From Slams of Life, with Malice for All And Charity Toward None Assembled in Rhyme by J. P. McEvoy, With black and white interruptions by Frank King, Chicago : P. F. Volland Company; 1919; pp. 50-74.
SLAMS OF LIFE
With Malice for All And Charity
Towards None
Assembled in Rhyme by
J. P. McEVOY
With black and white interruptions by
FRANK KING
[Part III.]
[50]
THE BRILLIANT ICEMAN
I used to think my iceman was
A regular Philistine,
That vegetable ivory
Composed his oblate bean,
That he was sorter balmy, too,
And wormy in the nut,
A cuckoo in the coco . . . yes,
I used to think this, but . . .
I know I was in error then
When foresaid thoughts I thunk,
When ’neath that rough exterior
I saw but human junk,
When I mistook his purest gold
For FeS2 dross,
My apprehension was at fault —
He’s quite another hoss.
My iceman has an intellect
Of most stupendous size,
A comprehension, keen, alert,
A vision, broad and wise;
And from his pupils shining forth
I see a soul that’s free,
A soul of pulchritude and worth
And rare sagacity.
Behind his broad and ample brow
There sits a noble nut
That rules with perspicacity
His cunning occiput;
How do I know that he’s so keen,
Whom once I thought so light?
Well, yesterday I heard him say
He likes the stuff I write.
[51]
LINES TO THOSE QUEER AND CURIOUS COOTS WHO ROAM THE STREETS IN BATHING SUITS
I do not know why you should stalk
Along the boulevard and walk,
Arrayed in suits that unawares
Reveal the trend of your affairs —
I do not know why this should be,
It surely ain’t no treat to me.
The bathing suits in which you dress
Are nothing much and mostly less,
And as you saunter to and fro
A lot of family traits they show
To unappreciative eyes
Who view them with mild surprise.
Perhaps you have the inward wish
Your anatomic exhibish’
Your epidermical display
Will sorter steal my sense away
And make my heart go pluck-a-pluck;
Is such you wish, you’re out of luck.
Your dripping passage down the street
Does not excite to fever heat,
Your coy and cute cutaneous splurge
Impels in me no naughty urge,
The moist contagion of your charms
Would lure no boys from off the farms.
You corpulent and sylph-like coots
Who run the streets in bathing suits,
Your rutilant al fresco coives
Are anaesthetic to my noives,
My brow is cool and dry my palm,
I view you with exceeding calm.
Why do you roam so far and free —
You ain’t no treat, that I can see.
[52]
LINES TO J. P. JUNIOR
My little son,
Your sentence on this earth has just begun,
You have a long and toilsome race to run,
And it’s but fair to tell you here and now
This ain’t the best of worlds, no way, nohow;
Because you have it pretty soft today
You think, perhaps, ’twill always be that way;
And every one that you will ever know
Will be as good to you as Doctor Stowe,
But listen, bo, it isn’t so.
The world ain’t built on no such gorgeous plan;
You’ll have to be a self-assertive man,
You bet,
And fight likehel for everything you get,
And light all spraddled out in every fray,
For life down here is not a holiday,
And he who totes the bacon to his den
is he who has it on his fellow men.
My little son,
If you would cop the daily bread and bun
Don’t figure on a soft and soothing time,
There’s no such thing, believe this simple rime.
You’ll find existence is a kind of bacon-biz,
With streaks of lean and fat
And this and that,
Like gloom and gladness, salve and sop, and sting
And everything,
And people lurking on the thoroughfare
To take you in and also unaware
And bounce a brick where you divide your hair,
And friends you’ll find
Of every kind,
The false and true,
And of the former lots,
The latter few.
[53]
And of your friends you’ll find before you’re done,
Your first will be your best and truest one,
And that friend is your mother, little son.
My little son,
The goal is far from easily won,
The road is long and hard that stretches there,
The race not to the swift but to the fair;
So play the game and play it on the square.
