Blue Note
Mickey from Chicago, he blue
As a midnight steel
Flashed against the gleam
Of a neon light.
He listens to the blue notes
Drift like a somber sea
Out of the clubs that weep
Like an endless rain.
He’s at Damen & Milwaukee
He’s at the hub of loneliness
His heart pumps cobalt
Blood through the veins
Of his eyes and the women
See a depth that has no bottom.
He holds a sapphire dream
In his hand, another kind of blue,
A burning blue lit with the fire
Of renewal, of new belief.
Mickey looks up and sees
A single note take wing
Against the midnight sky.
He feels the beautiful heaviness of blue
and hangs his head with the chorus of somber street lamps.