DRUM on your drums, batter on your banjoes, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen.
  
Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happy tin pans, let your trombones ooze, and go hushahusha-hush with the slippery
sand-paper.
  
Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome tree-tops, moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry like a racing car
slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang! you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps, banjoes, horns, tin cans—make
two people fight on the top of a stairway and scratch each other’s eyes in a clinch tumbling down the stairs.
  
Can the rough stuff … now a Mississippi steamboat pushes up the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo … and the green
lanterns calling to the high soft stars … a red moon rides on the humps of the low river hills … go to it, O
jazzmen.

Poet: Carl Sandburg
Poem: 6. Jazz Fantasia
Volume: Smoke and Steel
- III. Broken-Face Gargoyles
Year: Published/Written in 1922
Poem of the Day: Mar 19 2005

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