Nay, love has put your optics on the bum,
To you are Murphy’s gold bricks all O. K.;
His talks go down however rank they come,
For he has got you going, fairy fay. 
Ah, well!  In that I’m in the box with you,
For love has got poor Willie groggy, too.

XII

Life is a combination hard to buck,
A proposition difficult to beat,
E’en though you get there Zaza with both feet,
In forty flickers, it’s the same hard luck,
And you are up against it nip and tuck,
Shanghaied without a steady place to eat,
Guyed by the very copper on your beat
Who lays to jug you when you run amuck.

O Life! you give Yours Truly quite a pain. 
On the T square I do not like your style;
For you are playing favorites again
And you have got me handicapped a mile. 
Avaunt, false Life, with all your pride and pelf: 
Go take a running jump and chase yourself!

XIII

If I were smooth as eels and slick as soap,
A baked-wind expert, jolly with my clack,
Gally enough to ask my money back
Before the steerer feeds me knock-out dope,
Still might I throw a duck-fit in my hope
That I possessed a headpiece like a tack
To get my Mamie in my private sack
Ere she could flag some Handsome Hank and slope.

What ho! she bumps!  My wish avails me not,
My work is coarse and Mame is onto me;
So am I never Johnny-on-the-spot
When any wooden Siwash ought to be. 
Thus I get busy working up a grouch
Whenever heartless Mame harpoons me — ouch!

XIV

O mommer! wasn’t Mame a looty toot
Last night when at the Rainbow Social Club
She did the bunny hug with every scrub
 From Hogan’s Alley to the Dutchman’s Boot,
While little Willie, like a plug-eared mute,
Papered the wall and helped absorb the grub,
Played nest-egg with the benches like a dub
When hot society was easy fruit!

Am I a turnip?  On the strict Q. T.,
When do my Trilbys get so ossified? 
Why am I minus when it’s up to me
To brace my Paris Pansy for a glide? 
Once more my hoodoo’s thrown the game and scored
A flock of zeros on my tally-board.

XV

Nixie!  I’m not canned chicken till I’m cooked,
And hope still rooms in this pneumatic chest,
While something’s doing underneath my vest
That makes me think I’m squiffier than I looked. 
Mayhap Love knew my class when I was booked
As one shade speedier than second best
To knock the previous records galley west,
While short-end suckers on my bait were hooked.

Mayhap — I give it up — but this I know: 
When I saw Mamie on the line today
She turned her happy searchlights on me so,
And grinned so like a living picture — say,
If a real lady threw you such a chunk,
Could n’t she pack her Raglan in your trunk?