I was trying to help the preacher,

Trying to help his god,

By picking up toys the children had scattered 

While playing in the nursery.

I gathered them

Up into a sack I found,

Because the toy box was gone,

But the nice church ladies said I'd done it all wrong.

The toys were supposed to be color coded,

Segregated into the small cardboard boxes

Over by the wall.

I hated to tell them that I had seen

Seven baby cats come down

From the rickety attic

Of the old church, and poop in those boxes.

Well, I didn't want to tattle

On the baby cats,

Or offend the ladies

By disrespecting my elders,

So I thought instead of the words from an old old song, and

"Never said a mumbalin' word."

I went and bore my cross alone that day.

(I started to poop in the boxes myself,

Just to make the cats feel more at home,

But I thought better of it.)

And now I quote another book,

Brendan Gill's, The Trouble of One House, 

And meditate on how "no good deed goes unpunished."

-jenn