Because I have over the years posted it on Xitter, but not on here, another poem by Archy the Cockroach. (He writes in lower case as he is jumping onto the typewriter keyboard head first in order to type, as in this illustration by George Herriman.)
warty bliggens, the toad
i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially
planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain
thought out and prepared
for him
do not tell me
said warty bliggens
that there is not a purpose
in the universe
the thought is blasphemy
a little more
conversation revealed
that warty bliggens
considers himself to be
the center of the said
universe
the earth exists
to grow toadstools for him
to sit under
the sun to give him light
by day and the moon
and wheeling constellations
to make beautiful
the night for the sake of
warty bliggens
to what act of yours
do you impute
this interest on the part
of the creator
of the universe
i asked him
why is it that you
are so greatly favored
ask rather
said warty bliggens
what the universe
has done to deserve me
--Don Marquis 1878-1937
--from Archy & Mehitabel
3K notes
·
View notes
Reading The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel (Penguin Classics). For those unfamiliar with them, Archy and Mehitabel are creations of the great newspaper columnist Don Marquis that first appeared in the New York Sun in 1916. Archy is a free-verse poet who had the ill luck to be reincarnated as a cockroach; he can only write by hurling himself headfirst onto the keys of Marquis's typewriter. His friend Mehitabel is a hedonistic alley cat who claims to have once been Cleopatra. Through the two characters, Marquis expressed all sorts of wry observations about America and the wider world, often tinging his humor with cynicism in the best satiric tradition. Wonderful stuff, especially with the helpful annotations supplied by editor Michael Sims.
33 notes
·
View notes
ed frascino, 1996. illustration for don marquis’s poem “mehitabel s motto,” in archyology: the long lost tales of archy and mehitabel.
45 notes
·
View notes
"...why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense..."
Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!
6 notes
·
View notes
the lesson of the moth by archy (a poem by Don Marquis)
(The character of Archy, created by Don Marquis in 1916, was a cockroach who had been a poet in a previous incarnation. To write he must leap headfirst onto the keys of a typewriter, and thus is unable to capitalize his letters.)
i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then to cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is to come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
archy
31 notes
·
View notes
ME WHEN IT IS BETTER TO BE HAPPY FOR A MOMENT AND BE BURNED UP WITH BEAUTY THAN TO LIVE A LONG TIME AND BE BORED ALL THE WHILE
8 notes
·
View notes
the worst thing i’ve ever done is want it too bad
i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric lightbulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be an unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad up all our life
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
out attitude toward life
is easy come easy go
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilised to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
the lesson of the moth by archy (1927) by Don Marquis
I, Tonya (2017) by Craig Gillespie
Macbeth (c1606) by William Shakespeare
The Fallen Angel (1847) by Alexandre Cabanel | The Kiss (1882) by Auguste Rodin
Ozymandias (1818) by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Lament of Icarus (1898) by Herbert James Draper | The Unfortunate Gregor Samsa (2012) by Rich Johnson
4 notes
·
View notes
SOME NATURAL HISTORY
the patagonian
penguin
is a most
peculiar
bird
he lives on
pussy
willows
and his tongue
is always furred
the porcupine
of chile
sleeps his life away
and that is how
the needles
get into the hay
the Argentinian
oyster
is a very
subtle gink
for when he's
being eaten
he pretends he is
a skink
when you see
a sea gull
sitting
on a bald man's dome
she likely thinks
she's nesting
on her rocky
island home
do not tease
the inmates
when strolling
through the zoo
for they have
their finer feelings
the same
as me and you
oh deride not
the camel
if grief should
make him die
his ghost will come
to haunt you
with tears
in either eye
and the spirit of
a camel
in the midnight gloom
can be so very
cheerless
as it wanders
round the room
3 notes
·
View notes
fic stats game
Rules: Give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most bookmarks, fourth most comments, fifth most words, and your fic with the least amount of words.
Open tag accepted from @runawaymarbles
Being as I’m primarily a podficcer, I’ll arbitrarily use slightly different metrics for some of these.
