Chapter XXII

Still joy is rubbernecking on the street,
Still hikes the Mags' parade at five o'clock,
Still does the masher march around the block
Pining in vain some hothouse plant to meet;
Still does the rounder pull your leg to treat,
Where flows the whisky sour or russet bock,
And the store clothing dummies in a flock
Keep good and busy following their feet.

Rats! cut this out; for I'm a last year's champ;
Into the old bone orchard am I blowing,
So with the late lamented let me camp,
My walkers to the graveyard daisies toeing,
And shaking this too upish generation,
Pass checks through cigarette asphyxiation.

Epilogue

To just one girl I've tuned my sad bazoo,
Stringing my pipe-dream off as it occurred,
And as I've tipped the straight talk every word,
If you don't like it you know what to do.
Perhaps you think I've handed out to you
An idle jest, a touch-me-not, absurd
As any sky-blue-pink canary bird,
Billed for a record season at the Zoo.

If that's your guess you'll have to guess again,
For thus I fizzled in a burst of glory,
And this rhythmatic side-show doth contain
The sum and substance of my hard-luck story,
Showing how Vanity is still on deck
And Humble Virtue gets it in the neck.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum, by Wallace Irwin