*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79965 ***

BLUE LAW BALLADS

Blue Law Ballads

A
PURGE FOR PURITANS

BY

THE SINNERS
AUTHORS OF
JAZZ BIBLE LYRICS

THE SINNERS CLUB
CINCINNATI
1922

Copyright 1922

By WM. C. SMITH

12

TABLE OF CONTENTS

15

BLUE LAW BALLADS

PREFACE FOR PURITANS

Now would ye know what sinners think
Of cursed customs puritanic,
Our little book will tell—’tis quite
(Within the law of course) satanic.
Although we know that all thy race
Despises verse and is most thrifty,
Here’s chance to savor fruits unknown—
The cost is but a dollar fifty.
Soft nymphs, red wine, we’ll offer thee,
Thy hidden wishes freed by Bacchus,
While we dance to pipes of Pan
Join us, then can none attack us.
The truth to tell, we love thee not,
Confess too, of a surety,
Our pagan pleasures we prefer,
To sober lives—or purity.
But charity within our souls
Still lives, and so we hope perchance,
Our muse may melt in thee the ice
Of virtue—child of ignorance.
So buy our book and we’ll essay
To cure thy musty soul’s malaria,
A modern miracle attempt,
Thy close cramped minds t’increase in area.
16
’Tis true, one pleasure have ye now—
Doth not thy breed infest the nation?
Alas! ye use the gods’ great gift
For purposes of procreation.
One joy? Nay thy movies we forgot—
In art ye never have reached higher,
While by slap stick out of sobstuff
Thy priests proclaim a new Messiah.
Up from the muck ye live in
To pagan joys—sins esoteric—
We’ll try to lift thy sodden souls—
Mayhap ’twill take a derrick.
Learn ye from us—if happy chance
Thy youth endow with patrimony,
No need to lose all joy in life,
Though bound in holy matrimony.
If ye would live, come and for once
Forget the sanctity of marriage,
Come, lie awhile with pagan nymphs—
We hope ’twill not produce miscarriage.
We’ve done our part, each christian virtue
Is here exposed by cunning hand.
But still we pray, may Gods immortal
Give thee sense to understand.

17

TRANSVALUATION

We call unto your slender sin
To fatten on our godlike laughter,
That every one of Satan’s kin
May love and honor us hereafter.
You’ll find that if you fatten sin,
Unmindful of the mumbling pastor,
Your clumsy conscience will grow thin
And graceful as a dancing master.
And you will boldly dare to cling
With joy to every new temptation
And every fall from grace will bring
Triumphant paeans of elation.
From moral nebulae will spring
New stars for your enlightened vision;
Upon the virtuous, you will fling
The holy water of derision.

18

THE PIRATE CRAFT OF POESY

The pirate craft of poesy
Is launched upon the main,
The gay black skull and crossbones flag
Is streaming from the head,
Our merry seamen whet their knives
And chant a wild refrain,
The blue-green waves invite us on
To our career of Red.
We ride along the foam to sink
The galleys of despair,
The galleons of hypocrisy,
The shallops of deceit;
The big brass guns smile joyously,
All in the sun-lit air—
Ere night the Puritan shall be
Theirs and the fishes meat.
Our trusty thirsty cutlasses
Imbibe the bigot’s blood;
We force the surly Puritan
To walk our merry plank;
We view him dropping to defile
The angry azure flood;
We watch the happy hungry shark
Devour his carcass rank.
19
The castles of Theology
Collapse beneath our guns,
The painted tents of faith dissolve
In purifying flame.
Ho! By sweet Saint Beelzebub,
Ten thousand bloody suns
Shall rise and set ere we forsake
The pirate’s crimson game.

20

AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS

Where are the lovely maids for whom
The Romans waxed uproarious,
Faustina’s grace and Flora’s bloom
And Agrippina glorious?
Where is the Golden Age that knew
No preachings sanctimonious—
That found its Art and Ethics too,
In Ovid and Petronius?
Priapus smiled, when Roman knights
Doffed armour and regalia,
While damsels lured to wild delights
In time of Saturnalia.
Then damsels wandered grot and grove
With no one to prohibit ’em;
And Roman lads could gayly rove
Pursuing nymphs ad libitum.
With mead and maid and melody,
Their fun was fast and furious.
They thought a moral pedigree
Both stupid and injurious.
They differed as to social creed,
Their politics were various;
But all agreed in showing speed—
Brave Sulla or bold Marius.
21
O Roman days and Roman ways,
Patrician and imperious,
When Cleopatra doffed her stays
And Tony grew delirious.
You come to us no more I fear,
Today ’tis quite precarious
For man and maid to draw too near
Unlawfully gregarious!

22

MADAME THEOLOGY,
OR,
THE HARLOT GODDESS

Her scarlet inves’ture is tattered,
The rumps of religion protrude,
The crown of her piety’s battered,
Her countenance is skewed
In a smile that is terrible, but toothless,
For the red fangs of Faith are decayed,
And she that was reckless and ruthless
Stands abashed and afraid
Of the tempests that thunder and thicken
And threaten to topple her fane,
Where the souls of her votaries sicken
To death, and are slain.
She dreams of the days of her glory,
When Monarchs and men were as mud
To mould, and her garments were gory
With Infidels’ blood.
She dreams of the gallows she gladdened
With Inquisitorial fruit,
Of the wretches she saddened and maddened
With tortures acute.
She yearns with insatiable yearning
For the breath of an auto-da-fe,
The fragrance of heretics burning
Were priceless today.
23
Of old, when her minions were masters,
Her blood-lust waxed vast but was fed.
Today they are sniveling pastors,
Malign but half dead.
She sighs for her mediaeval brothers,
Her Sprengers in cassocks and copes,
Her Calvins, her Mathers and others,
Her pimps and her popes.
But her Sprengers and Calvins are hidden
In far off Tartarean flame,
And the souls of their victims are bidden
To the banquet of fame.
Her devotees still are unnumbered
With voices that raucously break
In vain on a world that has slumbered,
But now is awake.
The pimps of the pulpit are powerless
To people the Courtesan’s den.
Her altars are arid and flowerless,
Forgotten of men.
And she that was hailed as a Goddess
Is now but a harlot antique;
She would punish her foes, but her rod is
A jest that is weak.
So vanish, myth, monster and demon,
Like foam on the crest of the wave,
And the couch of the worn-out leman
Is turned to a grave.

24

A COUNTRY SABBATH

Above the throng a gaunt black figure drones
The dreary version of an old wives tale.
Along the somber aisles the singers wail
The while a tortured organ snarls and moans.
Within the neighboring churchyard, old dead bones
Thrill and are crucified anew and quail.
Souls long inured to Hell awake and rail
A curse upon the damned lugubrious tones.
Far from the dismal pile the pagan sun
Smiles on a little Heretic at play.
The white lambs gambol and the young colts run
Across the green and bloomy meads of May,
The meadow lark exults, and there are none
To blacken Mother Nature’s festal day.