Most hits: The MOST most hits (not counting Crown of Thorns, which I won’t, because it’s a multivoice juggernaut) is tentacular Good Omens fx-fest Pale Tendrils, by Anonymous. Understandable — come for the tentacles, stay for the witty writing and my unabashedly gleeful porn-formance. However, the secondmost hits is more interesting, because what the fuck. The hits on Only the Third Story in this Forsaken Fandom Whose Title Does Not Begin With If, by seekingferret, have been steadily climbing since I posted it — without at all a corresponding number of kudos, and no comments. It’s a highly meta If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler / 1/0 / 2666 by Robert Bolano Yuletide story, and while I like it a lot, I do not know what this unprecedented click rate means, at all. At first I thought it was bots, but I locked it down and the steady hits — sometimes ten or more per day — continued. Yeah, I dunno. Couldn’t happen to a more apt bunch of fandoms though.
Second-most kudos: What a Way to Make a Living, by attheborder, a Good Omens story in which Crowley, at a loss without his hellish assignments from Downstairs, becomes an Uber driver. Or, what if Crowley had ADHD? Includes “freelance chickens”, one of the most difficult phrases I’ve ever tried to record coherently.
Third-most words: Well, I thought I could go for “third longest,” and then realised that (because, unlike some podficcers, I don’t keep a detailed spreadsheet of my creations with word count, finished length, and a whole lot of other fascinating statistics, and AO3 doesn’t helpfully sort by podfic length tag) this was more work than I was willing to go to, especially on my phone, since I don’t feel like crossing the room and sitting in my office chair again to use the real computer.
So, third longest, ish, maybe, since Sansûkh isn’t finished yet (and anyway, I’m only counting multivoice and group projects when I feel like it, but also this is one of the times, kind of) is Once There Was, Once There Wasn’t, 2022’s Pod Together project from The Sentient Hive. This is a queer playable interactive game inspired by fairytales from around the world, with four different interlinked storylines. Hive projects are some of my favourite things to work on; most of what I did for this one was art, but I also read the Witch. This is approximately 6-7 hours of content. You can read the stories and listen to the audio on AO3, or play the complete, gamified Twine version with interactive puzzles on itch.io.
Fourth-most comments: Good Omens again (surprise surprise), equestrianstatue’s A Kind of Magic. Another very funny piece, because I have a Brand, with some of my personal favourite cover art — the idea for it made me laugh out loud when it occurred to me, and I still think it’s very funny. In a graphic design kind of way.
Fifth-most words: Hm. The sort-by-length thing just isn’t on, is it? Howbout first thing from the bottom with five comments? That might get us into some of the more obscure delights at the bottom of my catalogue… oh. ahahahaha! Not a podfic! This ancient and breathless little number, A Gamble in Darkness, is the backgrounder I wrote for my Toreador character back when I played in a vampire LARP. Well, it does have a few nice turns of phrase floating in the sea of purple prose.
The first-from-the-bottom podfic with five comments is He Who Is Made of Iron, a gently atmospheric Queen’s Thief piece mostly about tea by EternalLibrary. I recorded this very quickly during a rainstorm; it’s an unadorned and simple reading of a nice little story.
Fewest words: An obvious one — it has no words at all. (🌚🦋) 🧑🏫 is the all-emoji translation of Don Marquis’ the lesson of the moth, in collaboration with @olive2read. Includes text-to-speech audio for the full absurdist experience! This one is another personal favourite.
I’ll continue with tagging anyone who wants to do it. heck, if you do have a spreadsheet, use different stats!
4 notes
·
View notes
What with that post about The Lesson of the Moth doing numbers I thought I’d share one of my other archy faves bc that cockroach does not miss. I don’t think the bit about the Aztecs is strictly true but I’ll let him off this one time:
dear boss i was talking with an ant
the other day
and he handed me a lot of
gossip which ants the world around
are chewing over among themselves
i pass it on to you
in the hope that you may relay it to other
human beings and hurt their feelings with it
no insect likes human beings
and if you think you can see why
the only reason i tolerate you is because
you seem less human to me than most of them
here is what the ants are saying
it wont be long now it wont be long
man is making deserts of the earth
it wont be long now
before man will have used it up
so that nothing but ants
and centipedes and scorpions
can find a living on it
man has oppressed us for a million years
but he goes on steadily
cutting the ground from under
his own feet making deserts deserts deserts
we ants remember
and have it all recorded
in our tribal lore
when gobi was a paradise
swarming with men and rich
in human prosperity
it is a desert now and the home
of scorpions ants and centipedes
what man calls civilization
always results in deserts
man is never on the square
he uses up the fat and greenery of the earth
each generation wastes a little more
of the future with greed and lust for riches
north africa was once a garden spot
and then came carthage and rome
and despoiled the storehouse
and now you have sahara
sahara ants and centipedes
toltecs and aztecs had a mighty
civilization on this continent
but they robbed the soil and wasted nature
and now you have deserts scorpions ants and centipedes
and the deserts of the near east
followed egypt and babylon and assyria
and persia and rome and the turk
the ant is the inheritor of tamerlane
and the scorpion succeeds the caesars
america was once a paradise
of timberland and stream
but it is dying because of the greed
and money lust of a thousand little kings
who slashed the timber all to hell
and would not be controlled
and changed the climate
and stole the rainfall from posterity
and it wont be long now
it wont be long
till everything is desert
from the alleghenies to the rockies
the deserts are coming
the deserts are spreading
the springs and streams are drying up
one day the mississippi itself
will be a bed of sand
ants and scorpions and centipedes
shall inherit the earth
men talk of money and industry
of hard times and recoveries
of finance and economics
but the ants wait and the scorpions wait
for while men talk they are making deserts all the time
getting the world ready for the conquering ant
drought and erosion and desert
because men cannot learn
rainfall passing off in flood and freshet
and carrying good soil with it
because there are no longer forests
to withhold the water in the
billion meticulations of the roots
it wont be long now It won't be long
till earth is barren as the moon
and sapless as a mumbled bone
dear boss i relay this information
without any fear that humanity
will take warning and reform
archy
7 notes
·
View notes
POV: you are reading something written by a New Yorker.
43 notes
·
View notes
Archy & Mehitabel
2 notes
·
View notes
Writer Don Marquis with Boston Terrier Pete.
2 notes
·
View notes
The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965)
My rating: 5/10
Considering this is a beach movie (aka "background noise while your grandparents were making out in the theater") this one gets weirdly serious about the slasher/whodunit aspect of the whole thing. Pretty watchable, all things considered.
2 notes
·
View notes
I recently rec'd this to a friend, but I'm going to do a general rec, too.
Read Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers. It has nothing to do with Harry Potter and pre-dates that series by a lot.
This book is pure joy. I love it. When I'm in a bad mood I can cheer myself up by reading sections of it out loud. It is fantastic.
This series of short essays (more or less) and poems (I'm less fond of them) is by Don Marquis (Mar-quiss, weirdly enough), who also penned the much more well known Archy and Mehitabel that I've excerpted before.
Hermione is a privileged young woman who wants to be forward thinking and open minded. So she gathers her little group of serious thinkers together and they listen to various speakers and discuss such deep topics as vibrations and being other-worldly.
It is a product of its time, but is also a product of Hermione who just...tries so hard and gets so much wrong.
And then there's her ongoing, basically catchphrase: Have I (been independent/been untrammeled/vibrated in tune with the Infinite/Utile today/been a Stimulating Influence/etc) or have I FAILED?
The book is available for free here on Project Gutenberg.
To close, I will include some quotes and such from the book.
From "Politics"
I'M thinking of taking up politics in a practical way.
I've never been an active suffragist, you know, on account of that horrid yellow color on the banners and things.
But one must sacrifice Ideals of Beauty to Ideals of Usefulness, mustn't one?
And politics is fascinating; simply FASCINATING!
Going about and organizing working girls, you know, and seeing Corrupt Bosses and enlisting them for Moral Causes, and making one's self felt as a Force — could one make one's self more Utile?
More spiritually Utile?
Utility! That is what our Leaders of Thought need to develop!
Nearly every night before I go to bed I say to myself: "Have I been Utile today? Or have I FAILED?"
Politics, practical politics, will be such an outlet for my personality, too.
And when I reopen my Salon I can make it count for the Cause, too.
From "Hermione on Psychical Research"
And Spiritualism is somehow more — well, er — VULGAR if you get what I mean. The sort of people one cares to know well have dropped Spiritualism for Spiritism.
Though, of course, a ghost is a ghost, whether it is materialized by spiritualism or Spiritism.
I have been often told that I am naturally very clairvoyant — if I were developed I would make a splendid medium. Mediums have seen shapes hovering around my head, and once when I was at school I did some automatic writing.
It was the strangest, easiest thing! I had a pencil in my hand and without thinking of anything in particular at all I just scribbled away, and what I wrote was, "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary; When in the course of human events it becomes necessary," over and over again.
I was quite startled, for the last thing I had been thinking of was an algebra examination, and not history at all. We had had our history examination days before.
I felt as if an unseen hand had reached out of the Silences and grasped mine!
Wasn't it weird?
And I know who it was, too. A distant relative of Mamma's on her father's side, by marriage, was one of the men who signed the Constitution of the United States in Faneuil Hall, in Philadelphia, in 1776, and it was HIS spirit that was trying to de- liver his message through me!
From "How Suffering Purifies One"
Oh, to go through fire and come out purified!
Suffering is wonderful, isn't it? Simply WONDERFUL!
The loveliest man talked to us the other night — to our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know — about social ideals and suffering.
The reason so many attempts to improve things fail, you know, is because the people who try them out haven't suffered personally.
He had the loveliest eyes, this man.
He made me thin[k]. I said to myself, "After all, have I suffered? Have I been purified by fire?"
And I decided that I had — that is spiritually, you know.
The suffering — the spiritual suffering — that I undergo through being misunderstood is something FRIGHTFUL!
Mamma discourages every Cause I take up. So does Papa.
I get no sympathy in my devotion to my ideals.
Only opposition!
From "Fothergil Finch, The Poet of Revolt"
This one is a little different. She is quoting Finch who read her his "greatest" poem.
Look at me!
Behold, I am founding a New Movement!
Observe me. . . . I am in Revolt!
I revolt!
Now persecute me, persecute me, damn you,
persecute me, curse you, persecute me!
Philistine,
Bourgeois,
Slave,
Serf,
Capitalist,
Respectabilities that you are,
Persecute me!
Bah!
You ask me, do you, what am I in revolt against?
Against you, fool, dolt, idiot, against you, against
everything!
Against Heavy, Hell and punctuation . . . against
Life, Death, rhyme and rhythm . . .
Persecute me, now, persecute me, curse you,
persecute me!
Slave that you are . . . what do Marriage,
Tooth-brushes, Nail-files, the Decalogue,
Handkerchiefs, Newton's Law of Gravity, Capital,
Barbers, Property, Publishers, Courts, Rhyming
Dictionaries, Clothes, Dollars, mean to Me?
I am a Giant, I am a Titan, I am a Hercules of Liberty, I am Prometheus, I am the Jess Willard of the New Cerebral Pugilism, I am the Modern Cave Man, I am the Comrade of the Cosmic Urge, I have kicked off the Boots of Superstition, and I run wild along the Milky Way without ingrowing toenails, I am I! Curse you, what are You? You are only You! Nothing more! Ha! Bah! . . . persecute me, now persecute me!
5 notes
·
View notes
Dope on Don Marquis
Born of a July 29, midwestern humorist, poet, novelist, playwright and newspaperman Don Marquis (1878-1937).
Hailing from Walnut, Illinois (two hours west of Chicago), Marquis’s career included stints at the Atlanta Journal, The New York Evening Sun, and The New York Tribune, with later contributions to Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Harper’s, Scribner’s, and Cosmopolitan. He wrote columns…
View On WordPress
1 note
·
View note