Girt with the pelts of lion and hare.
Plodding with oxen wains,
Climbing the steeps on a Spanish mare,
Soaring in aeroplanes.
Men with their hates and their ires,
Men with their loves and their lust
Still shall I reign when their spires
And their castles tumble to dust.
My Children
Table of Contents
Now God be thanked that gave me flesh and thew
And passed them down to my own brood— my word,
Forgive me if my sinful pride be stirred—
They make a sightly and a buxom crew.
Fair, round-limbed girls and stout broad-shouldered boys,
All firm of flesh and ruddy-cheeked and fine—
My Lord, forgive this vanity of mine—
What man but sight of his own brood enjoys?
I know the blood that courses in their veins,
The flesh that laps their bones so softly round.
And when their voices lift their soft refrains,
My heart with undue rapture leaps and bounds.
As who would not who owns such dainties—Cook!
An onion roast I’ll have today and look,
My four year old yes’t-een was tough as sin!
Look to it when you cook the second twin.
Lord, Lord, forgive my fond and foolish pride!
The youngest girl, methinks, had best be fried!
Mystic
Table of Contents
There is a strange and mystic land
East of the rising sun.
A dim sea breaks on a coral strand,
Stars lie spread on the silver sand
And sapphire rivers run;—
There is a mystic land
East of the sun.
Nancy Hawk – A Legend of Virginity
Table of Contents
Nancy Hawk spread wide her knees—
Red are the drawers below the skirt—
From Brooklyn Bridge to the Caribees—
Down by the slums the wenches flirt.
Her perfume scented the sea port town,
But no man took her bloomers down.
Collegians cursed her, yellow and pink,
For a slug of gin in a skating rink
Was all of the booze they had to drink.
She harried the rum-runners all to Hell,
And took their cargoes to guzzle and sell.
For all she had one word alone,
One hunk of dung in their faces thrown:
“The man that shall jazz me is not known!”
This is the tail of her fall, by heck!
And the long tool and the heavy neck,
And the man that raped her on the deck.
The drunk was over, the looted ship,
Stripped as bare as a flapper’s hip,
With drunken skipper and drunken crew,
Who swore till the ocean all turned blew,
Back to the four mile limit flew.
And Nancy Hawk sat on her deck
And watched the boozing couples neck.
Below, with steins for many beers,
Heeding naught to the sailors jeers,
Hovered flappers with wiggling rears.
One by one with shimmying flank,
They guzzled and guzzled and drank and drank,
And one by one passed out and sank.
Only a girl was left at last,
Holding on to the mizzen mast.
Sir Koocoo Kook was a mighty souse,
He sat in state in the bawdy house.
Little a rubber meant to him.
From one rim to the other rim.
Of his lordly breeches flung out wide
On the whore house bench was a tall man’s stride.
And his only sister stood that day
Drunk as a fool in the flying spray.
And all of the sailors acted gay.
Sir Koocoo lifted a gown of lace
And far away in a boozy place,
Nancy slapped his sister’s face.
Sit Koocoo boozed, the drunken knave,
And far away his sister gave,
A yell that the sea cried out to hear
As Nancy lifted a barrel stave.
She squawked as Nancy Hawk drew nigher;
Her voice was high but her dress was higher,
And Nancy laughed and whipped her rump
Until she thought it had caught on fire.
.2.
Sir Koocoo stood at the manor dance
And his balls were hard rocks in his pants.
And he said, “Go fetch me wenches five,
“That love a man with a goodly drive,
“Where the gonococci never thrive.”
And each pimp shrieks back like a flighty fool,
From the girls they get from the nearest school
And the voodoo work of the master’s tool.
But down by the beds where the girls careen,
The skirts rise and the teds are seen,
Yellow and purple and pink and green.
And the knees knock and the bellies bump
And nothing changes but the rump.
And the men whore and the girls roar
And squeal and scream and beg for more.
But down by the beds where the gonny flies,
Collegians whoop and yell and rise,
Eyeing their tools with wild surprise.
And down the plank of the liquor ship
There skips a girl with a stinging hip.
Drunken and bawdy, go in cheer,
At last there are blisters on your rear.
And Nancy laughs when the girl is gone:
“The man that shall jazz me is not known!”
Sir Koocoo never sleeps alone
And his balls are firm and strong as stone.
And the sheiks roar and the girls roar
And each man gets himself a whore.
And Nancy Hawk still sails the seas
And no man lies between her knees.
And the rumps are slipped until they chap
And nothing changes but the clap.
But down by the beds where the wenches dream,
The gowns are raised and the bare thighs gleam—
Sir Koocoo laughs to hear them scream.
And Nancy swoops from the Caribees
With a skirt that does not hide her knees.
Sir Koocoo sits in the manor chair,
Eyeing his tool with an evil stare.
And the skirts fall and the step-ins fall
And nothing stops him but the wall.
But down by the beds where the wenches run,
Sir Koocoo get on a roaring bun.
His tool is strengthened, his practise done.
.3.
Nancy Hawk swept wide the seas—
There are no drawers beneath the skirt—
Her dress not nearly covered her knees—
Down by the bed the wenches flirt.
She sailed where the wide Atlantic slants
And the men who saw her lost their pants.
Unt l one way with a wiggling hip,
She stopped to hi-jack a bootleg ship.
She bade it halt—the air turned bule
As oaths and curses and beer kegs flew,
And boarders swarmed upon her crew.
They did as noble as they were able
But the boarders drank them under the table.