Peppy Clerk Continuity

They logged a steam incident there
Where no steam and no piping were there.
But the form needed Steam,
So they honored the theme,
And destroyed Peppy Clerk into air.

Which worked, for a page or a day,
Till a photo turned up in the tray:
Peppy smiling just fine
After documented decline,
Making records look drunk in a way.

There once was a stool in the hall
Marked DO NOT BECOME on its wall.
Though not mascot-issued,
That point got re-tissued,
And soon it was central to all.

“Retired permanently” failed,
So “administratively” sailed.
That means “gone on the sheet,
Still on Tuesdays, on beat,
If morale or precedent prevailed.”

The notices superseded themselves
With the grace of collapsing shelves.
Each cried, “No conflict here,”
While changing each tier
Of the facts they had laid on those shelves.

Form 11-S asked with a wave,
“Did it wave back, and was it well-behaved?”
You must not cite the rule
That requires this as tool,
Which is how proper nonsense is saved.

The head unit’s state, by report,
Was “destroyed / but present” of sort.
That’s absurd, you might bark.
But in Mascot Affairs after dark,
Both halves of a lie hold the court.

1. H. Tolland once asked, in a fright,
   “Is it the kind of thing that remembers at night?”
   Then the file drifted off,
   As such records do, soft,
   Past the scope of whichever desk’s sight.

Peppy Clerk is retired, intact,
Semi-symbolic, and active in fact.
If you need one clear lane,
You have not read the chain.
Contradiction’s the durable act.

So the cluster now keeps, without shame,
Every version that argues its claim.
Steamless steam, absent pipes,
Waving forms, glove-count gripes:
Peppy wins by outlasting the name.