the lesson of the moth
By Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927
i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
archy
haha. i cant help but laugh on this one. not that its ‘funny’ in every sense of the word but it definitely helped me pucker up despite having a period today. no, not femenine period. dark period. oh well here is something i wrote some hours ago and thought never in my sane mind post in my blog. well i’m posting it anyway. hehe just a bit of a keyhole view on what goes on with me or us inside the house. Skip this , but read if you must.
Love is food on the table served hot on cold weather ( and may be served hot or cold again for dinner depending on the chief cooks preference. Be thankful you have a mom who cooks and re-cooks). Pain is to be served none ( be thankful, there was never a time).
Love is to be able to play outside. Pain is to be fetched home ( a mud six-inches deep are for pigs . . who ‘wallow’ "you show me a kid who resembles a degenerate qaudruped, i’ll you show you youre way to a cage).
to be loved is to be given a chance for education (aside from the ones you learn on television) to incur pain is to ‘out-wise’ baffled parents or to use what you learned as an ‘escape route over crime’ against people you love.
to be loved is to be clothed on clothes laboured with L-O-V-E. pain is when they say ‘no’ on a mall-wide sale. (yes, they may be dug up from a nearby ‘ukay-ukay’ but they’re LEVIS, GUESS, MOSSIMO. read, it’s SIGNATURED!)
to be loved is to be sheltered in a 24-year old house with a taste of Picasso’s Abstract designs and various interiors. pray she doesn’t acquire taste for a minimalistic household ( Yes. the teevee and the stereo has to go and live through a cardinal rule: you can’t bounce the ball on a just-painted wall, anymore, coz there wont be any.)
to be loved is to be given a chance to say " My underwear kinda hurts here, on the sides. don’t you think i’ve o utgrown these Barney briefs, the ones i got on my 8th birthday?" while pain is somewhere else, somewhere far. M
aybe in Africa where children survived on none or in Kuwait where they shoot children: Naked! But no, not in this house".
june 17, 2007
Prometheus Unbound
Demogorgon:
This is the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for Heaven’s despotism, [4.555]
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs [4.560]
And folds over the world its healing wings.
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, [4.565]
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o’er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; [4.570]
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; [4.575]
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.
Exuent
June 15, 2007
"breathe" the fine soothsayer says. so i suck in air that can suck life out of a crocodile. yes, i know. i’ll probably gonna do a couple of it, ‘need’ a couple or more. suck in air, suck in fear. i can picture the entire procedure in my head and it made everything twice as hard no matter how i fan it out. Dear god it’s gonna hurt like hell. . . for someone who’s inconveniently faced with such predicament for almost a year what’s an hour’s worth of anguish than to suffer to an extent? no need to romanticize. it’s just a freakin ingrown. good ol’ dr. Love (amores) will have to take the damned thing off and . and what? I dunno. wait for it to grow again. that easy huh? to be honest i dread this day like one would on a deathrow. slow . . . suffocating death. just breathe . . ease up. whatever does not kill you makes you stronger. smart talk. you coward. the moment dr. love plunged the syringe down the area, i thought i’d pass out. it would’ve been more convenient. you know, to loose consciousness deliberately so i won’t have to witness, no wait, feel every horrid detail of the operation. i am not that tough you know. was never in any given circumstances. i know i can ‘talk’ my way out of an outrageously inane conversation. there’s no way i can ‘walk’ my way out of this one now. this baby’s gotta go. surrender. surrender to the minute yet tormenting pain of a needle prick, the extraction, the phobia it incurs. i won’t die although it almost felt like it. my sister, looking twice as scared as i am, is watching me die. despite the situation i was in i still have the nerve to stick my tongue out to her. happy birthday to my little soothsayer tonet who helped me conquer my fear. "think happy thoughts"– a desperate attempt to detach from the situation. . . think hard . . toenail in visual obscurity, looking dead, ravaged and bloody . . no it does not help. . .archy that verse libre poet that transmigated into a cockroach and mehitabel the cleopatra incarnate. it was painful in my head! it always makes things worse you know, thinking hard about it. the moment the doctor loosened the torniquet i know i survived death. funny. ha-ha. i took the extracted nail. that useless thing in my system that nearly killed me, or so I thought and cursed it hard. wotthehell.
warty bliggens, the toad
By Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927
i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially
planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain
thought out and prepared
for him
do not tell me
said warty bliggens
that there is not a purpose
in the universe
the thought is blasphemy
a little more
conversation revealed
that warty bliggens
considers himself to be
the center of the same
universe
the earth exists
to grow toadstools for him
to sit under
the sun to give him light
by day and the moon
and wheeling constellations
to make beautiful
the night for the sake of
warty bliggens
to what act of yours
do you impute
this interest on the part
of the creator
of the universe
i asked him
why is it that you
are so greatly favored
ask rather
said warty bliggens
what the universe
has done to deserve me
if i were a
human being i would
not laugh
too complacently
at poor warty bliggens
for similar
absurdities
have only too often
lodged in the crinkles
of the human cerebrum
archy
