IT’S a jazz affair, drum crashes and cornet razzes
The trombone pony neighs and the tuba jackass snorts.
The banjo tickles and titters too awful.
The chippies talk about the funnies in the papers.
  The cartoonists weep in their beer.
  Ship riveters talk with their feet
  To the feet of floozies under the tables.
A quartet of white hopes mourn with interspersed snickers:
    “I got the blues.
    I got the blues.
    I got the blues.”
And … as we said earlier:
  The cartoonists weep in their beer.

Poet: Carl Sandburg
Poem: 14. Honky Tonk in Cleveland, Ohio
Volume: Smoke and Steel
- II. People Who Must
Year: Published/Written in 1922
Poem of the Day: Apr 23 2005

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