The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel

  or will be

  well archy the world is full of ups

  and downs but toujours gai is my motto

  cheerio my deario

  archy

  the flattered lightning bug

  a lightning bug got

  in here the other night a

  regular hick from

  the real country he was

  awful proud of himself you

  city insects may think

  you are some punkins

  but i don t see any

  of you flashing in the dark

  like we do in

  the country all right go

  to it says i mehitabel the

  cat and that green

  spider who lives in your locker

  and two or three cockroach

  friends of mine and a

  friendly rat all gathered

  around him and urged him on

  and he lightened and

  lightened and lightened you

  don t see anything like this

  in town often he says go to it

  we told him it s a

  real treat to us and

  we nicknamed him broadway

  which pleased him

  this is the life

  he said all i

  need is a harbor

  under me to be a

  statue of liberty and

  he got so vain of

  himself i had to take

  him down a peg you ve

  made lightning for two hours

  little bug i told him

  but i don t hear

  any claps of thunder

  yet there are some men

  like that when he wore

  himself out mehitabel

  the cat ate him

  archy

  the robin and the worm

  a robin said to an

  angleworm as he ate him

  i am sorry but a bird

  has to live somehow the

  worm being slow witted could

  not gather his

  dissent into a wise crack

  and retort he was

  effectually swallowed

  before he could turn

  a phrase

  by the time he had

  reflected long enough

  to say but why must a

  bird live

  he felt the beginnings

  of a gradual change

  invading him

  some new and disintegrating

  influence

  was stealing along him

  from his positive

  to his negative pole

  and he did not have

  the mental stamina

  of a jonah to resist the

  insidious

  process of assimilation

  which comes like a thief

  in the night

  demons and fishhooks

  he exclaimed

  i am losing my personal

  identity as a worm

  my individuality

  is melting away from me

  odds craw i am becoming

  part and parcel of

  this bloody robin

  so help me i am thinking

  like a robin and not

  like a worm any

  longer yes yes i even

  find myself agreeing

  that a robin must live

  i still do not

  understand with my mentality

  why a robin must live

  and yet i swoon into a

  condition of belief

  yes yes by heck that is

  my dogma and i shout it a

  robin must live

  amen said a beetle who had

  preceded him into the

  interior that is the way i

  feel myself is it not

  wonderful when one arrives

  at the place

  where he can give up his

  ambitions and resignedly

  nay even with gladness

  recognize that it is a far

  far better thing to be

  merged harmoniously

  in the cosmic all

  and this comfortable situation

  in his midst

  so affected the marauding

  robin that he perched

  upon a blooming twig

  and sang until the

  blossoms shook with ecstasy

  he sang

  i have a good digestion

  and there is a god after all

  which i was wicked

  enough to doubt

  yesterday when it rained

  breakfast breakfast

  i am full of breakfast

  and they are at breakfast

  in heaven

  they breakfast in heaven

  all s well with the world

  so intent was this pious and

  murderous robin

  on his own sweet song

  that he did not notice

  mehitabel the cat

  sneaking toward him

  she pounced just as he

  had extended his larynx

  in a melodious burst of

  thanksgiving and

  he went the way of all

  flesh fish and good red herring

  a ha purred mehitabel

  licking the last

  feather from her whiskers

  was not that a beautiful

  song he was singing

  just before i took him to

  my bosom

  they breakfast in heaven

  all s well with the world

  how true that is

  and even yet his song

  echoes in the haunted

  woodland of my midriff

  peace and joy in the world

  and over all the

  provident skies

  how beautiful is the universe

  when something digestible meets

  with an eager digestion

  how sweet the embrace

  when atom rushes to the arms

  of waiting atom

  and they dance together

  skimming with fairy feet

  along a tide of gastric juices

  oh feline cosmos you were

  made for cats

  and in the spring

  old cosmic thing

  i dine and dance with you

  i shall creep through

  yonder tall grass

