Author: Don Marquis
Category: Humorous
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floor by your desk it was entitled
cockroaches and written by
c l marlatt2 entomologist and acting
chief in the absence of the chief and he
tells a dozen ways of killing roaches boss
what business has the united states
government got
to sick a high salaried
expert onto a poor little roach
please leave me some
more cheerful literature also please
get your typewriter fixed the keys are
working hard again butting them as i
do one at a time with
my head i get awful pains in my
neck writing for you
NOVEMBER 6
Where Is Archy?
HAS ANY ONE SEEN ARCHY?
“Where is Archy?” ask a score or more of his friends. And we are obliged to confess that we don’t know. Has any one seen a Vers Libre Cockroach with a sore head and a dejected manner lately?
Frankly, we fear the worst.
Archy came to us a couple of weeks ago with his head hanging down. This is no figure of speech. His head was hanging down and his neck was wried and lumpy. He asked for a leave of absence. We refused it. There were words. He left anyhow. We fear the worst.
Archy, writing all his communications by the slow and painful process of butting his head against one typewriter key after another, developed a callous on his skull at the same time that his neck muscles began to weaken. He asked us for some sort of head harness, such as football players wear.1
After thinking the request over, we refused it. We cannot afford to encourage contributors in the idea that it is possible to get anything in the way of material recompense out of writing for the Sun Dial.
Buy Archy headgear and next some other poet would want a lead pencil, a pad of paper or even a theatre ticket.
Once that sort of thing starts there’s no telling where it may run to before it stops.
“Archy,” we said, “is the glory you get worth nothing to you? We’re astonished to find you so materialistic! How about art for art’s sake?”
“Well, boss,” he said, “if you won’t get me the harness so I can write without screaming every time I hit a letter, at least let me lay off for a week or two.”
We thought it over. And decided against it. Begin to treat contributors as if they were human and there’s no telling . . . there’s no telling . . . it runs into drinks and lunches the first thing you know.
“Back to the mine!” we cried. . . . Then is when he left us. . . . We still think we did right.
Still, if any one sees a Free Verse Cockroach with a low-hung calloused brow and a wried neck wandering at large, lost and in distress, we will be glad to be informed of his whereabouts.
DECEMBER 20
Arrest That Statue
i was up to central
park yesterday watching some
kids build a snow man when
they were done and had
gone away i looked it
over they had used two
little chunks of wood for
the eyes i sat on one
of these and stared at
the bystanders along came a
prudish looking
lady from flatbush she
stopped and regarded the
snow man i stood
up on my hind legs in
the eye socket and
waved myself at her
horrors she cried even the
snow men in manhattan
are immoral officer arrest
that statue it winked
at me madam said the cop
accept the tribute
as a christmas present
and be happy my own
belief is that some
people have immorality
on the brain
DECEMBER 28
Happy Inspirations
excuse me if my
writing is out of alignment i
fell into a bowl of
egg nog the other
day at the restaurant down
the street which the doctor
says he is glad to
hear you are keeping away
from and when i
emerged i was full of happy
inspirations alas they
vanished ere the break of
day i am sure they
were the most brilliant and
witty things that ever
emanated from the mind of
man or cockroach or poet i
sat inside a mince pie
and laughed and laughed at
them myself the world seemed all
one golden glory boss
i came up the
street to get all this
wonderful stuff onto paper for
you but when i tried to
operate the typewriter
my foot would slip and
by the time i had control
of the machine again
the thoughts had gone
forever it is the
tragedy of the artist
1917
JANUARY 2
That Cockroach Glide
boss you oughta been
here last night we
had a ball on
top of your desk in honor
of your getting it cleaned
for 1917 three
cockroaches a katydid
two spiders and a
peruvian flea that came
in with the decayed
gentleman who tried to sell
you his autobiography in
poetical form the
other day and compromised by
borrowing a dime finally
a thousand legs came along
and made a hit by
dancing a dozen different
dances all at once each
pair of legs keeping step to a
different tune what we
need here worst of
all is two or three crickets
for an orchestra i
am inventing a new
step called that cockroach
glide
JANUARY 27
Archy Gets His Statue Made
Some months ago the friends of Archy, unable to conceal their interest any longer, began to send insects to us by mail. The idea was, perhaps, that Archy condemned to the society of humans and poets, might be languishing for the lack of associations more distinctly entomological. At any rate, there was one week during which we received, in trust for Archy, boxes containing the following insects:
One croton bug, alive.
One small roach, gone before.
One small mutilated roach, gone quite a long way before.
One grasshopper, alive and voting.
One large roach, alive and suffering from overfeeding, in a box which contained also a piece of toast, plastered over with welsh rabbit.
One small red and black spider, gone before.
One infinitesimal smear, purporting to be the physical remains of a defunct flea.
None of these things was acknowledged at the time. It was evident that some little group of serious drinkers were spoofing us, and using Archy as a peg to hang their practical wit upon. We had no bird to feed the insects to, and we did not dare or care to encourage the spread of the pastime by noticing it in print. We sent Archy into the silences for a few weeks, hoping that when he emerged again the Cockroach Shower would have ceased.
But we received last week a pedestrian statue of Archy, which, because of its artistic excellence, we are obliged to notice—and acknowledge. It is by Mrs. Helena Smith Dayton, and represents Archy as we ourself have always imagined him to be—a bit of the scholar, with the scholar’s stoop, a bit of the pedant, the highbrow, determined to mix with lowbrows on terms of equality—a superior insect, resolutely democratic for the moment because of what he might learn—a distinctly literary creat
ure, reaching out to life for literary purposes only, and interested in nothing not susceptible of being ground into grist in the literary mill—not a cockroach reaching up into art from life, but a cockroach consciously condescending to life and leaning toward it from the pedestal of art—a bug being vulgar now and then with an effort and solely for the sake of capturing the franchise of the majorities—a supercilious cockroach hiding his superciliousness under the affectation of being hail-fellow-well-met with all sorts and conditions of men, a spy scurrying among the lower classes, so-called, for the purpose of reporting them amusingly to his particular clientele . . . ; he thinks sincerely that he is seeing life from the under side, whereas he brings to the examination of the under side his literary preconceptions and prejudices.
