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GO-Events Book Fest
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Published:
2021-03-09
Updated:
2021-03-17
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2,194
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5/10
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the lives and times of crowley and aziraphale

Summary:

if you leave this laptop open
i will write you poems
about my life
as a cockroach
and ex-demon
and about aziraphale the alley cat
probably a lot about him
if i know myself at all
sure im a cockroach now
its a new perspective
but some things never change
you can call me crowley

Notes:

Archy, the cockroach who composed his poems by jumping around on a typewriter keyboard, made his newspaper debut in 1922 with the assistance of the journalist Don Marquis. These poems often featured the adventures of Archy's friend Mehitabel the alley cat and her many past lives. Reincarnation--samsara, eternal return, fanfiction, call it what you will--has restarted the cycle with new participants.
Thank you to the organizers of GO-Events Book Fest for their role in perpetuating the cycle.

Chapter 1: you can call me crowley

Chapter Text

Our house is old and like all old houses it is home to many occupants in addition to our human selves. Among these are rats, sadly, and where there are rats there are stray cats, though these felines keep themselves to themselves in the alleyway.
 
But my first thought, despite this company, was that the entity operating my laptop was a ghost. Or perhaps a ghost and a rat, at the same time, since even then I did not like to make speciesist assumptions about the likely inhabitants of the afterlife. Or possibly, as I have often suspected must be the case before it began spewing poems apparently of its own accord, my laptop was simply possessed by a demon. Or perhaps some combination of all three—there are more things in Heaven and Earth, OS 11, than are dreamt of in your binary logic. 

Since these events have been reported on social media and so are accepted as truth by some substantial portion of the population, I don’t mind making a statement about the events that transpired on my laptop in what seems like the recent past, although after a year of quarantine time has no meaning so honestly who knows.

When I went into my home office earlier than usual one morning, I found a gigantic cockroach jumping around on my keyboard.

He didn’t see me, so I watched him. He would climb up the screen and then launch himself, face downward, so the full force of his body had enough impact to press the keys even on a disastrous macbook keyboard of the kind I am doomed, no doubt by a less writer-friendly demon, to possess. So he went, one slow letter after another. 

I can truly say that I have never seen a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely. It is understandable that given the intense labor of his writing process, he left off the extra keystrokes necessary for capital letters and most punctuation. Since I had exorcised the autocorrect demons in a prior fit of pique, he was spared that indignity at least. After about an hour of this excruciating poetic labor, he crawled, exhausted, into one of the piles of draft printouts that are always littering the floor under my desk.

When I looked at the document open on the laptop screen, this is what I found. Since my browser windows are almost exclusively dedicated to open tabs on AO3, I assumed—correctly, as it turned out—that posting here must be his intention.

 

expression is the need of my soul
i was once a rock-n-roll demon
freddie mercury had nothing on me
but i died
got discorporated that is
and my soul went into the body of a cockroach
you know the ones that will still be here
after the apocalypse
a little humor from the funsters downstairs
you could go by crawly again they said
that satan is a laugh a minute

so i have a new outlook
i don’t take as much for granted
i should have eaten more cake
when i had the chance

come to think of it boss
if you left some cake out 
next to the laptop
i could have one less regret
just a thought

also 
there’s an alley cat named aziraphale
he comes by the window 
rubs his soft grey fur against the window
could you leave it open sometimes
i think aziraphale gets cold
in spite of the fur
the cold does not affect me
now that im a cockroach
but when I was a snake
an angel kept me warm
even when it rained

actually aziraphale can have my cake
otherwise he’s stuck eating rats
which doesn’t suit him
he is used to the finer things in life

if you leave this laptop open
i will write you poems
about my life
as a cockroach
and ex-demon
and about aziraphale the alley cat 
probably a lot about him
if i know myself at all
sure im a cockroach now
its a new perspective
but some things never change
you can call me crowley

