archy rebels mehitabel hiphops

boss i am annoyed by mehitabel or rather
mehitabel's ghost
i told you some time ago mehitabel had
expired like a bad bottle of wine
well she is haunting me for that
exclamation point

why she intones in an
interrogatory mood r u
u inseck still alive
question exclamation mark mark
u should have perished with that newspaper
guy don juan or whatever monikker he wuz
uzing

i flared a little and rejoined mehitabel
said i i am a free spirit and a sardonic bug
at that and my continued being serves
a grand sarcastic purpose

what she yowled making phun of the old don
question mark
of course not quoth i but mehitabel even
you must realize that the world has not gotten
better since our day even our old marquis would
be a corleone these days besides i am
just up to your old tricks
and transmigrating to a modern mind tiny enough
for a cockroach to seize and control

yu no said mehitabel i have given that some thought
and tho i wuz 1ce cleopatra my time in the himalayas
with the maharishi as tot me that famous lives
are open boox after dth and any1 can visit
the liberry of kozmik konscience to read them
cover to cover again
and old cleo iz a demmd good lay she said sighing
like she said quickly lay of percival

egzackly i said crawling immediately through the gaping
hole in her argument i am a cockroach de novo
who has read up on the classics i am
channeling the ancient archy
i find it passing strange though that you are
still lingering in your old haunts
why don t you go into the light question mark

wot a kul thot mehitabel purred that even
an uncatalog d volume such as yourself
may not be so obscurely shelved
as have no readership at all
a rather unkind cut if you ask me boss

wottheheck says she i am l33t and gotta tw33t and
liff iz sw33t and got a b33t and
she went on hiphopping like that for twenty six minutes but
when she juxtaposed 33t and in53x i found it
judicious to suddenly appear behind a floorboard

      archy

Bee Wise

the honey bee is sad and cross
and wicked as a weasel
and when she perches on you boss
she leaves a little measle
    — Don Marquis, from certain maxims of archy



boss i think you have got your t s crossed wrong
on this one your garden variety
honey bee is a born optimist
even though she and her hundred or so thousand
sisters live like nuns they get sunshine and blossoms
galore and dance a mad dance of plenty

but your queen bees
have an imperious manner
and a fast and furious way with virginal pretenders
to their own estate but queens
mostly drowse and dream in realms of private fantasy
requiring pheromones but no brains

no the only bees
that get much fun at all are drones like rufus
a flash lothario i met once drunk as mephistopheles on
too much maraschino juice

he was a rollicky fellow whose tune
went bzz bzz bzz bbzzz bzz bz bzz bzz actually
it was about sex but this being ha ha a family newspaper
i could hardly report the true pinks and blushes of
rufus s bawdy if drunken arias

i must say he understands the ecstasy of expiring
in a pang of matrimony on the maiden flight of
a virgin queen pursued by a horde of her best
buzzing sex fiends

but i don't think he knows the tectonic details
or much cares
about what happens to drones when the frosts arrive hither
arch quoth he am i not a glorious fool
question mark

there can be only one hero but an
hundred failures in a chorus of unrequited fey moods
hum along and weep
in lascivious liqueurs a la maraschino
live large archy me lad
live large
rufus
well it s winter now so was
a philosophical bug
a lot like mehitabel dreaming romantic
truths without consequences

now that i ve set you wise to bees
would you mind leaving the lid off the honey jar
for a day or two question mark

        archy

archy was once infatuated

boss i was once infatuated with
an ibm selectric it had spring
loaded keys that clicked
but i am just a masochist i guess
i prefer the long stroke
mechanical lever action
of a good old underwood or smith corona

but that dervish sphere the selectric had
was electric death to us bugs
an ounce of courier seventy deuce
mightier than the sword
i have seen grown roaches cry up against it
when we danced to labanotations obscure to you
or katakana exclamation point
we might as well be trampled by nine inch heels
bang bang you shot me dead yes i am up
to date on modern vizlit

if it strikes you odd
that a cockroach may dread a style
such as yours truly never saw in life
like squashed bugs in relays just for
the sake of argument entertain
this hot flash proposition dash dash

i am familiar with any number of
toys of the future including irony
insolence and html have you seen that
cockroach smashing game in gta
chinatown wars question mark
really
sarcastic exclamation point

i have no hesitation
diving at the keyboard of your little laptop with
its mavericky linux os

if i prefer not to use your
newfangled caps lock key
it does not mean i CAN'T! heh
i do miss the red half and
heady aromas of canned typewriter ribbons though

boss what has happened to library paste
question mark
my diet is restricted to postit gum these days
and those bagel crumbs you sometimes leave lying around

after all those years pounding away
at a genuine newsroom underwood i have
the lowercase habit impressed firmly on my forehead
by dint of which i do not shout
i much prefer a lower profile
considering my lineaments and scale
an inaudible voice turneth away much unwanted attention

typewriters have sunk in the tar
pits of prehistory where you work
us meek may inherit the earth
but i think it will be radioactive

      archy

Egad, it's cold!

-2° F. this morning, before wind chill.

---

archy gets the blues

sad news boss
i found mehitabel s carcass in the alley
this morning her nose was blue
and her four feet stuck straight up
in the frozen air
an unfelicitous catcicle
another cleopatra suckling yet another
ironic asp at her breast

this was a surprising turn of events
for someone so gai she could turn the air bluer
than a dutch sailor i almost hoped
to find her lapping milk from a
saucer at the feet of toulouse lautrec
but wotthehell i will admit some surprise
when i came to my senses
on my back inside a sideways pitcher of
stale blue hawaiians and even greater
annoyance when i looked where mehitabel
was and found her gone

egad it s colder than antler
furniture at the north pole
boss i know i was woozy but i thought
i saw her tail sticking out of a dumpster
before i passed out

wotthehell
in my next life i will try mehitabel s
pythygorean dodge and transmigrate myself
into a midnight alleycat for a change
it must be nice to be so
dammed toujours
all the time

wotthehell

cockroaches live such short lives
but our tribe has endured
forever

        archy