Then, even if the twilight of your day
Should find you with the goal still far away,
You need not care,
For better than the goal ignobly won
Is the race that’s lost but still was fairly run.
[54]
A LI’L OL’ PORTERHOUSE STEAK
O, the Romans of old, they were strong for the eats,
And they dined upon squab from Algiers;
And they reveled in rivers of humming bird livers
And swordfishes’ fricasseed ears.
Each p. m. at 2 they’d have nightingale stew
And a butterfly bake by the lake,
But sad was the lot of these guys — they know not of
The lil’ ol’ porterhouse steak. Yes, yes,
Of the lil’ ol’ porterhouse steak.
The nosebags Olympic of asphodel fields
Held ambrosia and nectar divine,
A heavenly hash with a Jovian dash,
But I’d scoff at such fodder for mine!
No Paphian pabulum, sir, could suffice
To satiate, surfeit, or slake
The keen appetite of the fortunate wight
Who has tasted the porterhouse steak, Aye! Aye!
The lil’ ol’ porterhouse steak.
A lil’ ol’ porterhouse steak, if you please,
But thicker, a trifle, than that,
As tender as Flora and pink as Aurora,
With nuggets of unctuous fat;
Please broil it to cage all the juices within it —
(Don’t season while cooking!) now take
Your dreamy, delicious (but highly nutritious)
Your lil’ ol’ porterhouse steak, Ye Gods!
Your lil’ ol’ porterhouse steak!
And that’s why I zam on my zither today
No gross Sybaritical song,
For such, ain’t it, Mawruss? I leave it to Horace
And Horace is there with it strong;
I long but to larrup my lyre to say
That Lucullian eats were a fake,
And I back by all odds, sir, that food of the gods, sir,
A lil’ ol’ porterhouse steak, Yes, yes,
A lil’ ol’ porterhouse steak!
[55]
A MAN’S BEST PRESS AGENT — HIS MOTHER
Oh, others my chortle and call me a failure,
And smile while I gather my Lilliput’ pile,
And sneer in derison: “That clutter of kale you’re
Annexing is puny and not worth the while!”
And maybe they’re right when they say I’m no demon,
And that I will never be warmer than fair;
Perhaps they are right and perhaps they are dreamin’
But mother — she knows I’m a regular bear.
Ah, yes, sir, my mother just KNOWS I’m a bear.
My mother is sure I’m the High Cockalorum,
That I am the Fount and the Wellspring of Lore,
When she is around I am sure of a quorum,
An audience she whom I never can bore.
The others get tired of hearing my chatter,
They say all my goods were deceased on the shelf;
They call me a flivver — but that doesn’t matter,
My mother knows diff’rent, she says so herself.
Oh, yes, sir, my mother will tell you herself!
My voice is not built to inspire emotion —
Emotion, that is, of a lovelier kind;
When sicked upon others they leap in the ocean,
But mother just loves it — she says “it’s refined.”
I’m not a Beethoven, a Shakspeare, nor Chaucer,
Nor even a Whistler — of that there’s no doubt!
But did they do anything I couldn’t? Naw, sir!
Just take it from mother, she’ll tell you right out!
Just listen to mother, SHE’LL tell you, old scout.
So what do I care if you say I’m a filbert?
Oh, what do I care if you censure my stuff?
My mother has told me I’m better than Gilbert,
She says in comparison Milton is guff.
I guess I should bibble, and stew, fret, and pine, sir,
Because for my talents the people don’t care.
I may not be able to spear what is mine, sir,
But mother believes I’m a regular bear;
Yes, mother, God bless her! just knows I’m a bear.
[56]
GOD GIVE US MEN!
God give us men in times like these:
To keep our flag upon the seas,
To bring it through that warring hell
Of screaming steel and splintering shell
To Victory and to peace again.
God give us men.
God give us men.