25

TO SAINT RABELAIS

Saint Rabelais, look not with scorn
Upon our modest offerings—
The centuries since thou wert born
Saw wit descend on languid wings.
Today prudes prune the picturesque
And fools denaturize burlesque.
The prurient Puritan exclaims
In horror at Boccaccio.
His dull and sodden pen defames
The artistry of Angelo.
In story or in stone, the nude
Doth shock his moral pulchritude.
The sculptured nude, he mutilates
Or dresses in a plaster veil,
A merry Booke, he expurgates—
Its readers he would put in jail.
He libels all—the churlish cuss—
Sweet Saint, it was not always thus.
When old Sir Walter Raleigh read
His bawdy rhymes to good Queen Bess,
She used to toss her royal head,
Reward him with a loud caress,
And clap her little hands in glee
At each sweet fond indecency.
26
And Thou, Saint Rabelais, did’st tell
Tales of a rich and purple hue,
Wherefore, the French king loved thee well,
And all the dames and damsels too.
They laughed and gave when Thou did’st cease
Rich largesses of wine and geese.
And once good Saint Boccaccio
With ladies of a high degree,
And lords of rich and splendid show
Discoursed in mirth and jollity
Of how sweet lovers sinned and died,
And everyone was satisfied.
In Bagdad town toward Araby
Whilom there dwelt a jolly jade,
Could tell a tale right merrily,
She was yclept Scheherazade.
She gave the Sultan tale on tale—
Old Haroun was a lucky male!
When Magda, Queen of Sheba, came
To be King Solly’s paramour,
The songs she sang to fan his flame
Were piquant but not always pure.
To raise his spirit, she would sing
The song of songs before the King.
And I could tell yet many a tale
Or tickling legend like to these,
Of old invented to regale
With soft erotic fantasies.
But thought of blisses banned is cruel
Thou saintly sire of Pantagruel.
27
So dost Thou see Saint Rabelais
The old sweet saints of pleasure wrote
As art might prompt. They could be gay,
But we must stifle in our throat
The softest subtlest whispering
Of any sweet improper thing.
Then peerless pere look not askance
Upon our far too modest lines.
Believe, if we but had a chance
We’d send a shiver down the spines
Of all the proper folks that flee
From truth as mere vulgarity.

28

HYMN OF THE HIGHER PURITY

Methinks the world doth die of decency,
See yonder phare where Passion’s paling fires
Burn low, and failing to illume the sea
Of life, imperil all our sweet desires
That lightly sailing from love-haunted strand,
Clad with the golden splendours of the morn,
Bear to us Aphrodite’s fair command,
The gracious message of the seafoam-born.
The frost of too much virtue chills our day,
Blasphemers of the creed of Bliss abound;
Our maids turned Puritans too sad to play
No longer dance unto the cymbal’s sound.
Of men forgotten is the Paphian boy;
The fool sees Eros only to deride;
Beneath a crown of thorns see tortured Joy
By puritanic dullness crucified.
Still pagan-like I seek the sun-kissed heights,
Clothed in the raiment of an amorous mood,
With one alone to share in Love’s delights,
Making a Paradise of Solitude.
I soar aloft upon eternal wings,
The flame-enameled wings of Love and Lust.
I drink the Wine of Life; my spirit sings
Above their Puritanic souls of dust.

29

MY LADY NICOTINE

Behold the objects of my worship fair,
Meerschaum, Nargileh, Hookah, Calumet;
Even the simple Cob and Clay are there
Cigar and Stogie, Cheroot, Cigarette;
I love them all, for they have always been
My faithful helpers toward a heart serene.
If smoking’s sin, then let me ever sin;
My only Love is Lady Nicotine.
I sit mid fragrant Latakia fume
Or softly mantling azure of Perique;
Caressing cloud hands dissipate my gloom
And lend the solace that I vainly seek
In sparkling eyes, or in the languorous smile
Wreathing the lips of some coquettish queen;
No fickle beauty shall my heart beguile,
My only Love is Lady Nicotine.
And when at night I yield me to the spell,
The subtle sorcery of the cigarette,
Caressing conscience tells me I do well
To sit and smoke while others vainly fret.
My pipes like to those other Pipes of Pan
That woke the Grecian woods to echoes keen,
Have magic in them for the soul of man
My only Love is Lady Nicotine.

30

INVOCATION
The Sinners Seek Rabelais and Find a Saint

RABELAIS!...What, dost thou sleep?
The Sinners call. Awake, thou Pagan Spirit. Wake!
Arouse thy slumb’ring soul from dreams by Eros sired,
By Freudian school in this New Age interpreted.
Gird up thy loins, protect us, remnant of that world
Thou knewest and loved so well, and, laughter-loving, drew
With Jovian Jest and Gaiety Gargantuan,
In vivid form and color relished by the Gods.
RABELAIS!...How doth the chill
Of doubt resolve itself into cold certainty!
Crucified! Forever stilled thy mighty laughter.
But hold! In rigid death the stiffening hand still clasps
A scroll new writ. Alas! faint dying strokes of pen
Once judged immortal by thy kind, declare the world
Reviles, rejects thee, and, perversely christian, spurns
Thy pagan goose-neck for an antiseptic roll.
Thou art not dead! Immortal thou in Sinners’ hearts,
Great singer of the days and nights now near forgot,
When man and woman loved to live and lived to love,
Ere Puritans within themselves and all about,
Each virile impulse did repress that led to joy,
And Phallus prudishly exchange for Fallacy.
Forever cursed that Race whose only glory is
In martyring Thee, it made for us a Patron Saint.

