Evolution
Jazzed a trifle—Apologies to Langdon Smith
By Neil McConlogue.
When you were part of an elephant’s tusk
In the Palezoic time,
And I rode round in a walrus mouth
’Mid the piscatorial slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Thru the depths of a salmon fen—
Our hearts were rife with that dentine life,
But—I wasn’t with you then.
That was before the colored man
Invented the game called Crap;
Before they cubed and spotted our sides,
And tossed us toward Fortune’s Lap.
But the world turned on in the lathe of time;
The hot sands heaved amain;
And our faces were polished with emery wheel—
Then between us they made a game.
At first they called us a “game of dice.”
We were drab as a dead man’s hand:
We lolled at ease ’neath the dripping trees,
Or trailed thru the mud and sand.
Sextette-sided, with corners round,
Writing a language dumb;
While fingers snapped and cash exchanged
On bets that we wouldn’t “come.”
Later they labeled us “African Golf.”
And they gave us a spin once more.
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
Of the Terra Firma shore.
The aeons came, and the aeons fled,
But the hand that held us fast,
Was sure to hold us a bit too long,
We tried hard, but—couldn’t “pass.”
Then light and swift thru the jungle trees
Swung the white men in their flights;
And they heard the darkies plead “Come little Joe”!
In the hush of policeless nights.
And, Oh! What improvement the white man made!
For us there were no bounds!
We were riven away by a newer day,
And no longer rolled on the ground.
Thus point by point, and “pass” by “pass,”
Onward thru cycles strange,
We “sevened,” “elevened,” “nined,” and “fived,”
And followed the chain of change;
’Till there came a time in Gambledom
’Midst many a weal and woe—
They changed the name of this plucky game
To “Bounding Domino.”
Long were the “rolls” on the table-top.
When the game would once begin;
Longer the howls of the “folks-of-chance”
When “hard-luck” came trooping in.
O’er gold, and silver, and paper notes,
They’d fight, and claw, and tear;
And cheek by jowl—with words quite foul
They’d soil the clothes they’d wear.
We were discovered so long ago
In a time that no man knows;
Yet here tonight, in the mellow light,
Near the race-track at Pamlico,
Our eyes are dotted with half-carat stones
That shine like the Devon Springs;
And cute Flappers display us in public
Quite as proudly as diamond rings.
It makes no difference if we are rolled
For a dollar, five, or ten.
Our love is cold, our game is old,
And the “sucker” our kith and kin.
Tho cities have sprung above the graves
Where the crook-boned-men made war,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Found the hardest point was “Four.”
Moral:
REMEMBER, He who operates a barber-shop is not barbaric; He that studies the lunar system is not a lunatic; He who exists on a stew is not always a student; He who thinks that One Broadway makes New York has “muchly” to learn; And—He that caresseth the Uneasy Ivories is hastily disconnected from his dough.
Never Shoot Crap!
Never! Remember That!
TOTAL MORAL: Play Poker Instead!
* * *
Is it you I love dear?
I can scarcely tell.
When you smile your eyes, dear,
Make me think of Nell.
When you’re sad, your mouth, dear,
Makes me think of Sue,
But, dear, when I kiss you,
I am sure it’s you.
* * *