God give us men in times like these:
No craven cowards on their knees
But fearless men, erect, four-square,
With hands to do and hearts to dare;
Come on! Your country cries again:
“God give us men,
God give us men!”
“God give us men in times like these,”
The Stars and Stripes shout to the breeze;
“Fearless and valiant, terrible, just,
We’ve never trailed in the bitter dust,
But give us men, or else we must” —
Hark! ’Tis the Stars and Stripes again:
“God give us men,
God give us men!”
April 6, 1917.
[57]
THERE IS NO DEATH
There is no Death! The leaves that fade
And softly drift to silent doom
Are not to cold oblivion laid
In some forsaken, hopeless tomb —
They are not dead: ’neath snow and rain
They live, and with the Spring’s first breath
All glorified they’ll come again —
There is no Death!
There is no Death! The boys who pass
Like falling stars in glory’s glow
Will live again when dewy grass
And poppies on those craters grow;
When all the world is fair and free
Because they gave their soul’s own breath,
They’ll live in millions yet to be —
There is no Death!
[58]
A JEREMIAD ON LAUNDRIES
I had some passionate pink pajams,
Some chromotogenous hose,
Some tasty, trim, and tricksy ties,
And other superlative clothes;
But as I rode the kivered cars
O’erdark my clotheses grewed;
I sent them to a laundaree —
If I had only knewed!
For today I got my bundle
From that haunt of noisome ill,
And inclosed I found a bunch of rags,
A button — and a bill!
Chorus —
O, shun, my son, the laundaree, that evil omened boid,
For a laundry is a place you send your clothes to be
destroyed.
I had a snappy Palm Beach suit —
It snugly draped my lattice,
It was a beatific beaut’;
But hold! Enough! Jam satis!
I loved that suit, I loved that suit,
I loved it like a son,
I’ve followed the hearse of all my hopes,
I’ve buried them one by one,
For to a demoniacal laundaree
I sent my little pard —
Today I got my Palm Beach suit
Upon a postal card.
Chorus —
O, grewsome, grim, and ghoulish is that evil omened
boid,
A laundaree — that place you send your clothes to be
destroyed.
Of noble shirts I had some three,
Each sillik, yes, and new,
Of lambent luminosity
And opalescent hue,
A polychromatic pooh pooree,*
A regular solar spectrum,
A gorgeous, colorful shivaree —
Buh-lieve me, I select ’em!
But Oh, one shirt grew darkful,
And a laundry grabbed it, certes!
Today I got my buttons back —
I don’t know where the shirt is.
Chorus —
For a laundry is a place you send your clothes to be
destroyed,
A place you send your clothes to be destroyed.
————————
* Back o’ th’ Yards accent.
[60]
A WASHINGTON D. C. TRAGEDY
It was a private soldier,
In Washington, D. C.,
Who, dying on the avenue,
This story told to me;
This sad and wistful story,
This narrative of gloom
That touched upon the circumstance
That led him to his doom.
“I am a simple private,”
He murmured unto me,
“And I am the only private
In Washington, D. C.
The rest are first lieutenants
With spurs and riding boots
And all day long they’ve hounded me
To give them some salutes.
“I did the best I could, sir,
From early morn till night.
I worked my tried and trusty arm
For every “lieut.” in sight.
But “Lieuts” came fast and faster
And more and more and more,
And nary another private came
To help me with my chore.
“And now, alas, I’m dying —
I could not stand the pace —
And I must die with one regret;
There’s none to take my place . . .’
His voice grew faint and fainter —
“O Gawd, my arm is sore,
Tell mother . . . Andrew done . . . his . . . bit . . .
To help . . . to win the . . . war.”
[62]
AN IMPORTANT EVENT
I was fathoms deep in cogent cogitation,
I had just put Old Afflatus on the mat,
And established a connecton
With a potent retrospection
Appertaining to and touching this and that;
I was lost I say in lambent lucubration,
And my thinker (yes, it is) was going some,
When the wife rushed in a-crying:
“Stop that foolish versifying,
Come and look. The baby’s learned to suck her
thumb.”