31

THE HYPOCRITE

What is the difference ’twixt man and beast?
For ages prigs have sought a safe criterion,
And they have furnished clever jests, at least,
For every man of Wisdom to make merry on.
They found the test in language, art, religions,
Or biped plumelessness—joint mark of mankind and plucked pigeons.
Yet the interpretation’s close at hand,
Writ large upon the face of civilization.
Behold the Hypocrite in every land
Elaborating higher Snivelization.
The coveted criterion is Hypocrisy
Perfected in the workshop of Theocracy.
Man laughs, but the hyena and the loon
Laugh likewise; he weeps with the crocodile;
He speaks, but monkeys chatter to the moon;
He toils, but so does the dung-beetle vile.
Most human qualities in brutes are known,
Hypocrisy was given to godlike man alone.
Though language, laws and codes of morals change,
And all the monuments of Man decay;
Though names of ancient conquerors grow strange;
Hypocrisy, today and yesterday
Remains the same. Indeed it never varies,
Whether in Tyre, New York, Rome, Babel or Benares.
32
Thanks to Hypocrisy, the arts of fraud
Developed to the fullness of Perfection;
Some priestly hypocrite devised a god,
Fresh gods evolved by natural selection;
With gods, arose the World’s religious slavery,
First triumph of the hyprocrite’s unceasing age-long knavery.
Hypocrisy attained its highest level
In the Dark Ages. As old monks relate,
Men used to break their contracts with the devil,
Appealing to a saintly advocate;
Then they would cheat the saint. So man may learn
To cozen God and Satan, turn by turn.
The ancient hypocrites at least were bold,
Original crooks commanding admiration.
The lying stories of the Gods they told,
Were masterpieces of prevarication.
They were inventive criminals, grandly lecherous,
Contemporary hypocrites are merely dull and treacherous.
The modern hypocrite of viler breed,
Too weak to imitate his predecessors,
Stands pat upon some obsolescent creed,
Intent on crucifying all transgressors.
The thought of open vice disturbs him violently,
For he believes in sinning, secretly and silently.
He founds societies for the suppression
Of vice; and keeps a dozen mistresses.
He owns (if you could get a straight confession)
A score of bawdy houses, more or less.
The revenues increase his bank-roll’s figures,
The surplus goes to missions, christianizing heathen niggers.
33
On Sabbath day he edifies society
By strict attendance at the tabernacle;
From Monday on, he pigeon-holes his piety
And plans a coup on coal, corn, or treacle;
Reflecting “I may safely rob the people,
If I devote a tithe to parson, or church-steeple.”
He speaks with horror of a gambler’s den,
At home he is a maniac on poker;
His daughters and his wife are whist-fiends; ten
To one, his son’s a budding Wall-Street broker.
Perhaps he owns a string of blooded horses,
And fires his clerks for frequenting the courses.
He is the man who votes for Prohibition,
And fills his cellars with the choicest wines.
He is the man who finds a saintly mission
In branding infidels as libertines.
He poses as physician of Society
And mixes poison with his pills of piety.
Sometimes he is a temperance reformer,
Who writes his dry orations while he’s drunk.
Sometimes an evangelical barnstormer
Inoculating folks with pious bunk,
Thundering threats of Hell-fire, hymning airily,
Saving old souls, and making new souls merrily.
He is the legendary model man,
The wight that our Chautauqua lecturers tell about.
You see him in the average Puritan
Who always finds there’s something to raise Hell about.
In short, to close a catalogue unpleasant,
The glorious Hypocrite is ever omnipresent.

34

THE WARTS OF FAITH

I touch the toad, Theology,
And wondrous warts of faith appear.
Wise men who see, swiftly flee,
Evangelists say “God draws near”.
God plants no warts upon the brow,
God wants no warts upon the brain,
And God must chuckle to see how
His self-styled followers grow inane.
He strews not warts upon the skin,
He loves not warts within the mind.
He laughs at man, He laughs at sin,
And makes His so-called prophets blind.

35

TRIOLETS DIABOLIQUES

What is the stuff that lives are made of?
Mortar of vice and bricks of sin.
Paint is the virtue we make parade of.
What is the stuff that lives are made of?
Satan’s the God we get our aid of,
Satan and all of his devilish kin.
What is the stuff that lives are made of?
Mortar of vice and bricks of sin.
What is the stuff that souls are built of?
Aether of longing and atoms of lust.
Sex is the song we heed the lilt of.
What is the stuff that souls are built of?
Where is the crime we feel the guilt of?
In clouds of creed and religion’s dust.
What is the stuff that souls are built of?
Aether of longing and atoms of lust.

36

INVENTORS OF HELL

Far back on a neolithic day,
An idiot worked in a rock-hewn cell.
He daubed on the wall with crimson clay
A devil’s image, and dreamed of hell.
When Brahm and Siva and Vishnu bright
Ruled on this earth as old tales tell,
When maids of dawn were a world’s delight,
A puritan crook invented hell.
Nirvana next was the poets dream,
As Buddha the master taught so well.
A world of joy and bliss did seem
A crime to the crook who invented hell.
Over the Nile, ten thousand years
Isis and Ra wove a magic spell,
Till monkish malice and martyrs’ tears
Banished the gods and established hell.
At Babylon great there grew apace,
Three gods hight Anu, Ea and Bel,
Gods of a great and ancient race—
Again a puritan gave them hell.
In Greece, Apollo, Athena, Zeus,
Vanished with Pan and Olympus fell
When the puritan came to introduce
The gloom of the cross and the fear of hell.
Rome was a mighty power of old,
Till a royal renegade came to sell
Pagans’ birthright for Christian gold,
A blood soaked cross and the right to hell.
37
In the Persian land were gods but two,
One of them tottered and slipped and fell.
The puritan’s unholy crew
Received the god in their new-made hell.
In China a peaceful people thrived,
Building pagodas where gods might dwell,
Till a zealous missionary arrived
With the dreadful news of a Chinko hell.
Beneath Old Glory we once were free,
Now the nut of life is a hollow shell,
Since the puritan stole our liberty
In trying to turn things into hell.
When the last of the puritans expires,
When the creeds collapse and the wise rebel
And the world becomes unsafe for liars,
We wonder who’s going to keep up hell?

38

THE MONKEY’S REPUDIATION OF MAN

A few belated pietists
Still groping in mediaeval mists
Engage in a perennial war,
Against the demon Darwinists.
“Man’s dignity,” the pious say,
“Requires that out of good red clay
God made a doll in festive mood
Six thousand years ago today.”
They brook at nothing to escape
Thought of relation to an ape.
Their wild apologies would make
Munchausen or a Jesuit gape.
Meanwhile some Profs arranged a plan
To see if Apes acknowledged man.
They asked ten million apes until
An old gray haired baboon began:
“No decent monkey would admit
That mankind ever sprang from it,
Especially when he perceives
A brother preaching Holy Writ.
The fear of sex, the morals wan,
The multitudinous wars of man,
His wild grotesque religious farce
Are alien to the monkey clan.
No Puritans or Pharisees
Bring intellectual disease
And bitter joylessness among
The happy dwellers in the trees.
39
With us there are no purse-proud snobs,
No politicians seeking jobs,
No overgoverned commonwealths,
No blatant Bolshevistic mobs.”
He ceased and we must all agree
With his indignant view, if he
See mankind in those who deny
Today their Simian ancestry.
Yet is it easier to trace
Such mystics to some other race,
Hyena, jackal, goat or ass—
The record’s written in the face.

40

PURITAN AND POISON VINE

Puritan and Poison Vine—
How the two words intertwine
And most lovingly combine!
Poison vines have lurid leaves—
And the Puritan conceives
Lurid thoughts of hate and grieves
At the sight of others’ pleasure.
So he spends his time of leisure
Planning some repressive measure.
Poisoned leaves and venomed stings
And all vile and creeping things
Aid in secret lobbyings.
Brutes fight with honest teeth and claws;
But Puritans prepare Blue Laws,
And poison vines smile mute applause.
They know resistance is in vain,
For poison leaf and poison brain
Prevail and happiness lies slain.
While the poison vine defaces
Some of Nature’s loveliest places;
Puritans pollute the Graces.
Poison vines may creep and crawl
In sheltered wood, on ruined wall
Or some deserted ancient hall.
41
Puritans creep in galleries
Of Art; wherever Beauty lies
And inspiration from the skies.
They come with souls untutored, rude,
In search of moral turpitude
And dream they find it in the nude.
They creep along the printed page
Of some dull magazine and wage
Their war on sin with pious rage.
What they say, nobody heeds;
They may write but no one reads
Rubbish, based on futile creeds.
Buddha on his upward way
Was all things in turn, men say,
Fungus, coral, willow-spray,
Bird, stag, elephant and hare
Mendicant and millionaire,
Everything and everywhere.
Thus all spirits that progress,
Wear an ever changing dress
On their way to Blessedness.
But the Puritan may say,
“Yesterday and still today,
Poison vine I am, and stay.
Constant in my transmigrations,
Poison vines were my relations
Through a million generations.
I am poison from the womb
In all forms that I assume—
Even to the crack of Doom.”