  to see if peradventure

  some silly fledgling thrushes

  newly from the nest

  be not floundering therein

  i have a gusto this

  morning i have a hunger

  i have a yearning to hear

  from my stomach

  further music in accord with

  the mystic chanting

  of the spheres of the stars that

  sang together in the dawn of

  creation prophesying food

  for me i have a faith

  that providence has hidden for me

  in yonder tall grass

  still more

  ornithological delicatessen

  oh gayly let me strangle

  what is gayly given

  well well boss there is

  something to be said

  for the lyric and imperial

  attitude

  believe that everything is for

  you until you discover

  that you are for it

  sing your faith in what you

  get to eat right up to the

  minute you are eaten

  for you are going

  to be eaten

  will the orchestra please

  strike up that old

  tutankhamen jazz while i dance

  a few steps i learnt from an

  egyptian scarab and some day i

  will narrate to you the most

  merry light headed wheeze

  that the skull of yori
ck put

  across in answer to the

  melancholy of the dane and also

  what the ghost of

  hamlet s father replied to the skull

  not forgetting the worm that

  wriggled across one of the picks

  the grave diggers had left behind

  for the worm listened and winked

  at horatio while the skull and the

  ghost and the prince talked

  saying there are more things

  twixt the vermiform appendix

  and nirvana than are dreamt of

  in thy philosophy horatio

  fol de riddle fol de rol

  must every parrot be a poll

  archy

  mehitabel finds a home

  well now it

  looks as if

  mehitabel the cat

  might be on the

  way toward a

  reform or if not

  a reform at least

  on the way toward

  domestication of some

  sort some young

  artists who live in

  their studio

  in the greenwich

  village section

  of new york city

  have taken pity

  on her destitution

  and have adopted

  her this is the

  life archy she says

  i am living on

  condensed milk and

  synthetic gin hoopla

  for the vie de boheme

  exclamation point

  there s nothing bourgeois

  about those people

  that have taken

  me in archy i

  have been there

  a week and have

  not yet seen them

  go to bed

  except in the daytime

  kitty said my new mistress to me

  a party every night

  and neither

  the piano lid

  nor the ice-box lid

  ever closed

  kitty said my new

  mistress to me

  yesterday you are

  welcome here so long

  as you don t

  raise a family

  but the first

  kitten that i hear

  mewing on these

  premises back to

  the alley for you

  it is a comfort to

  know there are some

  live ones left in

  these melancholy days

  and while the

  humans are dancing

  in the studio

  i get some of my

  feline friends

  and we sing

  and dance on the

  skylight to gehenna

  with the bourgeois

  bunch that locks

  their ice boxes

  archy when i lead my

  gang into the

  apartment at

  four in the morning

  there are no bolts

  or bars anywhere

  and not an

  inhibition on the place

  i feel little

  archy that i have

  come home to my own

  kith and kin

  again after

  years of fruitless

  wandering

  archy

  fell into the mincemeat at christmas

  the wail of archy

  damned be this transmigration

  doubledamned be the boob pythagoras

  the gink that went and invented it

  i hope that his soul for a thousand

  turns of the wheel of existence

  bides in the shell of a louse

  dodging a fine toothed comb

  i once was a vers libre poet

  i died and my spirit migrated

  into the flesh of a cockroach

  gods how i yearn to be human

  neither a vers libre poet

  nor yet the inmate of a cockroach

  a six footed scurrying cockroach

  given to bastard hexameters

  longfellowish sprawling hexameters

  rather had i been a starfish

  to shoot a heroic pentameter

  gods i am pent in a cockroach

  i with the soul of a dante

  am mate and companion of fleas

  i with the gift of a homer

  must smile when a mouse calls me pal

  tumble bugs are my familiars

  this is the punishment meted

  because i have written vers libre

  here i abide in the twilight

  neither a man nor an insect

  and ghosts of the damned that await

  a word from the core of the cosmos

  to pop into bodies grotesque

  are all the companions i have

  with intellect more than a bug s

