Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, October 1921 · page 40 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #25 — page 40: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two distinct works. The first is a dark, protest poem describing prisoners in devastating conditions—starving, diseased, dying. The speaker addresses God directly, demanding divine intervention against this "damn den of despair" or asking God to destroy creation itself, since "man's" cruelty exceeds even divine wrath. The second piece, "The Sunflower Kid" by Koffdrop DeHaven, begins a boxing narrative. The narrator recalls his youth when he weighed 110 pounds and trained intensely at a gym while working in a boiler shop. He was matched to fight "The Sunflower Kid," identified as "the colored bantam champ." The racial descriptor appears casual by the story's framing, typical of 1920s-era sports writing, though such terminology reflects period attitudes. The story promises to explain why the narrator, despite dedication, "never was a top notch" in boxing—continuing on a following page.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
38 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang We are sheep that are driven to slaughter; We are dogs that are whelped in the street; We are useless as poisonous water; We are only for punishment meet. So hear ye the prayers from the prison, Where fever and famine are rife; Where never one soul has arisen, Where myriads go down in the strife. Where the black wing of death scarcely hovers, Lest its jesters should make him unclean; And the soft fleecy clouds hurry over, To shut out God's sun from the scene. Where the light of God's orb would be stricken, With shame as it passed in the sky, To look in the cells where we sicken, To fall in the sod where we die. If thou, God, omnipotent being, Can pierce the prison's pale gloom; And growest not sick of the seeing, This charnel, this foul-reeking tomb? If Thy hand stretch not forth in its anger, To smite this damn den of despair, Whose evil is rampant, and langour Is lord of the poisonous lair. Then God, take Ye back your creation, And plunge it in infinite fire, Your wrath is eternal damnation, But man's is more lasting dire. * * * The Sunflower Kid By Koffdrop DeHaven. A few years back, in my palmy days, when the boxing game was grand, I tipped the scales at a hundred and ten; had a punch in either hand; But I never was a top notch, the reason for which I'll tell, I was learning a trade in a boiler shop; I worked, and worked like . everything; I was down at the gym three times a week, tore off six rounds each night, 'Till I found myself in tiptop shape and ready for the fight. I was matched to box “The Sunflower Kid,” the colored bantam champ;