42

WINE

The soul of man was born of fire
Then crown the cup with living flame
The heart of song and Love’s desire
The soul of war, the spur to fame.
The sunny spirit of the vine
Benignant wonder-working wine.
Away with that damned element
Insipid water undesigned
For man; but to sea-monsters lent
And to the whole reptilian kind.
Drink! and ascend to better things
On Wine’s red laughter laden wings.
O soothing anodyne of strife
Thou drivest every grief afar.
How weak and watery is life
How unillumed by sun or star
When Thou, where none save thee may shine
Bestowest not thy gift divine.
Faith, Hope and Love’s enchanting glow
And all the splendours of the heart
Had long been drowned in watery woe
And life had lost its better part,
Had’st thou not been in time of need
Care’s councillor and Valor’s steed.
Then thrice resound the song of praise
And pour the crimson that regales.
Wine’s the refreshing wind that plays
About life’s bark and fills her sails.
Drink! Let this wonder-working wine
Our cheeks and souls incarnadine.

43

BATS AND EVANGELISTS

Evangelists hang up-side down
Bat-like above the world and frown.
Who can believe what they’ve asserted?
We know their vision is perverted.
They dream by night of dead men’s graves;
Their churches are but bat-house caves,
Outside they cannot see for blinking,
What is the value of their thinking?
I know that bats may be a curse,
Evangelists are something worse.
Poor brutes, they only bring us vermin—
Evangelists will bring a sermon.

44

MORALITY

Morality is but a museum
Where fossil forms of ancient customs come
To rest a while, and raise perhaps the question—
Will mankind die from moral indigestion?
Old customs are ye, that we hunt no more,
Yet have we left descendants by the score;
Confess it now ye were but stupid species
Yet harmless quite; your progeny is vicious.
The old taboos our minds once fed upon
In neolithic caverns now are gone;
But new taboos of most unsavory relish
Cooked up by modern Puritans are hellish.
At modern moral broth we stand aghast;
The ancient kitchen middens of the past
Seem to a poor starved cultured soul symbolic
Of moral freedom; intellectual frolic!

45

SONS OF THE CUP

Tipsy old topers,
Jolly old dopers,
Blessed and bibulous sons of the cup,
Sit up and listen,
Aid me to christen,
The loveliest lyric since Hec was a pup.
Cock-tails and high-balls
Were Beauty’s first rivals
Ever since Noah came out of his ship.
Nothing’s so handy
As soda and brandy
To drive us along at a merry old clip.
When Life’s confusing,
And we are losing
Out in the struggle for honors and rep,
Burgundy, Sherry
Help us grow merry,
Fill us with ginger and load us with pep.
Oft when Ambition
Fails of its mission
And we’re so weary, we don’t care a rap,
Wine, Beer and Whiskey
Make us feel frisky
Saturate all of our being with Snap.
46
When recollection
And pure reflection
Cease and the wheels of philosophy stop,
Always deep drinking
Strengthens our thinking,
Sows fields of Wisdom and harvests a crop.
If there’s a fellow
Who doesn’t grow mellow
On wine that enlightens and amber that cheers;
Think what he’s missing
Better than kissing
Is cooing with cognac and billing with beers!

47

SUPPRESSED DESIRES

Old hens of piety that hatch
The eggs of superstition
In many a churchly nest
And cackle to the rest—
Old cocks of piety that crow
About a heavenly mission—
Are your desires suppressed?
Old ganders of mediaeval days
That quacked the doom of witches
And saw the work was blest
And God’s hand in the pest—
Old geese of sacred bigotry,
Beldames and holy bitches—
Were your desires suppressed?
Old ravens puritanical;
Your bills are full of blue laws
The carrion you love best,
And your eternal quest—
Old ravens kindly tell us,
When you lobby for your new laws
Are your desires suppressed?

48

SINNERS AND SAINTS

From the hollows to the heights of Life,
It’s not so very far;
There’s not a deal of difference
’Twixt a sinner and a saint;
For sin, it often seems to me
Is being what you are,
And saintliness I sometimes think
Is seeming what you aint.
For sin and saintliness you see,
They both depend on love,
And love is an experiment
That always hangs on Fate;
And when it works all right you get
A box-seat up above.
If it does not the chances are
They’ll stop you at the gate.
To find out what you love the most,
You’ve got to love a lot,
Kisses, cards and chorus girls,
Ponies and red wine.
And after while perhaps you find
You do not care a jot
For any of these items
As you swing along the line.
You may win a lot of laurels;
You may pluck the ruddy rose
Of pleasure from the thorny bush
Of love; ’tis all the same.
You may riot; you may revel;
In all that Life bestows
But after all you’ve just a
Gambler’s chance to beat the game.
49
If everything runs smoothly;
If you always get the break,
There’s sure to be somebody
Who will hail you as a saint.
But if affairs go badly,
What a difference does it make—
In Life’s wild rough and tumble
You’re a sinner if you faint.
It hardly matters what you do,
Just so you do it well
And get the mob to say so,
It’ll whitewash all your sin.
But if you fail, remember Bo,
There’s going to be Hell;
The gang of saints and saintesses
Will never let you in.

50

THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

A copy of Kant and a can of beer,
With a volume of snappy stories near—
Kant makes me study;
Beer keeps me ruddy;
That’s how I win my Wisdom dear.
When old Kant gets a bit too tough,
I love to turn to something rough.
Snappy stories,
Balzac’s glories,
And a sip of suds are the proper stuff.
’Tis then I take old Kant by the scruff;
For I’ve got the pep to treat him rough.
Oh, but I’m happy,
Snappy, scrappy,
And I never know when I’ve got enough.

51

IN PRAISE OF PROFANITY

Profanity’s a noble art
With which we should be loath to part.
Of all the arts that man doth prize,
By God! None hath more exercise.
No honest workingman would wail
If he should smash his fingernail,
But he’d alleviate his pain
With words emphatic and profane.
The teamster guides his stubborn team
With oaths of potency supreme.
He seeks to drive a mule in vain
Who doesn’t dare to be profane.
The hunter when he misses fire
In the magnificence of ire,
Swears till the very woodland sings
With his volcanic sputterings.
The man whose motor car breaks down
On muddy highways far from town
Gets out and under for repairs,
And as he crawls about, he swears.
The clubman when he goes home drunk
And strives to stagger to his bunk,
But tumbles down a flight of stairs
He swears and swears and swears and swears!
The lonely Puritan who prays
On Sunday and six other days,
Has lots of time between his prayers,
And as a mild amusement, swears.
52
When Sunday offerings are slim
The congregation sings a hymn;
The parson utters unctuous prayers,
But in his heart he softly swears.
Our learned ethnologists observe
That people swear with wit and verve
In periods when piety
Quite saturates Society.
Each one doth curse in his own way,
The sportsman’s oaths are swift and gay,
The scholar swears with erudition,
The steamboat-captain with decision.
Since everybody swears in season,
And no one swears without a reason,
There must be something that’s perverse
In anyone who doesn’t curse.
Enough! Profanity’s indeed
A by-law in a wise man’s creed.
Then brethren curse while yet ye may.
Swear well! and Benedicite.

