The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor | Page 4

Pokey
Pond and filled with prunes
Waiting for Congress to appropriate

The nuggets draped around me in festoons.
Wait till I ticket Pansy,
then I guess
Slow Freight will switch to Honeymoon Express!
IX
Today I gave a serenade to Gill;
I says, "To put it pleasant you're a
screech,
Your smile would shoo the seagulls off the beach,
Your
face would give Vesuvius a chill.
You're just what Mr. Shakespeare
calls 'a pill
Trying to keep company with a peach.'
Now, if you
want to answer with a speech,
Open your trap at once, or else lie
still."

But when I handed Gill the Grip this cluster
He simply clamped his
language-mill down tight,
Strangled his guff and acted rather fluster

Although I'm sure I spoke to him polite.
I guess that Mr. Gilly ain't
the kind
That understands when people talk refined.
X
Three days with sad skidoo have came and went,
Yet Pansy cometh
nix to ride with me.
I rubber vainly at the throng to see
Her golden
locks - gee! such a discontent!
Perhaps she's beat it with some soapy
gent -
Perhaps she's promised Gill the Grip to be
His No. 1 till
Death tolls "23!"
While I am Outsky in the supplement.
Now and anon some Lizzie flags the train
And I, poor dots, cry,
"Rapture, it is her!"
Yet guess again - my hope is all in vain
And
Pansy girl refuses to occur.
If this keeps up I think I'll finish swell

Among the jabbers in a padded cell.
XI
My Trolley hikes to Harlem p.d.q.,
And picks up pikers all along the
beat.
At six o'clock the aisles are full of feet,
The straps with fingers,
and the entire zoo
Boils on the platform with a mad huroo
Reckless
as Bronx mosquitoes after meat.
The widow stands, the fat man gets
the seat
And Satan smiles like Foxy M. Depew.
And as we hikes along I thinks, thinks I,
"The human race is like the
ocean foam,
Roaring and discontented, peevish, fly - "
Say, why in
blazes don't they stay to home?
This travel-sickness is a danger which

Keeps hoboes poor and corporations rich.
XII
Today I piped my future Ma-in-law.
She got aboard my Pullman and
she scared
Three babies into fits the way she glared.
Rattle my

baggage if I ever saw
A cracker-box to equal Mother's jaw,
A
hardwood-finish face all nailed and squared.
She ossified the gripman
when she stared -
And me? Well, I was overcame with awe.
But, being Pansy's Ma, 't was up to me
To hand her something
pit-a-pat and swell,
And so I says, "Hello, Queen Cherokee!
What
ho! for Pansy? hope she's feeling well."
And Ma responds, a trifle tart
but game,
"She minds her bizness - hope you feel the same."
XIII
I don't think Mother chalked me out to win,
To be the steady of her
darling child.
She thinks I am a kick-up, something wild,
And no
sweet girl should wear my college pin.
She thinks I'm some too piffly
with my chin
And my soft prattle simply gets her riled.
I've lost my
keys with her, to put it mild,
I don't belong, because I am not In.
Say how, with such an iceberg on the track,
Can I conduct my car to
married bliss?
I hoped that I could whistle Pansy back,
And lo! I
got a frostbite off of this!
I'd wrastle Death for Her, I'd fight her Pa, -

But stab me if I'll syrup to her Ma!
XIV
E'en as I stood with cobwebs in my tower
A candy vision came and
flagged the boat -
Give forty rah-rah-rahs! O joy, O gloat!
'Twas
Pansy like a fairy in a bower
Warbling, "Hi, stop the car!" With all
my power
I yanked the bell. My brain was all afloat,
My heart cut
pin-wheels, stole a base at throat,
Sang "Tammany" - and knighthood
was in flower.
I helped her on. My shoes were full of feet.
I says, "How's Ma?" She
answers, "Going some."
I doffed my lid and ventured to repeat
The
breeze had put the weather on the bum.
Then she replied, not seeming
sore or vexed,
"It may not be so punk on Sunday next."

XV
The Sinful Rich go whizzing by all day
In wealthy wagons, looking
pert and swell;
They get the ride, the Commons get the smell
And
full of thought and microbes wend their way.
Maxy the Firebug says
that Mammon's sway
Is stringing Virtue to a fare-ye-well,
But wait,
he says, till Labor with a yell
Soaks Mam a crack forninst the
vertebray.
The Rich, says Max, are simply dips and yeggs
That lift the headlight
beads from yaps like us;
They pinch your pie, sew up our ham and
eggs
And leave us minus all that they are plus.
The world, says
Max, belongs to me and Bill
And Mrs. Casey - whoa! let's roll a pill!
XVI
At Mrs. Casey's hunger-killing shop
Whither I hie thrice daily for my
stew,
I dream I'm Mr. Waldorf as I chew
My prunes or lay my
Boston-baked on top.
Growley and sinkers, slum and mutton sop,

India-rubber jelly known as "glue,"
A soup-bone goulash with a spud
or two,
Clatter below until I signal "Stop!"
There may be chefs in France or