I'd be more than happy to post some other Hobo poetry. Send it to poetry@cyberhobo.com

Christmas in the Hobo Jungle

Twas the night before Christmas, and down by the tracks
Hoboes was sleeping all sound by their packs
Their bottles was tucked in their top coats with care
In hopes that tomorrow the booze would be there.
They were sweetly snoring in cast-away rugs,
With visions of food and drink in big jugs.
Fats with his bindle and I with my wine
We hopped off a freight on the Santa Fe line.
Then down by the rails there arose such a clatter,
We jumped up to see just what was the matter.
Behind a caboose I flew in a flash,
But old Fats fell down when he tried to dash.
Moonshine on the railyard all covered with snow
Gave a lustre of day to the objects below.
When all at once, to my eyes did appear
A big paddy wagon with cops on the rear.
The big nasty driver, so red in the face,
Tipped me off to the fact they were raiding the place.
Upstanding and righteous, toward us they came
While the sergeant in charge called them by name:
"Now Clancy, now Yancy, O'Leary, and Flynn
On Tracy, on Lacey, on Brendan and Wynne
Now spread out, me lads, and we'll catch one and all!"
As dry leaves before the North Wind would fly
The hoboes all ran as the big cops went by.
They ran over bushes and out through the weeds
The Irish, the Danes, the Norwegians and Swedes.
The cops started running, I heard their big feet,
And I thanked the good Lord my legs were so fleet.
As I jumped to my feet and was turning around
Through the bushes a cop had come in with a bound.
He was dressed in all blue from his boots to his pate
And in his right hand was a big thirty-eight.
He shoved an old stumblebum flat on his back
As he ran through the brush on his way to the track.
His eyes they did burn like two holes ina quilt
He looked like a rhino the way he was built.
His thin, stubborn lips were clamped shut like a vise
The look that he gave me, it turned me to ice.
The stump of a cigar he held in his teeth
And the smoke of it circled his head like a wreath.
He had a red face, and a pot belly,
That bounced when he ran, not like jam but like jelly.
He grabbed poor old Fats by the collar, you see,
Be he just didn't have enough speed to get me.
He bellered and hollered while still on the run
And knocked old Fats down with the butt of his gun.
They loaded up every old hobo in camp
The winos and dingbats and every old tramp.
They sprang to their wagon with a good show of speed,
Secure in the thought they had done a good deed.
I heard them exclaim as they drove out of sight,
"The best time to catch bums is on Christmas Night!"