53

THE MISSIONARY

There cometh, the bold Missionary
The savage receiveth him well
And waxeth vivacious and merry
As travelers tell.
The missionary he greeteth
With sound as of psalms.
The savage that peacefully eateth
Beneath the tall palms.
The savage is Epicurean
He loveth long pig.
He roasteth the fat European
And danceth a jig.
Of his skull he maketh a rattle,
Of his long bones he fashioneth flutes
His hair lendeth bowstrings for battle
His hide yieldeth boots.
The ponderous book that he beareth
Becometh a fetish or charm.
That the savage contentedly weareth
To keep him from harm.
The crown of his virtue adorneth
And graceth all men.
And the glorious cannibal mourneth
That he come not again.
54
Methinks he hath failed of his mission
To preach evangelical things
He becometh nutrition
For cannibal kings.
Fair ladye ask not if he’s useful,
God wot, and may tell
The cannibal calleth him juiceful
He feedeth him well!

55

WHAT ELSE?

When Grecian bards caressed their lyres,
We know what else the Greeks caressed.
For there were no suppressed desires,
When Grecian bards caressed their lyres,
And sudden swift erotic fires
Were kindled in the human breast.
When Grecian bards caressed their lyres,
We know what else the Greeks caressed.

56

REINCARNATION

Reincarnation is a Truth
As sages are aware.
But if you doubt of it, forsooth,
The proof is everywhere.
Black beetles turn to preachers dark,
And snakes to Volstead sleuths,
The rat becomes a copper’s nark,
Peacocks breed gilded youths.
The cackling hen becomes a nun,
The cock a portly prior;
The butcher-bird returns a Hun,
The Cuckoo as a liar.
The slippery, slimy centipede
Comes back a missionary,
Who creeps about true to his breed
And poisons the unwary.
The souls of dead opossums dream
And doze in idle monks,
And reformers modern seem
Reincarnated skunks.
The dullness of the ostrich burns
In Christian Scientists.
The crazy circus clown returns
In our Evangelists.
57
From vermin, such as newts and toads
And others of that clan,
We get by many devious roads
The lowly Puritan.
The vile hyena reappears
A smirking hypocrite
Who always haunts the Church and cheers
His soul with holy writ.
Choir singers once were alley cats
Who practiced caterwauling,
And then came back to dwell in flats
And live on Sunday bawling.
The Gods reserve a fate sublime
For patient plodding mules—
They will reincarnate in time
And teach in Sunday schools.
By nature’s marvellous design
The fierce and filthy vulture
Returns a learned church divine
Dispensing Christian culture.
The average lawyer is an ass,
Or else a shark transmuted;
That some teetotalers were black bass
Is something undisputed.
58
The hog that to the shambles goes
Departs without a fear—
When he returns to earth, he knows,
He’ll be a profiteer.
The grave professor was an owl
Who hooted to the Grecians,
And yonder mangy hounds that howl
May yet be politicians.
The noisy knavish demagogs,
Who lead our parties for us,
Were once but big inflated frogs
In a primeval morass.
The she-philosopher descends
From some repressed desire,
And labors hard to make amends
For subtly smouldering fire.
We see the animals today
In every human station—
What better evidence, I pray,
To prove Reincarnation?

59

ROSA MYSTICA

’Tis sweet to be sportive in May-time,
A furious festive delight;
Joy that is abortive in daytime
May admirably prosper at night.
Let us pass from the mourning of Sainthood
To the roseate twilight of Sin.
Let our song be a scorning of Sainthood,
With Gargantuan grin.
Fair maid, you are modest and spotless
As a flower in the heart of a wood.
Fair maiden, but isn’t it thoughtless
To be so unutterably good?
Hearken not to the pious reformer
Who complains that your garments are rare.
If you did you would doubtless be warmer—
But insipid as prayer.
Dear youth, the wild women won’t hurt you;
You’ll find an exchange will be nice
Of the “lilies and languors of virtue”
For the roses and raptures of vice.
The pearl of your Passion is priceless,
Cast it not before virtuous swine.
Life never was meant to be spiceless—
Be drunk and divine!
60
Far better be guilty and gladsome,
Than a saint who is sinless and sad—
A jolly old Rounder has had some
Delights that you never have had.
So hark to the wisdom of poets,
And gather the rose while you may.
A little experiment will show it’s
A comfortable way!
Our Life’s but a glorious gaming—
Youth’s unrepressible fling.
Where the torches of pleasure are flaming,
Every man is a God or a King.
We know we are good when we revel,
As all Dionysians agree;
Scale the heavens beyond God or Devil,
Supernally free.

61

THE ATAVISTIC CO-ED

Kiddo I have got a hunch,
High-brow Love is too darned tame;
Hasn’t got a bit of punch,
Really isn’t worth the game.
I prefer the knockdown dope
Of the Cave-man. Are you hep?
Well you’ll get there soon I hope;
Get some Pep Kid, get some Pep.
I’m no lily proud and pale,
Clad in distant dignity;
I’m a wild-rose, and the gale—
Say, it’s just the thing for me.
Do not preach of prudence pray,
Maxims old as Ptah-Hotep;
Let’s forget ’em all today;
Get some Pep Kid, get some Pep.
Cut the sighs and sweet remarks;
Can the curt and timid kiss,
Kiss me till I see the sparks
Of a superhuman bliss;
If you crush me in your arms,
It is not too bold a step;
Rough-stuff wins Boy; Rough-stuff charms;
Get some Pep Kid, get some Pep.
I am tired of high-brow Love;
Lame is Love that lurks in Frats;
Hand me out some cave-man stuff;
Squeeze me if you smash my slats.
Go the limit; I don’t care
Even if it wrecks my Rep;
Everything in Love is fair,
Get some Pep Kid, get some Pep.

