Ode to The Arcade Hotel, Memphis TN

I watched Jim Jarmusch's 'Mystery Train' and thought about the blues.

The blue of a bright day Maggie’s blue The blue of my quinceañera dress The blue of boredom of allowing boredom to take hold the blue of shaking the boredom off The blue of a magpie stripe The blue of buildings built half-way meshed up to save strangers from falling The springtime blue The blue of happy Yves Klein's blue hyper-specific blue blue bodies on a white canvas The blue of speculation The blue of a Tesco sign The blue of entering subzero temperatures The blue of Blue Bunny in aisle 23 The blue of a brand-new bruise Matisse’s blue bodies his red room is blue too underneath the cadmium The blue of Walmart The blue of a bluejay wishing you good morning The supermodel blue The blue of birth control pills The blue of their side effects Derek’s blue His vast expansive blue The blue of the key of D diminished The blue of Memphis The blue of mezcal The blue of a toilet seat The blue of cold linoleum The blue of passing clouds The blue of negative space The blue of then Rebecca’s voyeuristic blue The blue of missing When does reality end and fantasy begin I think about the way memory floats along the wave of time’s impermanent Duat cruise How it isn’t ever here in the sprawl of a second a present instant the active moment — a TV switches on by the crook of a finger adding pressure a vein looms ominously the depressed tops of remote control buttons click into place on its way down giving way to a ground floor reception for electrical wires that form miniature cities brutalist tower blocks descend corridors of metallic material in the window a woman sips red wine from the bottle by the glassful I couldn’t quite decide which one of the two I meant or it was Or there out in that space time — which is to say the length of time divided by space that exists between this point A and that the future we desire point B Time stretches its long face voice hoarse from the expedition to convince one of us to concede The blue of royalty which is to say purple before they knew to call it that The royal blue of lavender The royal blue of Parma violets The blue of varicose veins A blue Mini Cooper A blue rat race The blue of a springtime sniffle The blue of an unattached tarp rustling in the wind The blue of a spoke and wheel turning The blue of an ice cream truck The blue of a lick Mixolydian blue The blue of corrugated metal The blue of a question The blue of an answer The blue of corn tortillas The blue of raspberry jolly ranchers The blue of chroma The pale blue of our planet The blue of liquid in movement The blue of ocean which is to say depth which is to say endlessness The blue of a dead end The blue of cigarette smoke The blue of a cramped envelope The blue of an unspoken word understood in an instant The blue of a maybe of an always The blue of the underground The blue of 6pm indoors The blue of 6pm outdoors No matter the time, no matter the day.