And the message she exuded it was truthful,
And the words were gems of rare veracitee,
For our airy little fairy
Had unhinged a maxillary
And inserted in the cunning cavitee,
Had inserted in the consequential chasm,
In the aperture resulting thusly from
Her precocious dilatation
Of her means of mastication,
Had inserted — shall I say it? Yes! — her thumb!
You may wonder that I gazed in admiration?
You may marvel that I stared with oh’s and ah’s,
With astonishment prodigious
As my cunning little squidjus
Placed her thumb within the province of her jaws?
But I tell you that my pride is most preposterous,
And my exhaltation simply strikes me dumb,
I just stand with glowing buzzum
For my darling fuzzum-wuzzum
Has discovered how to suck her little thumb,
By gum!
The little slickerine can suck her thumb!
[63]
SOME MUSINGS ON NATURAL HISTORY
For birds I entertain a care,
I like the way they take the air,
Their singing soothes my inner ear,
And I am pleased when they appear
In crimson feathering and blue,
In short I think that birds will do;
But they eat worms, which proves, I’m sure,
Their taste is far from epicure.
I quite approve of squirrels, I think,
Although I’d much prefer them pink;
Their teeth are sharp, their fur are soft
And nimbly they can shin aloft;
But I can’t understand why they
Should chew on hard-shelled nuts all day,
When they could find much softer eats,
Like peas, bananas, soup and beets.
I would not for a single term
Agree to underwrite the worm;
The way he rises after rains
Is proof to me has no brains;
For he is stepped on in his flight
Which must be quite distressing, quite;
Another reason why I think
The garden worm’s a silly gink,
His chassis is assembled wrong
And his wheelbase it is much too long.
People are nice, but then I fear
There are too many people here,
When one would watch a function gay,
They’re always standing in your way;
And when in need of much repose
They park themselves upon your toes.
I think they’re ordinary, too,
And that includes myself and you.
[64]
THE HIGHER THE BROW THE LESS IT SWEATS
Sing of the Bunions of Toil,
Warble the Man with the Hoe,
Hokum’s according to Hoyle,
But gimme the Man with the Dough!
Gimme the Guy with the Green,
gimme the Jay with the Junk,
Gimme the Shekels Serene —
This Bunions of Toil is the Bunk,
Hammer your lyre to bits,
Warble the Luke in the Loom,
Sing of the Corns on his Mitts,
But gimme the Mighty Mazum’!
Gimme the Goof with the Gold,
Gimme the Toff with the Tin.
Hoes may be noble to hold
But gimme a Five in the Fin.
Salt is the Sweat of the Serf,
Scant is the glory he gleans,
His toeses are out on the turf,
He battens his belly with beans.
Sing you the Man with the Hoe?
Sing him, you Sonuvagun!
But gimme the Man with the Dough,
Gimme the Guy with the Mon.
[65]
“NO, NO, DOWNTOWN, POP-EYE
TAY HOME”
Each morn when I’ve ruined some ham and some eggs
And stowed ’em all under my hatch,
And draped the remains of my coat round my legs
And crowned with a kelly my thatch,
I say to my daugher: “Now, Pop-eye must go,
Downtown to his work he must roam,
And make you some taters.” But daughter cries, “No!
No, no, downtown, Pop-eye; tay home!”
You’d wonder if you were to gaze from afar
And see what I drew for a face,
Why Dorothy Mary should think me a star
And cry when I’m leaving the place.
“I’ll say that he sorter oppresses the eyes,”
Would peregrinate through the dome,
“It ain’t for his beauty that Dorothy cries:
“ ‘No, no downtown, Pop-eye; tay home.’ ”
It ain’t for his beauty! How utterly utt,
Sagacious and keen and profound!
But what do I care if I look like a mutt,
As long as she likes me around?
