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as a representative
of the insect world
i have often wondered
on what man bases his claims
to superiority
everything he knows he has had
to learn whereas we insects are born
knowing everything we need to know
one thing the human
bean never seems to
get into it is the
fact that humans
appear just as unnecessary to
cockroaches as cockroaches
do to humans
all the world shall come at
last to the multitudinous maws
of insects
a man thinks
he amounts to a lot
but to a mosquito
a man is
merely
something to eat
a louse i
used to know
told me that
millionaires and
bums tasted
about alike
to him
the trouble with
most people is
that they
lose their sense of
proportion
of what use is
it for a
queen bee to fall in
love with a bull
man eats the big fish
the big fish eat the
little fish
the little fish
eat insects
in the water
the water insects
eat the water plants
the water plants
eat mud
mud eats man
one of the saddest
creatures i ever saw
was a turtle who said
he was a thousand
years old
it is a good
thing not to be too
aristocratic
the oldest and
most pedigreed
families in this
country are the
occupants of various sarcophagi
in the museums
but it is dull associating
with mummies no
matter how royal their
blood used to be when
they had blood
it is like living in
philadelphia
honesty is a good
thing but
it is not profitable to
its possessor
unless it is
kept under control
if you are not
honest at all
everybody hates you
and if you are
absolutely honest
you get martyred.
as i was crawling
through the holes i
a swiss cheese
the other
day it occurred to
me to wonder
what a swiss cheese
would think if
a swiss cheese
could think and after
cogitating for some
time i said to myself
if a swiss cheese
could think
it would think that
a swiss cheese
was the most important
thing in the world
just as everything that
can think at all
does think about itself
a good many
failures are happy
because they don t
realize it many a
cockroach believes
himself as beautiful
as a butterfly
have a heart o have
a heart and
let them dream on
boss i believe
that the millennium will
get here some day
but i could
compile quite a list
of persons
who will have
to go
first
when the proud ibexes start from sleep
in the early alpine morns
at once from crag to crag they leap
alignting on their horns
and may a dozen times rebound
ere resting haughty on the ground
i do not like their tirivial pride
nor think them truly dignified
one queer thing about
spring gardens is
that so many people
use them to
raise spinach in
instead of food
everybody has two kinds of friends
one kind tries to run
his affairs for him
and the other kind
well i will be darned if i can remember
the other kind
now and then
there is a person born
who is so unlucky
that he runs into accidents
which started out to happen
to somebody else
let us rejoice
and fromus tear
in glee
our winter
underwear
and let us
dance
and let us
swat
the harps of spring
just as soon as the
uplifters get
a country reformed it
slips into a nose dive
if monkey glands
did restore your youth
what would you do with it
question mark
just what you did before
interrogation point
[Don Marquis, The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel]