Selected Poems

don marquis'
archy and mehitabel (1916)

 

featuring

lucy mcmichael
temi rose
don brennan
elena sapora

archy and mehitabel

 

the cheerful cricket

 

 

featuring

temi rose as archy

elena sapora as the cricket

 

 

 

 

recorded january 30th 2011 ~
at the ensemble studio theatre nyc

 

 

 

 

 

archy and mehitabel home

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the text of this poem is unabridged,
but the recorded text may have been altered

i can t see for the
life of me what there is
about crickets that makes people
call them jolly they
are the parrots of the insect race
crying
cheer up cheer up cheer up
over and over again til you want to
swat them i hate one of these
grinning skipping smirking
senseless optimists worse
than i do a cynic or a
pessimist there was
one in here the other day i was
feeling pretty well
and pleased with the world when
he started that confounded
cheer up cheer up cheer up stuff
fellow i said i am
cheerful enough or i was til
a minute ago but you
get on my nerves it s all right
to be bright and merry
but what s the use
pretending you have more
cheerfulness than there is in the
world you sound
insincere to me you insist on
it too much you make
me want to sit in
a tomb and listen to the
screech owls telling
ghost stories to the tree toads i
would rather that i heard a door squeak  have you only one record the sun
shone in my soul today before
you came and you
have made me think of the
world s woe groan
once or i will go mad your
voice floats around the world like
the ghost of a man
who laughed himself to death
listening to funny stories
the boss told i listen to you
and know why shakespeare
killed off mercutio so
early in the play it is only
hamlet that can
find material for five acts
cheer up cheer up cheer up he
says bo i told him i
wish i was the
woolworth tower i would fall
on you cheer up cheer up cheer
up he says again

archy

the coming of archy

archy interviews a pharaoh

the wail of archy

archy creates a situation

archy hears from mars

unjust

archy at the tomb of napoleon

the song of mehitabel

mehitabel was once cleopatra

mehitabel's extensive past

why mehitabel jumped

mehitabel has an adventure

mehitabel finds a home

mehitabel sees paris

cheerio my deario

a spider and a fly

the lesson of the moth

the hen and the oriole

ghosts

the dissipated hornet

the flattered lightning bug

the cockroach who had been to hell