So long as she’ll have me — and may that be long, —
I know I won’t hunger to roam,
For there’s just a wee tear and a pang in her song:
“No, no, downtown, Pop-eye; tay home.”
[66]
WE MEET, BUT DO NOT SPEAK
We do not speak, the wife and I,
We meet, but do not speak;
Our one-time happy habitat
Is desolate and bleak.
A deep sepulchral silence reigns
Within our humble hut,
Where lightsome chatter fluttered once
There now is nary flut.
Perhaps you wonder what became
Of our esprit d’corps,
And why vamoosed the dove of peace
From our domestic shore.
If so your wonder cease a while,
And read this deathless squeak,
And you will know then why we meet,
And pass — but do not speak.
Upon a lot adjoining us,
A lot of luscious loam,
I planted onions, beets and things
To garnish up my home,
To load my table with its yield —
Its succulent and bright
Convention of comestibles
Of esculent delight.
One fatal day wife volunteered
To help subdue the weeds,
And with a cruel, vicious hoe
She dug up all my seeds,
And cut down each potato stalk,
Each onion, corn and leek,
She thought them weeds, so now we meet
And pass — but do not speak.
[67]
THE FLU
When your back is broke and your eyes are blurred.
And your shin-bones knock and your tongue is furred,
And your tonsils squeak and your hair gets dry,
And you’re doggone sure that you’re going to die,
But you’re skeered you won’t and afraid you will,
Just drag to bed and have your chill;
And pray the Lord to see you through
For you’ve got the Flu, boy,
You’ve got the Flu.
When your toes curl up and your belt goes flat,
And you’re twice as mean as a Thomas cat,
And life is a long and dismal curse,
And your food all tastes like a hard-boiled hearse,
When your lattice aches and your head’s abuzz
And nothing is as it ever was,
Here are my sad regrets to you,
You’ve got the Flu, boy,
You’ve got the Flu.
What is it like, this Spanish Flu?
Ask me, brother, for I’ve been through,
It is by Misery out of Despair,
It pulls your teeth and curls your hair,
It thins your blood and brays your bones
And fills your craw with moans and groans,
And sometimes, maybe, you get well —
Some call it Flu — I call it hell!
[68]
AN IMAGIST WOULD CALL THIS “PALE PURPLE QUESTION DESCENDING A STAIRCASE”
How puerile and futile, inept and inutile,
How profitless, empty and stale,
How bootless and vain and how dram and inane
Is our life in this vaporous vale;
We rise and we work and we eat and we drink,
And we sleep ’till it’s time for our call,
And then once again we rise, work, eat and sleep —
And what is the use of it all,
At all!
Oh, what is the use of it all!
Oh cosmic monotony, pallid and gray
You fill me with exquisite pain.
For always the nighttime is followed by day
And Sunday by Monday and April by May
And sunshine by tempest and rain,
And after the Winter come Spring time and Summer,
And after the Summer comes Fall,
And after the Fall come Winter and Spring,
The same old routine, deadly thing!
Oh, what is the use of it all,
At all!
Oh, what is the use of it all!
“No sub-solar novelty” Solomon said,
And Sol was precocity plus.
The newest inventions (oh blushes dark red!)
Were swiped from some nations unutterably dead
Who swiped them from others, — cuss ! cuss!
So therefore why bustle, get het up and hustle
’Tis useless, for Solomon said it;
There ain’t a thing new that a live one can do —
The dead ones have got all the credit.
And now leading Pegasus back to his stall
Oh, what is the use of it all,
Dog-gone!
Oh, what is the use of it all!
[69]
A LAMENTATION
I know now why you fletcherize your short and stubby
toes
Why you prefer to slumber on your kneecaps and your
nose,
And why you find a pabulum surpassing in your thumb,
And why you always holler when your fodder orter
come
I know the why and thusly and the whence of every-
thing,
Excepting this: I don’t know why you like to hear me sing.