JANUARY 30
Statue of Myself
say boss but its great to
be famous when i saw that pedestrian
statue of myself on your desk i reflected that not
every one is privileged to see his
monument erected before he dies nor
after either for that matter it
gave me the feeling that i was looking at my own
tombstone erected in memory of my good
deeds how noble i will have to be to live up
to all that i felt just as a person might
feel who was hearing his own funeral
sermon preached over him i
stared at the statue and the statue stared at
me and i resolved in the future to be
a better cockroach of course it doesnt flatter me
any my middle set of legs arent really
that bowed but the intellectual look
on my face is all there
MARCH 3
Going to War or Just Going to Hell
well boss i have
been down to washington to see
if i could find out whether
we were going to war or
just going to hell anyhow i
was looking for statesmen to my
surprise i found quite a
number of cockroaches in
charge of affairs cockroach mann
cockroach
kitchin need i specify further it
made me ashamed of the cockroach
tribe more anon
MARCH 29
More or Less Neutral
well boss there are
some great questions before us these
days such
as which shall i be a militarist or
a pacifist as between the two things i
am more or less neutral some days i
say on with the dance let war be
unconfined i
am a militarist other days i shout let
loose the dogs of peace and the
average i strike is one of complete
neutrality between the two last evening
after
you left some of the gang gathered
on your desk a couple of cockroaches
a red eyed
spider a mouse with a set of german
military
whiskers who is believed to be a
spy a big blue bottle fly that has been
asleep behind the radiator all winter
and we had
all decided on militarism when in blew a
hornet what is the question before
house he
asked and when we told him he said if
this bunch is
for militarism count me a pacifist
or vice versa he said
anything for trouble i especially hate
spiders my grandfather got tangled up
in a web little red eye do you want
any of my
game i have not said a word remarked
the little red
eyed spider stranger go in peace you
hadn t better
say a word either said the hornet
i give you
warning that wherever i look i
create a barred zone i
will sink you without visit or search
stranger
said little red eye i never brag but
my bite
is poison where my tongue stabs a
life ceases if i was to spit on the floor a
poison flower would bloom there i
never boast myself
said the hornet i am a quiet person
but it is
only fair to tell you that i can lick my
weight in
german measles declare yourself
spider whatever you
are i am the other thing stranger said
the spider i
advise you to begin nothing that you are
not able to carry to a conclusion i feel
sorry for you stranger i hate to see an
innocent thing from the suburbs get
entangled with
a concentrated essence of pestilence like
myself come come said the hornet let
the note writing
cease i dare you dare me to do what asked
the spider dare
you to live any longer said the hornet
and they
went at it then the results were fatal
to both the
hornet stung the spider to death
and died of his own
wounds crying out for water to
the last watching
that fight made me more neutral
than ever if
possible
MARCH 30
Between Him and His Masterpiece
boss why dont you get a
ribbon put into your typewriter it is only
after the most desperate exertions that
i am able to pound out these few lines i
had to get a sheet of carbon paper
and insert it between two sheets of white paper
and fix it in the machine in order to
write at all1 and would never have got it
done if it hadnt been that mehitabel the
cat and all the rest of the gang
around here helped me i had something
important i wanted to write you but all this
frightful physical labor has driven it out
of my mind it is always so with the
artist by the time he has overcome the
difficulties that lie between him and
his masterpiece
he is tired i wish you would get me an
electric typewriter and why not have me
endowed so i would not have to worry about
material things at all i would like to write
and eat and sleep and not work at anything else
APRIL 16
War Times1
well boss we may
be legally at war but
i am derned if i can
make myself feel like it was war
times wait says mehitabel the
cat till the food shortage comes then
you will know it is war
times all right as far as food is
concerned i answered her it is war time
most of the time with me
anyhow boss i don’t like to be always
hinting but if you could
establish something more like a
regular ration for me i would feel
more like devoting myself to my
art
APRIL 17
Agate for You, Archy, Just to Curb Your Pride
thank you boss for
printing me up near the
top of the column the
other day i
am not a vain cockroach but
it does me good
to feel that merit will finally
be recognized if i
could only attain
brevier type now my cup
would
be full you
may hear little more from
me for some days as
i am engaged on a literary
work of some importance it is
nothing more nor less
than the life story of
mehitabel the cat she is
dictating it a word
at a time and all
the bunch gather around to listen but
i am rewriting it as i go along
boss i wish we
could do something
for mehitabel she is
a cat that has seen
better days she has
drunk cream at fourteen
cents the half pint
in her time and now she
is thankful for a
stray fish head from a
garbage cart but she is
cheerful under it all toujours
gai is ever her word
toujours gai kiddoo drink she
says played a great
part in it all she
was taught to drink
beer by a kitchen maid she
trusted and was
abducted from a luxurious home
on one occasion in a
taxicab while under
the influence of beer which
she feels certain had been
drugged but still her
word is toujours gai my
kiddo toujours gai wotto hell
luck may change
APRIL 19
The Story of Mehitabel the Cat
well boss i promised to tell you
something of the life story of
mehitabel the cat archy says she i
was a beautiful kitten and as good
and innocent as i was beautiful my
mother was an angora you dont
look angora i said your fur
should show it did
i say angora said mehitabel it must
have been a slip of the tongue my
mother was high born and of