62

THE POLITICIAN

He sits in the Halls of the Nation,
His ear ever close to the ground,
Willing to sell all Creation,
Hoping the Graft will go round.
Slave of his Puritan masters,
Quick to do their behest,
The source of all our disasters,
This parasitical pest.
Like a beggar he sings in the streets,
Seeming all things to all men,
Rounding up all the dead beats,
But to betray them again.
Whipped into line by his masters,
He emerges from under the scum
Of a drunken committee of pastors
With a law prohibiting rum.
To innocent pleasures a traitor,
He answers the Ministers’ call
With a law to suppress the theatre
And a bill against Sunday baseball.
For the prurient Puritan panders,
Like a harlot solicits the vote
Of the honest Pagan he slanders
In the depths of his treacherous throat.
Urging his love for the masses,
The political Jekyll-and-Hyde
Preaches of Freedom and passes
Hateful Blue-laws on the side.
63
By training a sneaking lick-spittle,
By nature a gluttonous pig,
His excuse for a soul is as little
As his ambition is big.
Dealings eternally double
Polish the mind of the crook;
His honor’s as frail as a bubble,
His voice is a babbling brook.
Of rhetoric empty and aimless,
Of words asinine and inept,
A deluge of promises shameless
That never were meant to be kept.
His manners are cautious and catlike;
His notion of Bliss is a bribe;
His morals are rotten and ratlike,
As befits an omnivorous tribe.
He sits in the Halls of the Nation,
Punch and Judy in one;
The laughing stock of Creation,
But there’s nothing new under the sun.
For his likeness was known in Babel,
In Nineveh, Athens and Rome.
His parasitism is stable,
Where rascality reigns, he’s at home.

64

HOTEL ORGY

The bold boot-leggers fetch the hootch,
We wait no longer wearily;
Pianos bang a hootchy-cootch,
And maids unlimber cheerily.
The boys are bribed to stand on guard,
The alcohol flows merrily,
And here and there a tipsy bard
Chants drunken ditties airily.
The red lights totter and grow dim;
The saxophone sings curiously—
As cheek to cheek and limb to limb,
A tipsy tribe jazz furiously.
Above the slowly wakening mart
The pale stars flicker fretfully;
As we get ready to depart
From girls and booze regretfully.
Today the papers hint I hear
That we behaved most frightfully,
But what the Hell have we to fear
Though Puritans talk spitefully?

65

THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE

Psalm-singing hypocrites, we know
Your patron saint is Ananias;
As all your actions plainly show,
Your worship’s but a jest to guy us.
You are admired, for morons fight
To range themselves beneath your banners.
The clergy and the crooks unite
In praise of your sleek soapy manners.
And you are well beloved, they say,
By each dishonest politician,
And all ambitious grafters pray
That you may prosper in your mission.
The anarchist is fond of you;
You found a people law-abiding;
He sees with joy, that when you’re through,
You’ll leave a nation law-deriding.
With lawyers aid all decent rules
Are by you looked on with defiance;
Replaced by pap from Sunday schools,
A damnable corrupt alliance.
How can the bold bootlegger thrive
Without your aid and consolation—
How can the crooked sleuth survive
Without your rotten legislation?
66
A wonderful machine you’ve built,
Bootleggers, thieves, crooks, smug preachers;
A vicious circle, rank with guilt—
’Tis quite an honor to its teachers.
A great bootlegging army to
Your graft chest stolen funds contributes;
The preacher and his holy crew
Wax fat and pious on their tributes.
A maker of bum rabbit food,
Of coffee and drink substitutes,
Beholds your work and calls it good—
To swell your chest he’d sell his boots.
The politician at the door
Of legislative halls does dwell;
His hooks extended—yells for more
To buy the stuff bootleggers sell.
The poor bootlegger then in turn
From politician buys protection;
This crooked wight has cash to burn
To aid him in his next election.
And so the vicious circle spreads,
The graft is passed from hand to hand;
Oh! for the power to bump the heads
Of fools who cannot understand.

67

DESCENT OF MAN

Yesterday—
The monkeys held a prayer meeting
In Borneo or Timbuctoo,
And every monkey had a
Palm-leaf hymn book too.
With cheeks inflated
A big blue-faced baboon
Gyrated
And prated,
And swinging in the bamboo tops,
Arboreal choirs would trill a
Simian hymn
Unto the bright Chimpanzee Cherubim,
And thus they celebrated
With mighty monkey psalms
The great divine Gorilla.
And yesterday—
The savage medicine man
Frothed, foamed, danced,
Writhed and ran
About,
And bit his devotees,
Or beat them with a knout
Into a bloody rout.
His victims bore the knout or rod
(Unless they died)
And cried,
“No doubt
The man is surely full of God.”
68
Monkey or Medicine man—
He practiced paroxysms
And exorcisms
And all the apish mummery
Of baptisms
Like any Saint,
And he was quick to scent
A demon’s taint
And paint
A sick man’s hide
With symbols magical;
With sacred bones
And prayer quaint
He cured sometimes—but usually—
The terminus was tragical.
Today—
The man of atavistic twist,
Who would have been a monkey
Or a medicine man,
Is an Evangelist
With skill
To offer vile religious
Vaudeville
And still
More horrible theological burlesque.
The mindless mob admires
His monkey gyres,
Applauding with good will
His writhings and his words grotesque,
Which proves that man,
However high
His place on Evolution’s hill,
Must live and die
A monkey still!

69

MANDARIN INN

Dainty young damsels delighting in sin
Lightly came tripping to Mandarin Inn,
Weaponed with smiles, and vivaciously vamping
Tender young men who were tired of their tin.
Theirs was the sorcery of languorous looks,
Airs of enchantment unborrowed from books,
But wrought in the midst of a thousand wild revels—
God! but those girls were adorable crooks.
Wine, Wit and Women; those pearls without price
Turned lilies of virtue to roses of vice.
Hell’s bells were a-tinkle at every wild session.
’Twas wicked! ’Twas wicked! But wasn’t it nice?
Rippling laughs, from rose-rivalling lips,
Wooden-faced waiters who lingered for tips;
Gone are your glories, or am I but dreaming?
Gone! and the soul of me totters and slips!

70

SILLY BUNDAY

When Silly Bunday slings the bull,
When antiquated eggs decay,
I feel the atmosphere is full
Of—Well I’m too polite to say!
When Silly Bunday runs his bluff,
When bullfrogs croak and asses bray,
I feel the World is growing tough,
How tough I’m too polite to say!
When Silly Bunday spills his slush,
When Tom cats wail and Monkeys pray,
The things I think would make you blush,
The things I’m too polite to say!
When Silly Bunday slings the bull,
When festive skunks hold holiday,
I feel that some one ought to pull—
Again I’m too polite to say.

71

PSYCHOANALYSIS

Equipped with his technique, his tests, and his tools,
The Master of Psychoanalysis
Finds jewels of Wisdom in fops and in fools,
And secret compassion where malice is.
Truth means inner falsehood, while Falsehood means Truth,
For Life is a mere masquerading.
Analysis always will show you a weed,
Where you dream that some flower’s white chalice is.
The children of Beelzebub chuckle with glee
At the proof that all virtue is viciousness.
The Puritan’s high flown ethics we see,
Is simply a sort of facetiousness.
The admirable morals of civilized man
Are only a Peacock’s parading.
The highway to saint-hood is outward sin
With all its attendant deliciousness.