My voice is most peculiar because it runs a race
Between an ice cream tenor and a coco-cola bass,
And when I trot it forth in song the doors and win-
dows slam,
And neighbors holler something — I believe it’s Yubie
Dam!
The city has requested me to fumigate the thing,
And yet (it’s almost past belief) you like to hear me sing!
With cacophonic clatter through the keys I let it flap,
It skids on ev’ry turn and has a blowout ev’ry lap,
It knocks in all the bearings and it rattles in the gears;
No wonder that the neighbors when they hear it burst
in tears.
I would not be surprised if they should shoot me on
the wing,
And yet, you little booberine, you like to hear me sing!
Oh yes, I hoped that you would learn to treat pianos
rough,
And bat at least 400 in that fa-so-la-si stuff;
I prayed you’d be a glutton for Beethoven and his crew,
But all my fondest fancies now have flickered up the flue;
I know you’ll never have an ear for music’s magic
swing —
You’ll never know what music is — you like to hear
me sing!
[70]
THOUGHTS ON A BATHING BEACH
I sit upon the shining sand,
Beside the sounding sea,
And sights I cannot understand
Come flitting o’er the lea,
Ungainly sights which give me pain
In my anatomee.
Long, lean and lanky gnarled legs
With knots upon the knees,
And trunks like piccolos or kegs
Come wafting thru the breeze,
And arms like reeds and hands like hams —
I gaze on al of these.
Yon woman in her bathing suit
Upon the shining sand,
When on the street I thought her cute,
And now upon the strand —
Where are those lissom luscious curves?
I cannot understand.
And yonder man — if man it is —
I saw him yesterday,
And marveled at his beauteous phiz —
And watched his shoulders sway —
But now within that bathing suit —
His shoulders — where are they?
And so upon the shining sand,
Beside the brimming brine,
I sit and watch those ghastly sights
And painful thoughts are mine —
I sit and wonder why it’s called
“The human form divine.”
[72]
THE CURE
For years he cursed the wicked rich in horrid, hectic
tones;
He cursed them hide and fur and tooth and feathers,
hair and bones;
He cursed them in the morning, and he cursed them in
the night;
He panned them auburn, blond, brunette, and yellow,
black and white.
He hated them and all they had with a hate beyond
compare —
He hated them down to Hades — and up the Golden
Stair;
But an uncle dies and left this guy a uncle of yellow
ore,
And now you never hear him curse the wealthy any
more.
“The plutocrats,” he used to say, “have ground us
down and out;
They scourge us to disease and death beneath the
bloody knout;
They take the bread from out our mouths, the rags
from off our backs,
And live the while in mansions grand while we exist in
shacks.
O, curse the rich and all they have and those that
gave them birth;
I wouldn’t touch a cent of theirs for anything on
earth.”
But an uncle died and left this guy a million bucks
or more,
And I have got it pretty straight it didn’t make him
sore.
He’d stand beside the avenoo, this democratic guy,
And shake his fists at limousines as they went crash-
ing by;
[73]
He’d curse a pants that had a crease and shoes that
had a shine.
And rave at lobsters, caviar, and any kind of wine.
The cognoscenti he’d condemn and hoi polloi he’d
praise;
You have no faint conceptions of the H—l he used to
raise.
But an uncle died and left him many flocks of golden
ore,
And, strange enough, he doesn’t curse the wealthy any
more.
[74]
GIRLISH NERVE
I sorta figgered you would be
Away above the crowd,
A child of rare supremacy
Of whom I could be proud.
A modest, timid little maid
I pictured you, alack!
But all my dreams are rent and frayed —
You call your daddy: “Mac.”
The only children I have got
And you so brash and bold,
To call me Mac — my little tot
One year and two months old.
One year and two months old — that’s all —
A lady you should be,
Instead of that you’re full of gall —
You holler “MAC!” at me.
You might have called me, daddy, see?
Or pa, or even pop,
But this here squawking “MAC!” at me
Has simply got to stop.
