NP--the author s desk

[Tyrone Mullet]

It would not be surprising if Pynchon has read Marquis.  It struck me that 
this piece could be an inspiration for Slothrop’s desk.  (Being as how I 
don’t read lit crit, for all I know this may be old news.  If so, please 
accept my apologies for wasting your alls’ precious time.)

     Tyrone “Steve Maas” Mullet

the author s desk
(from _archy does his part_ by Don Marquis)

i climbed upon my boss s desk
to type a flaming ballad
and there i found a heap grotesque
of socks and songs and salad

some swedenborgian dope on hell
with modernistic hunches
remnants of plays that would not jell
and old forgotten lunches

a plate once flushed with pride and pie
now chill with pallid verses
a corkless jug of ink hard by
sobbed out its life with curses

six sad bedraggled things lay there
inertly as dead cats
three sexless rhymes that could not pair
and three discouraged spats

the feet of song be tender things
like to the feet of waiters
and need when winter bites and stings
sesquipedalian gaiters

peter the pup sprawled on the heap
disputing all approaches
or growled and grumbled in his sleep
or waked and snapped at roaches

i found a treatise on the soul
which bragged it undefeated
and a bill for thirteen tons of coal
by fate left unreceipted

books on the modern girl s advance
wrapped in a cutty sark
with honi soit qui mal y pense
worked for its laundry mark

mid broken glass the spider slinks
while memories stir and glow
of olden happy far off drinks
and bottles long ago

such is the litter at the root
of song and story rising
or noisome pipe or cast off boot
feeding and fertilizing

as lilies burgeon from the dirt
into the golden day
dud epic and lost undershirt
survive times slow decay

still burrowing far and deep i found
a razor coldly soapy
and at the center of the mound
some most surprising opi

some modest pages chaste and shy
for pocket poke or sporran
written by archy published by
doubleday and doran

archy the cockroach

-------------------------------------
“Honi soit qui mal y pense“ -- French for “Evil be to him who evil thinks.”

“Cutty Sark” -- "Short shirt" from the garment worn by the witch Nannie in 
Robert Burns's poem Tam o'Shanter.


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