The Best of Archy and Mehitabel Read Free

machine, one slow letter after another. He could not work the capital letters, and he had a great deal of difficulty operating the mechanism that shifts the paper so that a fresh line may be started. We never saw a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely in all our lives before. After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in profusion.
    Congratulating ourself that we had left a sheet of paper in the machine the night before so that all this work had not been in vain, we made an examination, and this is what we found:
    expression is the need of my soul
    i was once a vers libre bard
    but i died and my soul went into the body of a cockroach
    it has given me a new outlook upon life
    i see things from the under side now
    thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket
    but your paste is getting so stale i can t eat it

    so stale i can t eat it
    there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have
    removed she nearly ate me the other night why dont she
    catch rats that is what she is supposed to be for
    there is a rat here she should get without delay
    most of these rats here are just rats
    but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him
    he used to be a poet himself
    night after night i have written poetry for you
    on your typewriter
    and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet
    comes out of his hole when it is done

    reads it and sniffs at it
    and reads it and sniffs at it
    he is jealous of my poetry
    he used to make fun of it when we were both human
    he was a punk poet himself
    and after he has read it he sneers
    and then he eats it
    i wish you would have mehitabel kill that rat
    or get a cat that is onto her job
    and i will write you a series of poems showing how things look
    to a cockroach
    that rats name is freddy
    the next time freddy dies i hope he wont be a rat
    but something smaller i hope i will be a rat
    in the next transmigration and freddy a cockroach
    i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then
    dont you ever eat any sandwiches in your office
    i havent had a crumb of bread for i dont know how long
    or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings
    and paste leave a piece of paper in your machine
    every night you can call me archy

mehitabel was once cleopatra
    boss i am disappointed in
    some of your readers they
    are always asking how does
    archy work the shift so as to get a
    new line or how does archy do
    this or do that they
    are always interested in technical
    details when the main question is
    whether the stuff is
    literature or not
    i wish you would leave
    that book of george moores on
    the floor
    mehitabel the cat and i want to
    read it i have discovered that
    mehitabel s soul formerly inhabited a
    human also at least that
    is what mehitabel is claiming these
    days it may be she got jealous of
    my prestige anyhow she and
    i have been talking it over in a
    friendly way who were you
    mehitabel i asked her i was
    cleopatra once she said well i said i

    i was cleopatra once she said
    suppose you lived in a palace you bet
    she said and what lovely fish dinners
    we used to have and licked her chops
    mehitabel would sell her soul for
    a plate of fish any day i told her i thought
    you were going to say you were
    the favorite wife of the emperor
    valerian he was some cat nip eh
    mehitabel but she did not get me
    archy

the song of mehitabel
    this is the song of mehitabel
    of mehitabel the alley cat
    as i wrote you before boss
    mehitabel is a believer
    in the pythagorean
    theory of the transmigration
    of the soul and she claims
    that formerly her spirit
    was incarnated in the body
    of cleopatra
    that was a long time ago
    and one must not be
    surprised if mehitabel
    has forgotten some of her
    more regal manners
    i have had my ups and downs
    but wotthehell wotthehell
    yesterday sceptres and crowns
    fried oysters and velvet gowns
    and today i herd with bums
    but