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.

Calais was a small disappointment,
And Ams-too-**** good to be true,
So while the red orb is yet to set,
I'll clear out my debt,
And try to forget,
And gather fresh hope on the morrow new.

Vesoul, that was my destination:
I gave up Quebec and Madrid!
Gladly forsaking old
Constantinople, for
Paris awaited my trip.

But I can't make a living in Bangkok,
With poncy jazzmen such as these.
The coffers of kings are busted and broke,
And my heart craves more
Than ashes and smoke,
So tour Guatemal', if you please.

Goodbye to pretty Latakia,
I turn from your shore with such sorrow.
Your flowery air I long to breathe,
Instead of standing alone in the street;
I want to return in a golden-fringed dream...
And gather fresh hope on the morrow.

quiet rhythms of jazz
flow in the pouring rain
we cuddle the pillow
my dog and I
lonely jazzmen
we fall
in the bliss
of freedom