The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum | Page 3

the bunch, and no doubt he is, long ere this,
consoled with a "neater, sweeter maiden" to whom his Muse will sing
again a happier refrain. In this hope we close his dainty introspections
and await his next burst of song!
Gelett Burgess.
San Francisco, Nov. 1, 1901
[*] Note, for instance, the potential mood used indicatively in the
current colloquial, "Wouldn't that jar you!"
An Inside Con to Refined Guys
Let me down easy, reader, say!
Don't run the bluff that you are on,

Or proudly scoff at every toff
Who rattles off a rag-time con.
Get next to how the French Villon,
Before Jack Hangman yanked
him high,
Quilled slangy guff and Frenchy stuff
And kicked up
rough the same as I.
And Byron, Herrick, Burns, forby,
Got gay with Erato, much the
same
As I now do to show to you
The way into the Hall of Fame.

Prologue
Wouldn't it jar you, wouldn't it make you sore
To see the poet, when
the goods play out,
Crawl off of poor old Pegasus and tout
His
skate to two-step sonnets off galore?
Then, when the plug, a dead one,
can no more
Shake rag-time than a biscuit, right about
The
poem-butcher turns with gleeful shout
And sends a batch of sonnets
to the store.
The sonnet is a very easy mark,
A James P. Dandy as a carry-all

For brain-fag wrecks who want to keep it dark
Just why their crop of
thinks is running small.
On the low down, dear Maine, my looty loo,

That's why I've cooked this batch of rhymes for you.
I
Say, will she treat me white, or throw me down,
Give me the glassy
glare, or welcome hand,
Shovel me dirt, or treat me on the grand,

Knife me, or make me think I own the town?
Will she be on the level,
do me brown,
Or will she jolt me lightly on the sand,
Leaving poor
Willie froze to beat the band,
Limp as your grandma's Mother
Hubbard gown?
I do not know, nor do I give a whoop,
But this I know: if she is so
inclined
She can come play with me on our back stoop,
Even in
office hours, I do not mind -
In fact I know I'm nice and good and
ready
To get an option on her as my steady.
II
On the dead level I am sore of heart,
For nifty Mame has frosted me
complete,
Since ten o'clock, G. M., when on the street
I saw my
lightning finish from the start.
O goo-goo eye, how glassy gazed thou
art
To freeze my spinach solid when we meet,
And keep thy Willie
on the anxious seat
Like a bum Dago on an apple cart!

Is it because my pants fit much too soon,
Or that my hand-me-down
is out of style,
That thou dost turn me under when I spoon,
Nor
hand me hothouse beauties with a smile?
If that's the case, next week
I'll scorch the line
Clad in a shell I'll buy of Cohenstein.
III
As follows is the make-up I shall buy,
Next week, when from the
boss I pull my pay: -
A white and yellow zig-zag cutaway,
A
sunset-colored vest and purple tie,
A shirt for vaudeville and
something fly
In gunboat shoes and half-hose on the gay.
I'll get
some green shoe-laces, by the way,
And a straw lid to set 'em
stepping high.
Then shall I shine and be the great main squeeze,
The warm gazook,
the only on the bunch,
The Oklahoma wonder, the whole cheese,

The baby with the Honolulu hunch -
That will bring Mame to time - I
should say yes!
Ain't my dough good as Murphy's? Well, I guess!
IV
O fate, thou art a lobster, but not dead!
Silently dost thou grab, e'en as
the cop
Nabs the poor hobo, sneaking from a shop
With some rich
geezer's tile upon his head.
By thy fake propositions are we led
To
get quite chesty, when it's buff! kerflop!!
We take a tumble and the
cog-wheels stop,
Leaving the patient seeing stars in bed.
So was I swatted, for I could not draw
My last week's pay. I got the
dinky dink.
No more I see the husk in dreams I saw,
And Mame is
mine some more, I do not think.
I know my rival, and it makes me
sore -
'Tis Murphy, night clerk in McCann's drug store.
V
Last night - ah, yesternight - I flagged my queen
Steering for

Grunsky's ice-cream joint full sail!
I up and braced her, breezy as a
gale,
And she was the all-rightest ever seen.
Just then Brick
Murphy butted in between,
Rushing my funny song-and-dance to jail,

My syncopated con-talk no avail,
For Murphy was the only
nectarine.
This is a sample of the hand I get
When I am playing more than
solitaire,
Showing how I become the slowest yet
When it's a case of
razors in the air,
And competition knocks me off creation
Like a
gin-fountain smashed by Carrie Nation.
VI
See how that Murphy cake-walks in his pride,
That brick-topped
Murphy, fourteen-dollar jay;
You'd think he'd leased the sidewalk by
the way
He takes up half a yard on either side!
I'm wise his
diamond