The Forgotten Papers

 

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……These are the forgotten papers that fell out of the sky. Actually they were lost in a closet for many years. They nearly fell on your author’s head while he was rummaging about in there. Presented here in no particular order and for no particular reason, you will need to fly along with me in this.

 

 

He just called off the marriage because when he called it on she called it off and when she called on he called off and coughed and the doctor said cough and she called it off and then he called on and the people yelled you’re next and she caught the bouquet and he caught the next stage and that was a killer stage where he called it on and she called it off and right before the wedding she knew that he didn’t want to get married and he knew the same thing about her but she called his bluff and he called hers and the minister got a headache and the wedding chapel collapsed.

 

Don’t worry if some people are amongst the missing. The people that they are missing among will try to find them and show up with heroes from yesteryear and Indians from the spirit world. I didn’t know that Abraham Lincoln once owned a horse named “Dixie”. They say he caught a lot of flack for naming his horse that because of the Civil War. This goes back to what I was saying about spending a whole life lost. This is a fragment written from the heart of man to the heart of man, and is referenced in the Smiley-Man Chronicles in the section talking about finding alternative glee.

 

Out in the business of forgiveness a broken heart waited in line for redemption. It was a long wait. He washed down the wait with a few thousand drinks. Then he wanted to go out to eat, but his friend Eddy told him that an alcoholic is supposed to eat at home. Then he was heard mumbling, “Thank-you for everything and for petting me and giving me nothing but they all think I got something but I ain’t got nothing but whatever I got I’m gonna give it to them.”

 

I sang a little song with the Lord. It was a little-Lord song, and He never heard. Then came in all the naked girls. It was a little naked girl in a great big world song, and then a draft flew in and big rains. The big rains fell outta the Lord’s veins. People had to work themselves to the bone in this weather, and some people went insane. Other people drugged them, but it didn’t help-it just wasted their poetic chance. The idiots in offices in charge shuffled papers and wiped their asses with their diplomas. Many of them were psychiatrists: licensed lunatics. I sang a verse of this to one of them assholes in an office. He said, “man you are an asshole; I am closed on Shabbos.”

 

Go-About-Your-Business came into the bar, and he was a little bit ruffed up. Had a run-in with four of five bouncers upsides the head, and he had bumps and bruises that weren’t going away for “Many Moons” is what they called him down in the tribe. He had only been around the world once in this life so far, but Go-On-About-Your-Business stared at the potion chest even if it was off-limits, but they shined up like big suns as two canoes were paddling away. Go About Business thought he would have happy thoughts and that he would not starve as long as the women walked around barely clad. He might live out on the veranda of time.

Go About Business came in with a buttered roll and contusions. Guys in leather pants and girls enchanted stared at him for a second, but he was wearing a big awning over his head, so the only person who could see him clearly was Ed-Who-Makes-Children-Laugh-And-Builds-Things. Ed said that he bought a box of matzah, and when he opened it up, half of it had been eatin’ by what looked like mice, and the guy at the store wanted to take it back, but Eddy said, no, this here box is worth something from the factory, maybe a year supply of free matzah. “I bought it,” he said proudly, like that was some kind of miracle. (Ed, in fact, lived only a few blocks from the matzah factory on the Lower East Side, so he headed down there to see them). Then go-About-Your-Business left the bar and danced in an apron in the clouds.

Each year the animals live and love us and trust us and hope they don’t get run over, and each year we let them down and double-cross them. The smart animals realize this and try to get further away, but there’s less and less places to hide, and the dumb animals watch more television, play with computers and think they know everything.

 

Something about the Crabapple Chronicles—don’t want to make a big deal about it, but there was a voice that spoke in the hollow of the Crabapple Chronicles, and that voice said, Estelle, you don’t have to be anything when you grow up if you absolutely insist on it—I ain’t even skylarking you about this—and even if men are trying to nail you all day, you still don’t have to do anything all day for them: maybe you will and maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have kids and maybe you won’t (Estelle’s internal voice was the voice of a gypsy fortune teller), maybe you’ll be rich and maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll own a sword and maybe you won’t.

The crabapple chronicler was a man who collected naked pictures of black women, and he put them on his wall so that he would have good dreams at night. And sometimes, black women would come to him and let him take care of them for a while. Down in the lakes there lived a lot of snakes, but everyone said that he was a dove. The chronicler had one friend left and though that friend spoke exclusively in swear words, he was also interested in talking to women. Some women did not even seem to mind, because word had gotten out that you could fuck like a racehorse with him.

 

Dear Editor:

Newt Gingrich quit congress, because the perception of the American people was that he was an asshole, and even if he wasn’t an asshole, the perception of the people was that he was an asshole, so the GOP needs to change its perception by the American people and put someone in who is also an asshole but who is not perceived by the American people to be an asshole, because the American people have watched so much T.V. that they believe perception is the same thing as thinking or perhaps reception,….whatever…the GOP just knows that whether or not you’ve got a problem with reception or perception, they can clean up that problem by getting rid of that old potato and bringing on some new asshole who’s got a better chance of being received up the butt by the American people.

 

This is a tough old bird typewriter. There are some good thoughts in it somewhere, but it’s going to be a very dusty day on the day that they fall out. It’s got a little bell in it like a bird also, and it’s got a sweet little jingle to it too like maybe Santa’s coming. St. Goodness had a meeting with St. Worry, because St. Worry could not hear nor see. St. Worry was seen shaking his clothes and airing them out, and St. Goodness counted up all of St. Worry’s children. The Worry had a lot of children to worry about. St. Goodness stated that though the Saints appeared thus and so, they could also appear thusly, and that ipso facto, that was a stock that was heading south. This made St. Worry think and smile. Mental illness was spreading with remarkable facility throughout all the kingdoms, and people were calling it this and that, and it didn’t jive with the data anymore nor with the words used to describe it in the professional literature. The Chi-Square was not a good statistic to describe the data, but no one could even remember what a Chi-square was, and no statistician alive could calculate one manually anymore. What was funny now was just almost funny, because it was living next door so closely to what was tragic. But the one great thing is that some things are just so amazingly great that no matter how much you try to mess with them and ruin them, you can’t, because they are just great to the core! That girl, Veronica, is like that. One night she was running around with this guy who stuttered, and he’d just start stuttering, “Lord lubba ducker,” and that was some kind of reference to his girlfriend, but that didn’t even matter at all with regards to Veronica’s outstanding greatness.

 

April 8, 1997

 

Parking Violations Bureau

NY, NY

 

To Whom It May Concern:

I am absolutely not guilty of this violation. My car was in a zone to be moved for street cleaning from 11AM-2PM. I arrived at my car before eleven, exactly 2 minutes before. I have a very expensive Swiss watch that keeps perfect time. From a half block away, I saw this officer (car #7454) writing the ticket. I started running down the street screaming for her to stop. She completely ignored me, finished writing the ticket and put it on my car. All she had to say was that it was 11 o’clock. That is the exact time she put on the ticket. I believe that my watch is a far better and more accurate watch than her watch. I would be happy to demonstrate this in a court of law. In addition, a friend who I was with will also testify to the accuracy of my watch.

Additionally, what kind of mean-spirited police policy is this when there is not even a few seconds grace period to allow for possible degrees of differences with regard to the accuracy of...