Devil May Not Care Poem by Billy Bennett

Fly if your pigtail catches fire
Dive down the nearest sink
Remember if you wash a pancake
It's underwear's sure to shrink.

Once I was a twister, just like you
Had rickets, false teeth and no hair
Do you remember when first we met
You do? You're a liar, Devil-May-Care.

Devil-May-Care who trampled corn
To cover his awful past
Devil-May-Care, the cowheel taster
And a bachelor’s son to the last.

Some of you tell how you beat the bull
Aye, brag on a flush of hair
When you've scattered the giblets in the tube
With dirty old Devil-May-Care.

You were lucky at finding things not lost
As a milkmaid milks with pliers
Your mothers nurse your baby
If you can't use Dunlop tyres.

Dog at the lamp-post wags its tail
'Cos the dirty legs are square
What little remains of the crystal set
Of dirty old Devil-May-Care.

How do I live? On the Parish
Where do I sleep? In a tomb
I was born in a sardine's graveyard
Where treacle and sausages bloom.

Asleep on your back in a haunted house
And dreaming of rats with bobbed hair
Fighting boss-eyed bulls and knock-kneed cows
Puts the wind up Devil-May-Care.

But we can find you a three-quid short
The Lady lodger's out
It makes you think what the Parson knows
When the feathers are lying about.

We got drunk together the night we met
At a Japanese Yiddish wake
And I slipped my hand deep down in her purse
And I pinched her current cake.

Everyone said that her legs were false
And I proved it so in the dark
But we tried to dance the can-can in Paris
But her magneto wouldn't spark.

So I reeled up the aisle with me braces broke
While crowds pelted me with bad eggs
When the Parson said, 'Look what the wind's blown in.'
She hit him with one of her legs.

What does it matter if rock cakes rock
And pineapples fly in the air
'Cos at death I shall cheerfully cry, 'I'm sticking.'
But he'll say 'Pontoons only, Devil-May Care.'