72

OLD KING VOLE

Old King Vole was a dreary old soul,
A dreary old soul was he;
He called for his pen and he called for his scroll,
And he called for his minions three.
He drafted a bill that was meant to kill
The whiskey, the wine and beer,
Put a bee on running a private still,
When the moon is bright and clear.
When the House came to, he had jammed it thru,
The Senate was next in line;
They never woke up, except a few
And the President had to sign.
With a mournful knell, he tolled the bell,
That put his hounds on the trail;
We can drink from the well, which is simply hell
Or spend five years in jail.

73

KINGDOMCOME
(Written by a Lutheran of Mohammedan Parentage)

Out in the land of Kingdomcome,
The very rivers run with rum,
The mountain summits wear a cloak
Of azure-hued tobacco smoke.
In Kingdomcome, there is, I hear,
A mighty river full of beer,
Where happy topers lie all day,
And drink dry memories away.
There is a fountain filled with wine,
Where the beneficence divine
Regales the thirsty Sons of God,
Who come and quaff until they nod.
In Kingdomcome, there is no guilt
Except when precious wine is spilt
Upon the amethystine walls
At wild celestial carnivals.
To waste a drop of Alcohol
Is recognized as Sin by all;
They send the sinner down to Hell,
There to teetotal for a spell.
But Allah, all-compassionate,
Relents, despatching a mandate
His erring children to recall
To Paradise and Alcohol.
74
Thus saith the Koran; and I know
That every Sura there is so;
And Allah, the all-merciful,
Doth tolerate no sober skull.
The royal Cherubim police
Have little work to keep the peace—
They labor to incarnadine
Their holy noses with red wine.
In Kingdomcome, divine soubrettes
With clash of clinking castanets
Dance nightly to the Seraphim
To keep their appetites in trim.
In Kingdomcome, trees bear for fruits
Rare cigarettes and fair cheroots.
In Kingdomcome, the falling stars
Deliver boxes of cigars.
At night a moon of Schweitzer cheese
Illuminates the lands and seas;
One may fly up and eat a bite
Without extinguishing the light.
And in the Spring, the whiskey rains
Splash on the diamond window panes,
And patter on the pearly roofs,
And wet the wandering angels’ hoofs.
75
In Kingdomcome, the souls of men
Who drank on earth shall drink again;
There shall the sober learn the rules
Of drinking, in the Sunday schools.
There are saloons with opal doors
And brightly polished emerald floors,
With beryl bars and golden rails,
Where geniality prevails.
In Kingdomcome, the gentle breeze
Is loaded with jazz melodies;
While houris in transparent clothes
Dance lightly on ethereal toes.
Before the Golden Gates, the guards
Play an eternal game of cards—
I’ve heard that when the game gets gay
They bet the ruby walls away.
Thus Kingdomcome’s a merry place
And quite an ornament to space.
I scent its sweet effluvium—
My children, seek ye Kingdomcome!

76

INTERPRETATIONS

Cathedral spires are tall syringes
For constipated cherubim.
The gates of heaven have rusty hinges
That creak and groan in every hymn.
Cathedral spires are phallic symbols,
Half forgotten in man’s advance.
The chimes and bells re-echo timbrels
That timed the sacred harlot’s dance.
Church spires are hypodermic needles
To ease the angels with coke of prayer,
The pulpit a place where Satan wheedles
Man to believe that God is there.
Church spires are surely heavenly chimneys,
Vomiting forth the smoke of praise,
Chapels where puritans bend their grim knees
Show how the human mind decays.

77

THE AMOROUS RUSSIAN

Idly I stand at the entrance of Brown’s,
Gazing at passing decollete gowns,
Eyeing fair ankles—But who’s this a mushin?
The Deuce! It is Jim with his amorous Russian.
Restlessly roving the gay demi-monde.
He’s fond of Brunettes, but this is a Blonde—
Lurid she looks with her hat of red plush on
No wonder he’s gone on this amorous Russian.
Rouge and red roses, with garments of green—
Say! But she’s surely a colorful queen.
It’s easy to see why the man has a crush on
A creature as cute as this amorous Russian.
Sadly I muse; it is most indiscreet
For Bacchus to hustle that Queen of the Street,
Yet I cry “Howdy Jim”—but the two only gush on;
He’s lost in the charms of the amorous Russian.
If they don’t hear me, I shall not complain;
To rescue that college-bred Bacchus is vain.
But what do I see? How that girl is a blushin!
Pray, what does he say to his amorous Russian?
Limned by the light of a yellow street lamp,
They pause for a moment—Roue and fair vamp.
I’m sure they’re engaged in a loving discussion,
By the way he behaves to his amorous Russian.
And now they are past me; they’re climbing the stair,
I stay where I am, but if I were up there,
I’m certain I’d soon see a rosier blush on
The frolicsome face of that amorous Russian!

78

OSCULATORY HORRORS

He once stole a kiss,
Alas ’twas unsterilized;
He thought it was bliss—
’Tis better to miss,
For now he is paralyzed.
He once stole a kiss
Alas ’twas unsterilized.
He pilfered a smack
From a Southern Lily.
Alas and alack,
He pilfered a smack
And he suffered attack
From ferocious bacilli.
He pilfered a smack.
The thing knocked him silly.

79

UN CRI D’AMOUR

Pretty maids are kissable.
Lovers’ lips are miscible
In the mystic misty moonlight.
Lips but rarely miss
Maidens are caressable.
Love is irrepressible.
What if I should realize
All my dreams of bliss?
Sweet it is unseasonable
In love to be reasonable.
Protest only fans to flame
All the Soul’s desire.
Why should we be dutiful,
Love alone is beautiful,
And reluctance melts away—
Fades in Passion’s fire.

80

THE REFLECTIONS OF A SPORTY PURITAN

Ye bright little girls
With peroxidized curls
And cuticle covered with pigment and powder—
How often I wonder
And inwardly ponder;
Your clothes or your morals—say, which is the louder?
Your gay tinsel clothes
Are like petals of rose
As you flutter along in your frolicsome dances.
And your morals are paint
That is bright but grows faint
In the course of a thousand nocturnal romances.
But ’tis not only you—
Of us all it is true,
All morals are paint though the colours are various.
Though our tints are less bright
Than where morals are light,
They all wash away ere the grave-diggers bury us.

81

HOPE

I whet
My wit
When I wet
My whistle.
May the Puritan
Sit
On a well-barbed
Thistle
Of words
Well chosen
To puncture
His brain.
If my verses
Do This
They are not
In vain.

82

FAKERS

Fakers in the pulpit,
Fakers at the bar,
Can you point me out a place
Where no fakers are?
Fakers in the market,
Fakers in the schools,
Where so many fakers thrive
There must be countless fools!
Fakers in the arts and crafts,
Fakers of the press,
Fakers in our national game
Fatten on success.
Fakers, Fakers everywhere
Where do fakers fail?
Where they properly should be—
There are few in jail.

