noir sonnet of my life

I guess I’ll open with a poem, the wry rascal declared
Grinning, nodding asleep onstage
Lights shone on sweat stained suit and
Creased, beaten, worn fedora
Lent an air of
Desperate dignity to the dim scene
And he said

“All the people I love are wandering drunks
Wasted and high, blasted to the mind’s eye
Selfless and spent, hippies, freaks, geeks and punks
Lost to the nightlife, alone when they cry

They traipse through my life, my house and my heart
Mad abandon in the sacred moment
To be more than a number on a chart
In art immortalized, death’s opponent

Living on the fringe of reality
Rejecting some mad American dream
We work to escape the banality
So what will we be? The milk or the cream?

We are the change we wish to be gandhi
So why can’t we wish for more than we see?”