Thursday, April 06, 2006

invisible man who can sing in a visible voice

One of the many cool things about working in the restaurant industry is that you find shit all the time. People leave stuff behind all the time. So at closing time, or sometimes, the next morning, we find lots of things left behind. Sometimes in the bar, sometimes at a table. Sometimes in the parking lot. Sometimes, but rarely, we find things of value. More often than not, it's crap.

People leave umbrellas and jackets more often than anything else. They come back for them about half the time. We'll hold onto the jackets for a couple of months, at which time we'll take what we want and donate the rest.

People have also been known to leave shoes, underwear (I'm not making that up), or other articles of clothing. With some rarity, people even leave various jewelry including wedding bands. They almost always come back for the jewelry. Not surprisingly, they never come back to claim their underwear. Yes, I've seen it more than once.

Another extremely popular thing that gets left behind is the love poem or the love letter or the "Dear Jack, I hate you. Love Diane" letter. It's always fun to read these and try to put together a story behind the poem/letter.

I found one such poem a couple of weeks ago, and I've decided to share it with you, dear scrupulous and brilliant readers. See the photo on the right, which you can click on to enlarge.

The text is as follows:
Baby can you fix that
You say I's fixin to
I said baby I need it now
I can't get past line two
You said turn the volume up
So you can hear better inside your head
I said baby can you get that?
You said I's going to
I said baby why couldn't you bring that when I first asked you to
& you said baby why don't you sit down and let me take care of you
I said baby I been trying to do just that for the past 5 years
& that's the first time you asked
And you said baby I'm sorry
I been meaning to get around to you again


This was written on the back of a receipt from a dinner delivery this person got the night before. If you're interested, they ordered a 12" Italian sub, bottled water and Camel Lights. I know the place they got it from, and that's a tasty sandwich.

Most of the time when we find "letters" or "poems" they're incomplete and have lots of strikethroughs and scribbling. They usually make very little sense and are really poorly written. Not that this thing is a work of genius, but it's probably the best "found" piece of "poetry" I've come across.

I haven't invented a backstory to go with it yet. Any suggestions? I'm not looking for the actual backstory. I'm looking for fiction.

now playing:

Bettie Serveert Attagirl

1 comment:

doug said...

well, whatever the backstory, that's good stuff - and you need to send it here:

http://www.foundmagazine.com/