AMERICAN VAUDEVILLE SHOW This vacuous, clattering spectacle Has collected the heart-beats of a nation. Greed, like a gorged Machiavelli, Slumps down in the green plush seat And wonders whether it has not blundered, While a sentimental song, Like a kindly infant, Interferes with the clink of coins. Hatred, juvenile and deformed, Earns the smirking oblivion Of fat women mangling sound. The wrangling babble of ignorance Turns to silence underneath The opium of innuendoes. Acrobats appear and seem To be raping phantom lovers No longer beautiful and fresh But mechanically endured. Part of the audience is also A battered stoic clasping worn-out mistresses. Clog-dancers enervate The thumping martyrs of their feet, And chorus-girls offer the lines of their bodies With whining voices. Dreams are cheap, and green plush seats Appropriately, snugly hold The expensive hallucinations. [Illustration: colophon] _Printing Service_ _Company_ _Chicago_ End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sardonic Arm, by Maxwell Bodenheim