Banjo Dog Variations Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDC EFGH I JKLK MMNN OPCP Q RSRS TUVU VWCW VXYX VZVZ BBVV V VA2XB2 XXVX C2 D2E2F2E2 XCG2CH2Tramps on the road floating clouds OLD CHINESE POEM | A |
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Agriculture and Industry | B |
Embraced in public on a wall | C |
Heroes in shirt sleeves Next to them | D |
The average man felt small | C |
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I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night | E |
By Vassar girls surrounded | F |
They harmonized expertly oh | G |
Their little true hearts pounded | H |
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Joe went on smiling | I |
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I thought I saw what Trotsky saw | J |
A friendly cossack wink | K |
And then his friends brought down their clubs | L |
Christ what would Trotsky think | K |
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Train had just slowed for the crossing when | M |
Out from the bushes jumped a hundred men | M |
With baseball bats and iron bars | N |
They persuaded us back onto the cars | N |
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And out of dirty fists sometimes | O |
Would bloom the melancholy harp | P |
Then low low low on the gon doh lah | C |
We swayed beneath our tarp | P |
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And far lights moving in and out of rain | Q |
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What you do with the Sunday news | R |
Oh citizens of the great riffraff | S |
Is you put the funny papers in your shoes | R |
It gives the feet a laugh | S |
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We read our brothers shirts for lice | T |
And moved around with the fruit | U |
Went north to Billings for the beets | V |
And had three good days in the jail at Butte | U |
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We chalked our names on red cliffsides | V |
High up where only eagles dwelled | W |
Each time a big truck went by below | C |
The earth trembled like a woman held | W |
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And we passed fields of smoking stumps | V |
Where goats sometimes or ponies grazed | X |
Abandoned tractors stood against the sky | Y |
Like giant fists upraised | X |
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But if we bent our knees it was | V |
To drink from a creek s rust colored slime | Z |
And splash our chests with it and rub our eyes | V |
And wake into another world and time | Z |
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Let us go then you and me | B |
While the neon bubbles upward ceaselessly | B |
To lure us down back streets and alleyways | V |
Where we may wander and be lost for days | V |
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Many days and many hours | V |
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I miss the smell of the ratty furs | V |
And saturday night cologne and beer | A2 |
And I miss the juke and the sign that read | X |
NO POLICE SERVED HERE | B2 |
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Off Mission wasn t it The old | X |
White Angel Breadline where we met | X |
You had just come west from Arkansas | V |
But the rest of it I forget | X |
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A cup of coffee afterwards a hymn | C2 |
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Once we stood on a high bluff | D2 |
Lights fanning out across the bay | E2 |
A little ragged band of Christs we were | F2 |
And tempted but we turned away | E2 |
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And didn t I see you Saturday night | X |
After the paycheck from the mill | C |
Bearing a pot of store bought lilies home | G2 |
One budding still | C |
Ah oh my banjo dog | H2 |
Donald Justice
(1)
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