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My brother he was an auctioneer

With a skull like a kotted hammer,

He was quick as a cat when he went for beer,

But his wife was a showgirl, damn her.

Some are crooked from dusk to dawn,

But none was ever so crooked,

For I first shot craps on the ghetto lawn

Where the immigrant kids are rook’ed.

Some are kept at home of nights,

Like something screwed in a socket,

But my uncle took me to see the fights

And I picked his goddam pocket.

When I grew and guzzled my brother’s corn,

He would not bide so near me,

So he kicked me out one lovely morn,

With a boot in the pants to cheer me.

So I went my way and I sought for gawks

With skulls like solid palmettos,

And I shot my craps on the crowded walks

In the shade of the East Side ghettoes.

Till I lost my money and found my girl,

One of the Harlem wenches,

With a pair of buttocks that she could twirl

Till they passed out under the benches.

She danced in a flock of cabarets,

Was never a girl could beat her,

But some low bastard got a raise

And came one night to meet her.

But I laid for him upon that night,

As he leaped across the hedgel,

And I timed his chin with a roundhouse right

And knocked him cold as a wedgel.

The punch that finished him broke my hand,

Mere words can not convey it,

To mend it cost me to beat the band

And it broke my heart to pay it.

I took me a black, unbroken wench

And led her into the park there,

But she knocked me out with a monkey wrench

And left me naked and stark there.

I lay in the lush of the ticklish grass,

It’s a wonder I did not freezel,

Till I woke and found what had come to pass

And my curses froze the treesel.

So I sat me down beneath a tree

And gathered all my craftel,

And the thought of college came to me

And that is a goodly graftel.

I wear a green, he-mannish cap

And a pair of sails for breeches,

And I yodel and sing and act the sap

With a hundred sons of bitches.

Go lay your hands in a harlot’s lap

And seek for the stuff she peddles,

You will jazz her and get the clap,

But I will jazz co-eddles.