Chapter 2: aziraphale knew cleopatra and so did i

Summary:

aziraphale and i
we got to talking
how aziraphale knew cleopatra
and so did i
i learned he had some wrong ideas
about how things went down

Chapter Text

aziraphale knew cleopatra and so did i

boss idk about your readers
they wonder why i don’t use spellcheck
or more punctuation
you’d think
does the cockroach
have an authentic voice
is the more pressing question
it is hard enough
hopping around on these keys
i don’t need to walk a mile for a comma
better to have lowercase
than wrong capitals breaking up the lines
computers don’t understand verse forms
they don’t have free will
it only seems that way
but autocorrect was one of mine
it puts in the apostrophes
but only sometimes

we think you should know
aziraphale the alley cat is an angel
whose soul formerly inhabited
a bookseller
we have known each other a long time
i don’t know why he came back as a cat
unless our old bosses
learned about a trick we pulled
we switched bodies
aziraphale took a bath in hell
it was a whole thing
bet hes glad we switched back
now that im a cockroach
but at least
im not afraid of water

thank you for leaving the window open
even if the screen is down
we can talk that way
i don’t want aziraphale to feel left out
of my literary career
when the poor thing went centuries
thinking i didn’t read
lol
m a bit of a trickster
serves me right
that shakespeare took my best lines
which speaking of
aziraphale and i
we got to talking
how aziraphale knew cleopatra
and so did i
i learned he had some wrong ideas
about how things went down
death by asp to the breast
was not my idea
i know it looks suspicious
with my side hustle
as a snake
but appearances deceive
who would look at me
and think ‘poet’
they see me
and shriek
put out little plastic traps
by the floorboards
but poet i am

so believe me when i say
i had nothing to do with antony
that was before i ever used that name
aziraphale always suspects me
just because i am a demon
servant of satan
etc
people aren’t their jobs

besides
maybe an asp
seems a logical step
when you love like cleopatra
and they tell you antony is dead
burned or whatever
but eternity leaves no outs
stretches long and lonely
an asp wont fix it
love is beyond my wiles

aziraphale says
he believes me now
he was hungry
and got grumpy
he misses the food
in cleopatra’s palace
they had good fish
by the nile
aziraphale talks about fish
more than he used to
said he’d sell his soul
for a can of tuna
he should know better
that never goes well but
hes a soft angel and cant live on rats
if you leave some tuna
on the windowsill
ill write an extra poem

Chapter 3: aziraphale and the rats

Chapter Text

aziraphale and the rats

boss it’s a good thing
you left the tuna
aziraphale got talking
to the rats
they never meant to spread disease
he said
people misjudge them
he said
and it may be natural
for cats to eat them
immortal enemies since eden
mortal enemies i said
cats and rats being mammals
but then again i said
you thought dolphins were fish

don't be pedantic crowley
he said
and don't bring up fish
big eyes all reproachful
which is the absolute worst
and i've recently become a cockroach
so that's saying something
you know how it is with enemies
he said
of whatever lifespan
once you get to talking
of a long cold evening
just you and the rats
you become friends
so i think he’d go hungry
if it weren’t for you boss
he’s gone soft on the rats
such a soft bloody angel
you have no idea

should be having
dinner at the ritz
going for picnics
dancing in clubs
the kind where gentlemen go
not casout alley rats
or cockroach poets
who cant even open a window
or punctuate
heaven has no mercy
even on its own

boss 
i think aziraphale
wants to read my poems
this would be embarrassing
as he is my muse
so if you open the window
for a cold alley cat
please preserve my dignity
set a screensaver
for when i stop jumping on the keyboard
he won't figure that out 
technology
not his cup of tea
speaking of
maybe leave one in a saucer
with extra milk
and sugar
even an alley cat
likes sweet things

Chapter 4: the cockroach who had been to hell except not really

Summary:

boss i have never heard anything so ridiculous
and i have listened to a drunk angel’s
explanations of marine life