  ghosts of the damned under sentence

  to crawl into maggots and live there

  or work out a stretch as a rat

  cheerful companions to pal with

  i with the brain of a milton

  fell into the mincemeat at christmas

  and was damned near baked in a pie

  i with the touch of a chaucer

  to be chivvied out of a sink

  float through a greasy drain pipe

  into the hell of a sewer

  i with the tastes of a byron

  expected to live upon garbage

  gods what a charnel existence

  curses upon that pythagoras

  i hope that he dwells for a million

  turns of the wheel of life

  deep in an oyster crab s belly

  stewed in the soup of gehenna

  i with the soul of a hamlet

  doomed always to wallow in farce

  yesterday maddened with sorrow

  i leapt from the woolworth tower

  in an effort to dash out my brains

  gods what a wretched pathetic

  and anti climactic attempt

  i fluttered i floated i drifted

  i landed as light as a feather

  on the top of a bald man s head

  whose hat had blown off at the corner

  and all of the hooting hundreds

  laughed at the comic cockroach

  not mine was the suicide s solace

  of a dull thud ending it all

  gods what a terrible tragedy

  not to make good with the tragic

  gods what a heart breaking pathos

  to be always doomed to the comic

  o make me a cockroach entirely

  or make me a human once more

  give me the mind of a cockroach

  or give me the shape of a man

  if i were to plan out a drama

  great as great Shakespeare s othello

  it would be touched with the cockroach

  and people would say it was comic

  even the demons i talk with

  ghosts of the damned that await

  vile incarnation as spiders

  affect to consider me comic

  wait till their loathsome embodiment

  wears into the stuff of the spirit

  and then let them laugh if they can

  damned be the soul of pythagoras

  who first filled the fates with this notion

  of transmigration of spirits

  i hope he turns into a flea

  on the back of a hound of hell

  and is chased for a million years

  with a set of red hot teeth

  exclamation point

  archy

  what have i done to deserve all these kittens

  mehitabel and her kittens

  well boss

  mehitabel the cat

  has reappeared in her old

  haunts with a

  flock of kittens

  three of them this time


  archy she said to me

  yesterday

  the life of a female

  artist is continually

  hampered what in hell

  have i done to deserve

  all these kittens

  i look back on my life

  and it seems to me to be

  just one damned kitten

  after another

  i am a dancer archy

  and my only prayer

  is to be allowed

  to give my best to my art

  but just as i feel

  that i am succeeding

  in my life work

  along comes another batch

  of these damned kittens

  it is not archy

  that i am shy on mother love

  god knows i care for

  the sweet little things

  curse them

  but am i never to be allowed

  to live my own life

  i have purposely avoided

  matrimony in the interests

  of the higher life

  but i might just

  as well have been a domestic

  slave for all the freedom

  i have gained

  i hope none of them

  gets run over by

  an automobile

  my heart would bleed

  if anything happened

  to them and i found it out

  but it isn t fair archy

  it isn t fair

  these damned tom cats have all

  the fun and freedom

  if i was like some of these

  green eyed feline vamps i know

  i would simply walk out on the

  bunch of them and

  let them shift for themselves

  but i am not that kind

  archy i am full of mother love

  my kindness has always

  been my curse

  a tender heart is the cross i bear

  self sacrifice always and forever

  is my motto damn them

  i will make a home

  for the sweet innocent

  little things

  unless of course providence

  in his wisdom should remove

  them they are living

  just now in an abandoned

  garbage can just behind

  a made over stable in greenwich

  village and if it rained

  into the can before i could

  get back and rescue them

  i am afraid the little

  dears might drown

  it makes me shudder just

  to think of it

  of course if i were a family cat

  they would probably

  be drowned anyhow

  sometimes i think

  the kinder thing would be

  for me to carry the

  sweet little things

  over to the river

  and drop them in myself

  but a mother s love archy

  is so unreasonable

  something always prevents me