowd

Or black in the night’s fright

Yes, it’s blue

But so what

You insist

The sea is blue, isn't it?

Yes, when it isn't opaque
And doesn’t churn sea-sick green

With the storm within

And the sun doesn't plunge

To its doom in its depths

In a daze of blood-red dread

At the end of day

But did you know
When without purpose

You mix blood-red dread
And sea-sick green
(or is it opaque yellow)

On your palette

You get blue?

And did you know that when without pause

The clock kicks and claws

And hicks and hocks all your ticks and tocks

You get blue?

And did you know sometimes you get blue

Just hoping the idiot clock

Would just for a minute shut-up and stop

Just enough for a blue butterfly to take stock

Of her situation?

Of surrounding blue walls

Closing in like a cocoon

Where her wings are trapped

And slowly turn

The colour of an ink-blue bruise

Until she metamorphoses

Into a blue butterfly

And flutters away into the solitude

Of the sky - Oh so blue

And alights on a blue moon

And exclaims in delight

(with apologies to Armstrong, of course)

"This may be one small step for mankind,
but a giant leap for a bruised Blue Butterfly!"

-by Rita Putatunda