The Missing First Draft of The Book Of St. John

ST. JOHN

(Chapter 5)


1) After the mah-johhng sets were put away and the ping pong tables were sandpapered and set aside, there was another feast in The House of the Blues, where Jesus picked up a baritone sax and began guttural moans of "Trouble In Mind" between blowing a few lines (on his sax, that is). He walked out after a six-second standing ovation (and 43 cents in his hat), and went unto Booze-by-him.

2) Now there is at Booze-by-him a gaggle of sheep and a stray poet, all sauntering aimlessly by an oversized pink porch.

3) On the floorboards lay a great multitude of impotent men, aged pedestrians, blind crossing guards, lame 100-meter dash medalists, demented orangutans, and confused cosmopolites who had wandered there by mistake after taking a wrong turn at the head municipal tax office.

4) An angel went down on a medalist in the deep end of the pool, and troubled the water with chlorinated milky deposits.

5) And the poet, who had been inflicted with a myriad of psychosomatic diseases (and thought he was better than Homer) for two score and several years, lurched after Jesus.

6) When Jesus saw him, and recognized the pinkish nightgarb, he bestowed unto him a secret salve and balm and adornment made of scented myrrh and the essence of lilac in a halo garlard.

7) The impotent man then said: "Sir, I grow even softer when thrust into the frigid zones of the pool, but when I used to come here, the towers erected themselves out of the lonely dust."

8) Jesus said unto him: "Rise, and when once you've risen, then take up thy bed and get it on!"

9) And immediately the man had a raging boner, and took up his bed, and on the same day, scored with Sonia Braga.

10) The accountants then said unto the suddenly erect one: "It is illegal to play musical beds of a Sabbath day."

11) The man answered: "Grope thyselves nimbly or sourly, I don't give a brass farthing. Now away, dour bean tossers!"

12) They then answered: "What man hast given thee such turgidity?"

13) But a great cloud of ersatz epsom salts had sprung upon their midst, obscuring the Messiah in translucent mists of orange-glowing radiation, from which Jesus made a secret getaway to the head temple.

14) Jesus found the once-impotent (now beaming) man there, and said unto him: "Get thee to a pharmacist forthwith, and order the Holy Rubber-- filtertipped with sage-juice and on sale only today for nineteen shekels for a box of two dozen (extra large)."

15) The man departeth like the road runner after a missing Bugs Bunny Show residual.

16) The accountants then attempted to slay Jesus, since their johnsons were sore and packaged lonely and humid.

17) But Jesus answered them: " My Father needed no splints or Viagra, and I mock the interlopers of stale seduction."

18) Therefore the accountants sought further to do grievous injury to Jesus, for their once glorified tumescence was now mocking them with thin leakage out their Lazy Susans.

19) Then Jesus continued: " Verily and truly, O office conformists, I say unto you: wheresoever you lay your hat will be your home; and though papa may have been rolling his bones on the north forty, you'll always be alone."

20) "For the Father hath napped and splurged in His dreambed of backward millenial unsanguined reminiscences of bonding and nature-humping."

21) "For as the Father raised up His staff and lightening-fucked the Earth, so too do your own peckers blacken with buboes foreign to our generational genital specialists."

22) "For the Father judgest not of thy fallow centuries, but betimes hurries unto the Holy Den, where pan pipes of groovy tobacco and spiked lime wedges multiply like loaves of buttered scones."

23) "And whosoever honorest the Son shall honorest the fungus of thine own loins, for the Father hast often said, 'Yay, know me by the lowest of the low, that though they quail and quaff, are also of the Lord's creation' ".

24) "Verily and noisily (and somewhat in irritation) I say unto you, whoever believest me shall not pass the horrific gallstone, but will have equanimous bladder flow unto the end of his days."

25) "The hour of the Lord is at hand, and the minute of the Lord is in the rice."

26) "For the Father is weary of the same motions from His creations, and is planning a spontaneous population explosion which will-- for a first time-- NOT go through Ernest Borgnine's harem first."

27) "And the Father will stand no squabbling over longer line-ups at the discos."

28) "Marvel not at this, since the graves will open perforce unto the entirety of the evening news, interrupting the how-to-do-it-hemp-growing classes."

29) "And the basketball courts shall be divided into the sons of Wilt, and those who've never been in the same continent as Wilt."

30) "And judgest not of the rancid bacon fat, that it will continue to self-replenish when the Tigris turns silver and gives up its spurious algae."

31) "If I tattle-tale on myself, then Bob's yer Uncle, I'll pay the parking ticket."

32) "And if anyone witnesses the hookah getting up and walking off of its own accord, he may replenish his bowl immediately, and is within local oversight to request another supplier."

33) "And John will be out of the klink soon and anon."

34) "And I'll read the further requests to waive the initial cable-hook-up charges, and get back to you."

35) "The Father is a burning light, just as most of his burger-blighted burghers are pox-stricken with grey toadstools on their back porches."

36) "And I'm better than John, neener-neener!"

37) "And my Father is bigger than your father."

38) "And your father can't afford to send you to the best universities, so sorry."

39) "And stop putting oatmeal in the scriptures to mark the passages."

40) "And stay off my front doorstep after 9 p.m., please!"

41) "I receive no kickbacks from any man."

42) "And I know you, that you have a burning love for the daughters of Donna Summer."

43) "You can name your children anything, but registry prices have gone up, and are not optional."

44) "Seek the honor of the Father, but shed your tokens to the greater marketplace, especially when the Holy souvenirs are a-plenty."

45) "Last taps, gotcha last!"

46) "Had ye believed in Moses, you would have been in prison long ago for hypocrisy."

47) "But if ye had truly believed in Moses' words, then I'd be out of a job, Amen!"


(to be continued ....)