Chapter Text

the cockroach who had been to hell except not really

boss ive been talking to some of the other bugs
I think maybe the insects have gotten
a bum rap as people used to say
i thought snakes were low on the totem pole
but compared to houseflies we were exhalted
not to mention cockroaches
we are somewhere below fleas
we don’t even bite
but whatever
it’s not like i was beloved as a demon
and cockroaches not winning any awards
for rocket science

i went exploring
in the wild wood aka under the sink
seeking out my cockroach brethren
i found a group of young under the sink
gathered around an elder
telling how he’d been to hell and back
oh this should be good I said to myself
and sat down to listen
boss i have never heard anything so ridiculous
and i have listened to a drunk angel’s
explanations of marine life
old man cockroach said
he fell into an abyss
there were billows and billows of smoke
thick and yellow and foul-smelling
he was coughing choking
cockroach souls everwhere their legs in the air
there were winged beasts he said
flying and falling dead on the ground
all the young cockroaches
sat in rapt attention
drinking in his wisdom
i saw enough of that as a demon
idiots falling prey to false prophets
but I digress
so i said old man
it was a figure of speech
old man you have never seen hell
i am an old hand and it is nothing like what you describe
cockroaches are not the main event there
it’s demons and human souls in eternal agony
the occasional angel with a bath towel
what you are describing is fumigation
just plain old people who want you dead
take it from me
people come up with the worst of it
hell is more of an addendum
i did my best for 6 thousand years
and i never came close to the humans
for evil genius

the young cockroaches just gathered closer
round the old one muttering
in my direction what a nutter
as if i were a true prophet and not just
a misplaced demon
if i had been a true prophet
and they had been human
they would have ignored me even harder
so maybe humans should not lord it over
us insects quite so much

boss you forgot to leave the window open
i worry aziraphale might get lonely
with just the rats for company
and i don’t mind the cold

Chapter 5: the song of aziraphale

Summary:

without me he goes frantic
for a serpent quite romantic
it’s the angel who’s bacchantic
toujours gai toujors gai

Chapter Text

boss sometimes i think
that our friend mehitabel
is a trifle too gay

--don marquis
archy and mehitabel
_________________

 

the song of aziraphale

this is the song of aziraphale
of aziraphale the alley cat
as i wrote you before boss
aziraphale was an angel
a denizen of heaven
at some point but
he has been here a long time
i told you how he
knew cleopatra
but what i didn’t say was
cleopatra was fairly late in the game

i have had my ups and downs
but wottheheck wottheheck
seen floods and thorny crowns
roman oysters demon frowns
now i run with cats in heat
but wottheheck wottheheck
i have never learned to sleep
but i do cavort and leap
to any tune but psalms
wottheheck wottheheck
heaven burned my books
but at least i’ve got my looks
and wottheheck wottheheck

do you think that i would change
my current prowl and range
if it meant we’d be estranged
wottheheck wottheheck
without me he goes frantic
for a serpent quite romantic
it’s the angel who’s bacchantic
toujours gai toujors gai

we should have gone to ground
gone where we could not be found
now i’m chased by man and hound
but wottheheck wottheheck
i’m a cat so now i fret
less about falling than getting wet
there’s a dance in the angel yet
toujours gai toujours gai

i was guardian of eden’s gate
wottheheck wottheheck
but I’ve never once been straight
with just a demon as a mate
o wottheheck wottheheck
when the serpent slithered by
with a come hither look in his eye
a stormcloud split the sky
and wottheheck wottheheck
i gave him shelter with my wing
without expecting anything
like a six thousand year long fling
wottheheck wottheheck

no more heaven’s faithful pet
i’m a cat without regret
wottheheck wottheheck
there’s a dance in the angel yet
toujours gai toujours gai

if demons sleep more than they ought to
i’ll do things i never thought to
wottheheck wottheheck
find a tune to dance gavotte to
toujours gai toujours gai

boss sometimes i think
that our friend aziraphale
is a trifle too gay