83

SAHARA

I am dying, Egypt, dying!
For the rum is getting low,
And dark shadows puritanic,
Like thick fogs about me grow.
In mine arms I hold my bottle,
But my sobs I can’t control
For I can’t afford to pay for
Booze that some bootlegger stole.
Since the scarred and veteran legions
Of the rum hounds are no more,
And our wrecked and scattered barrooms
Strew that fair Canadian shore,
Since they’ve gone—those old bartenders,
Prompt to do their patron’s will,
I must perish like a Roman—
Or else buy a private still.
Let not Volstead’s servile minions
Mock the lion thus laid low.
’Twas not theirs the arm that felled me,
’Twas my country struck the blow.
Fellow citizens and neighbors,
Listening to the preachers pray,
All got drunk on bum religion
Madly threw a world away.
84
Should the base plebeian rabble
Dare assail my name at home,
Where my noble spouse—Old Maggie—
Full of suffrage jams her dome,
Seek her, say the gods bear witness,
Though my money’s taken wings,
Yet the booze in this quart bottle
Is well worth the wealth of kings.
As for all ye cross eyed puritans,
Nasty minded, full of bile,
May ye have delirium tremens
And never know a smile.
Give to Volstead crowns and arches,
His brow with poison ivy twine,
I scorn his damned eighteenth amendment
While my bottle still is mine.
I am dying, Egypt, dying!
Hark! the vile philistines cry
They are coming. Quick my bottle,
Let me drain it ere I die.
Ah, no more amid the boozefights
Shall my breath exulting smell,
Aphrodite, Bacchus, guard thee—
Whisky, Wine and Beer, farewell!

85

THE SONG OF THE LAST PAGAN

’Tis nineteen hundred and fifty-two
And the Millennium is here.
Morals are gray and laws are blue,
In nineteen hundred and fifty-two.
The heart of man is dry and sear,
Like the wandering leaves of yester-year.
Morals are gray and laws are blue;
The soul of man is stretched on a rack;
His are the torments the Martyrs knew;
Morals are gray and laws are blue.
Lordly palace and lowly shack
And sprawling cities are garbed in black.
We have roofed the heavens with darkened glass
Lest the cosmic smiles of the stars annoy us.
We have learned to wash the green from the grass
And to roof the heavens with darkened glass.
Star sheen and gorgeous green are joyous,
And the priests say, “Beauty and Bliss destroy us”.
Pale neurasthenic wrecks assemble
In hideous houses of the Lord;
And horrid hymns and prayers tremble
On lying lips, while priests dissemble
Their rage, regaling the dejected horde
With praise of God’s great purifying sword.
The sacred sword that maimed the Muses,
Or made them pedlers of vile hymns,
The sword of a thousand holy uses,
The instrument of holier abuses,
The sword of devastating whims,
That mutilates imagination’s limbs.

86

II

The noble buildings that our fathers reared
Crumble before the pious Vandal’s blow—
There may be alcohol beneath the corner stones, ’tis feared,
And logic Puritanical can easily show,
One drop of alcohol may poison millions.
Hence there is no extravagance in wasting billions!
In Museums the statuary stands
In clay kimono or in plaster pantaloon,
And in Art Galleries fanatic hands
Paint out the Nude or daub with fig leaves; soon
The legislature will enact laws to demolish
The Galleries, and thus increase the Age’s moral polish!
Our Literature is thoroughly expurgated,
The dictionaries list no vulgar word—
Our disinfected cyclopedias are rated
By foreigners as perfectly absurd;
Soft-headed superintendents turn libraries
Into enormous intellectual cemeteries.
The symphonies of Wagner sound no more—
Sweet music maketh mankind passionate;
Wherefore the sweet souled Puritans deplore
Music as something unregenerate.
Because they are incapable of pleasure
They find the joys of other men offensive beyond measure.
Long years ago, they banished alcohol,
And ended so-called nicotine carouses.
Today their ulcerated brains recall
That sin may lurk in moving picture houses.
The censors fear that amorous scenarios
May generate a race of gay Lotharios!
87
The people live like mewling babes on pap;
Our old ancestral diet is prohibited.
’Tis sin to eat of food with spice or snap;
For drinking tea or coffee, men are gibbeted.
And all because these cursed Millenarians
Are bent, at any cost, on being rigid Vegetarians!
Of course necessities of population,
Even in our Chautauquan Commonwealth,
Require occasional cohabitation;
But decency demands a modest stealth.
Nor shall the shameful deed transpire on Sunday—
Essential Sin must be reserved for Monday.
Pacifists though we are, yet we await
Most eagerly a suitable occasion
To realize a plan they contemplate,
Namely: a monstrous heavenly invasion,
To clean the Moon, purgate the Sun, and tame the Comets!
’Tis thus the Puritans’ imagination vomits!
We’ve crucified the Virtues with the Vices,
And made of Life a stagnant putrid pool.
Beneath a thousand Puritanical disguises,
Man stands revealed a harlequin—a fool
Who capers in his cap and bells, while social evolution
Transforms proud homo sapiens into a Lilliputian!

88

L’ENVOI

Hear the alcoholic echoes
Of the voice
Of intoxicated muses
And rejoice
That the Sinners hear them truly
And record the matter cooly
In epigrams emphatic, chaste and choice.
Here is Wisdom from the heart
Of hidden places.
There’s a blush in every line
For pious faces.
It will aid the circulation
And improve their cerebration
And guide them in their search for inner graces.
If our uplifting arguments are granted
Go out and get some monkey glands implanted,
And start a new career,
A pilgrimage of cheer—
We know you’ll sing as loudly as you’ve ranted.

89

EPILOGUE FOR PURITANS

Your portraits we’ve drawn without any malice,
Refreshed you with wine from pure pagan chalice.
To fill up the void
Of skulls anthropoid,
Was task quite beyond our present intention.
We’ve shown you yourselves stripped bare of pretenses,
And hope that the shock may restore you your senses.
We know that for verse
You care not a curse,
But prefer the obscene and sins we’ll not mention.
In one respect only have you been cheated—
Smut such as you love has all been deleted.
Each bawdy desire
We’ve raised from the mire,
And hope we’ve improved your degenerate condition.
We hate you as hypocrites, loathe you as liars,
Behold with contempt your perverted desires.
To spread poison-gas,
Then mumble a mass,
You always are ready and filled with ambition.
Betrayed by the follies your thick skulls produced,
Cuckolds you’re made—your Reason’s seduced.
With Ignorance horn’d
We see you adorned,
Impotent, venomous, doomed to depression.
So Farewell, ye Puritans, Panders and Pimps—
Should you claim that our Pegasus staggers and limps,
We care not a rap—
We’re no vendors of pap
For crazed epileptics, mad with repression.
We laugh at your Blue Laws—as fast as you make ’em,
Red-blooded pagans are ready to break ’em.
You think that on Sinners your laws leave their mark?
Fools that you are—we can work in the dark.
We’ve taken great joy in our verses’ creation,
And trust we have earned your eternal damnation.
For our book we’ll not offer a single apology—
To Hell with your Principles! Damn your Theology!

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Typographical errors corrected: “every” corrected to “ever” in the line beginning with “That mankind ...” (page 38); “saxaphone” corrected to “saxophone” (page 64); “carressable” corrected to “caressable” (page 79).

Missing quotation marks restored on page 38.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79965 ***