For Brother Blue

Photo by Marshall

Butterflies

The butterflies are weeping.
The butterflies are weeping.
The butterflies are weeping.
Where's Blue?
Where's Blue?
Blue, where are you?
Where are you?
Where are you?
The clouds part.
The clouds part.
His face, it's blue.
It's blue. It's you. It's you.
The butterflies
The butterflies
The butterflies
They all flutter by
Flutter by
Flutter by
The lift him up to the sky.
The butterflies are singing.
The butterflies are singing,
The butterflies are singing
They are singing
They are singing
They lift blue to the sky
To the sky to the sky
Blue is eternal
Blue lives forever

--R. Wayne Nickerson

Tribute to Brother Blue

our brother's part
of us that's
blue seems gone

though never left
is here
before we're born

spread out
on every lawn

in every eye
to span the sky
look down to us

from up on high
in laughter's tear

in blue balloons
from far though
near
on streets we

cross to take
us where we
are
you cannot leave

pieces of you
here in all
of us

before you were
precedes you leaves

you where you
went

it is no
accident
is meant to
be

you only live
where all are
free

--William J. Barnum


For Brother Blue

Our beautiful, beloved, bohemian, be bopping,
butterfly, bard has flown up to the light,
The heavens are brighter and we are blessed to
have had him here with us on loan from
God as we all are.
The wars still rage, the hungry still hunger,
the world still turns and spins,
and we mourn,
and we dance,
and we cry,
and we pray,
on a warm November day
as Brother Blue is buried in a blue
butterfly cloth.

--Elizabeth Doran


Brother Blue

For me Brother Blue
was the quintessence of Hippiedom
this butterfly blues man
who retold Shakespeare
from an inner city point of view.

Of course I knew
his was really a generation
before the rebellions of the late ‘60’s
and early ‘70’s
which made him all the more precious
all the more the repository of the counter-culture
everyone was so quick to consign to commercial cooption.

He was so fucking beautiful.
He never gave up his regalia.
He never wavered from the total innocence
of his story and his story telling for children.

His butterfly was the incarnation
of his own ongoing metamorphosis.
We cannot even think who he was.
He was always Brother Blue,
just as he will always be Brother Blue.

--James Van Looy