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“Aw Come On And Fight!”

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On my hands and knees in a scarlet pool

I heard the referee toll,

And the crowd roared: "Kill the yellow bum!"

Like the sea along a shoal.

I sprang, I struck, I crushed his skull

With a sudden desperate swing,

He died with his eyes to the glaring lights

And his back to the canvassed ring.

The referee counted above the dead,

I swayed and clung to the ropes,

And the crowd roared: "Yellow! Both of em's bums!"

Like the seas on the beaches slopes.

Babel

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Now in the gloom the pulsing drums repeat,

And all the night is filled with evil sound;

I hear the throbbing on inhuman feet

On marble stairs that silence locks around.

I see black temples loom against the night,

With tentacles like serpents writhed afar,

And waving in a dusky dragon light

Great moths whose wings unholy tapers char.

Red memory on memory, tier on tier,

Builds up a tower, time and space to span;

Through world on world I rise, and sphere on sphere,

To star-shot gulfs of lunacy and fear—

Black screaming ages never dreamed by man.

Was this your plan, foul spawn of cosmic mire,

To freeze my soul to stone and icy fire,

To carve me in the moon that all mankind

May know its race is futile, weak and blind—

A horror-blasted statue in the sky,

That does not live and nevermore can die?

The Ballad of Abe Slickemmore

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Guzzle your beer, you lazy louse!

Boast of your lack of knowledge,

And you may go to the bawdy house

But I shall go to college!

A Ballad of Insanity

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Adam was my ball-and-chain,

A tall short mule,

A walking red olay tennis court

In Eden’s judgment pool.

He tore the dubious petticoat

From Eve’s sequestered hips,

Oh, Adam was my elephant

Upon the sea in ships.

The Ballad of Monk Kickawhore

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My brother, he was a keg of beer,

And he spoke with a rotten grammar,

He was quick with his rump as a pitching steer

When he got some girl to ram her.

My sister she would never behave,

Went with the friend of a neighbor,

And he was a pimp and a lowlife knave—

And so she came to her labor.

Some are cradled in silks anon,

And petted and fed on candy,

But I was laid on a demijohn

And all that I drank was brandy.

Some are crummy from dusk till morn,

But none was ever so crummy,

For bastards along my trail were born

Till the Devil himself got chummy.

And I remember a household tough,

And a brother prone to trifle—

But he married a girl who lived on snuff

When her uncle came with a rifle.

And I remember the kitchen wench

Who was Swedish and short and stocky,

And the parties we had on the kitchen bench

Ere I heard of the gonococci.

And how we wriggled and writhed and twitched

Till the kitchen started reeling,

And how she giggled and bucked and pitched

Till my rump went up to the ceiling.

When I grew tall as an army mule

My brother had little to show me,

For I was an expert with my tool

With the proper wench below me.

I travelled far and I took each chance—

Slept with the English wenches,

And jazzed in public all over France

Under the bar-room benches.

Till I lost my virtue and found my mate

A girl with a lisp and a stammer,

And she was built to accommodate

A man with a ten foot rammer.

We slept off our drunks in stables of France,

Fought with the hogs and ganders,

And she left the seat of her under-pants

On the end of a bar in Flanders.

She was so hot that she’d make you melt

Some times on the nose I’d bust her,

And I made her wear a chastity belt

For I knew that I could not trust her.

My tool was sore and it made me frown,

For I knew I shouldn’t abuse it,

But I could not stop when her drawers were down,

Though it hurt like Hell to use it.

Till I took me a new girl out one night,

And we got heated and gay there,

But my wife came down with a swinging right

And knocked me flat as I lay there.

Her high heels beat out a wild tattoo

As she danced upon my belly,

She kicked my rear both black and blue

And beat me into a jelly.

And your girl’s easy where mine was rough,

My brother so slick and sappy,

But mine has a form and yours dips snuff,

And I’ll bet, begob, she’s clappy.

The Custom House on the French Frontier

I passed with my drunken soul-mate,

And they took her drawers for a souvenir

And hung them over the toll-gate.

The Belgian women raised a row

When she kicked them on their bustles,

And she tried to ride a milking cow

In a tavern-yard in Brussels.

The Coblenz wenches raised merry Hell

When she said they all were strumpets—

And how you departed I may not tell,

But we left town with trumpets.

I lay on a couch with a ticklish whore,

For her price I did not haggle

She took all I had and wanted more,

But I was limp as a raggle.

Go jazz your wenches and go to Hell,

I want no whores around me,

For I hid in the room of a high hotel

But my goddam wife has found me.

The Bombing of Gon Fanfew

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A gang of the Reds were hanging a Jew

In the Murderer’s Rest Saloon

And the girl at the accordion

Was whanging, “The Devil’s Own Tune”;

Over by the Hangman’s Counter