SHINGLE-SHORT
Slip o’ the tool....or scratch....or scritch,
Somewhere’d be bound to come the hitch.
’Cause why? It’s always so, that’s why,
That’s all about the bloomin’ mess....
Kind of a blitherin’ human blight—
Nothin’s not never Right-down Right!
—An’ most ’s a jolly long lot less.
Oh, ain’t it paltry! Ain’t it poor,
An’ loo-warm, an’ soul-sickenin’!
Not on’y me, an’ my poor fake
(I wish it was!), but—Rotten Roots!
Failure bang in Creation’s make,
Somethin’ at fault in Everythin’.
Good Gum! I’m fair full up of it.
It’s all to pot, an’ so am I.
Seems such a general, livin’ lie....
If there was just, for comfort’s sake,
One rightness under the round sky!
But, nothin’, nowhere, all it ought?
The whole show with a taste o’ taint?
The whole caboodle shingle-short?
Oh, stinkin’! Makes you kind o’ heave!
Fair makes you want to cut an’ quit.
Wish I was dead, an’ done with it.—
I do, old Stars!
Ay, there you stay,
Lookin’ all handsome in the Blue;
But, if I knew it, I daresay,
Really, there’s somethin’ wrong with you?
....It don’t insist, tho’, anyway.
33
