Indigotham

A lesson: in the Indigotham I wear a tagelmust

to protect against the shadow dust

for unlike Gotham with its mirrors and leers

in the Indigotham it is always queerer

to spy a man with an uncovered face.

                                                                               And no,

the Indigotham of which I speak is not the Shadow

City, nor an Emerald City, or a certain Wonderland,

but every Gotham, you must understand,

has its Indigotham, just as every glow, Farben or no,

surely has its indiglow. And how do I know?



One summer I painted supernova in the nook

that held my bed, and then wrote a book

of fragments with titles like “hunting the indigo

bunting“ and lines like “Sun spine scolio-

sis these vertebra aglow.”

                                                              The sun stole

into my room then and stroked the wall scroll's

Buddha pear belly.

                                                This was before I knew

of the Indigotham, so the sun said “True

the things you write about the subway, bus,

and park, but you haven't got a clue, plus

you claimed I hopped the turnstile and rode

unticketed, which wo'n't do.”

                                                              So Sun bestowed

a simple code: “For every Gotham you do write,

you must write its Indigotham.”

                                                              “Quite right,”

I said and set to work.

                                                Now the sun's my newest besty

who daily likes to text me about the etsy

store he's opened where I bought my tagelmust

for, to quote the sun, “the cloaked ones are the only ones to trust.”