On one hand, the Garden took me in when no one else would.
To make itself into a fist, themselves into fists, with which to smash the tabling world.
On the other hand, they’re no longer in power, the Garden: Die — no thanks, I hardly knew him…this I’ve heard on one firsthand shaky, from a source as reliable and, too, as loud as the na zdorovyes I’d stood him, little flowery and watery vodkas flowing seaward from environs northeast: from a refugee he was who’d been saved by this mensch who he’d worked with a mensch, he’d said, tushdeep in the Solution, I’m talking two Tours’ worth of Unaffiliated Disposal (UND) behind him not that he’d liked to remember it much — but then again, on the other side of the other hand, its always unknowable face, that same mensch had also told me my parents were still alive, are, and happyhealthy, he’d said, Shanghai where, hic or sic, a slurred Shangri-La…that near the Mound as well, not sure, don’t know, up near which Zodiacal finger, got me, Pollex, Medicus, just past the Index girls keeping low in the line designated for love — you’re next, what’s your name, don’t be shy…Amularis orphans gathering ash and toxic particulate they’ll heat for a meal over the pulse of a wrist, since morning flush and flooded with life; keeping theirs from the Auricularis displaced, hiding their wretchedness amid pruning and hairs, the hump and hunch of the wrinkles — just point me in the right direction, I’m thinking, I’ll wrong myself from there, find me lost. None of these fellow wayfarers to give me the help of a hand, those or theirs: they ignore, though only after they’ve ascertained I’ve nothing left to steal, not even a pocket, a hole, the pocket of a hole — the depths of the valleys clawed out below us. None understand me’s what it is — all my palming myself off from thought to, indecision to, no one with whom to share my dissatisfaction, my unhappiness, this inability of mine to just nose my way out and pick, goddamnit, to fingerselect, to just settle down on one hand, or the other, and then just stay there, that’s that: stay deluded, and justifying your heart out; what everyone has to do, eventually, with the choices we’re handeddown from our birth. Pick a hand any hand then stick with it, shaken, choose your choice then die in the grip of its consequence, no.
I make night from one to the other — to live or die, to wander or stay with the sun, dawn to dusk, whichever at hand, its rising at one, its set at the other. Then, at fullest moon, a night seized with light, halfway between hand to hand to…mouthless, without speech: as both fists — they just clench, suddenly; their arms that had been other ridges and rims of other valleys, they outstretch the borders between…they lift themselves, become lifted, slowly, then up through the clouds, musclebound: how they weigh in the air, how they weigh the air, a moment amid the luminant sky, then eclipsing its moon…as if balances to weigh, too, the once sheltered now falling life they’d held tight with meaning, dim squalls and sobs tumbling through the mossy cracks between fingers opening, fingers spreading this widely, their crevices splayed — scaled high up as if in a benediction of fall, a blessing of crash, judiciously unto the Highest all then smacks, grubs grandly, and whipsup, is whippedup through the wisps into sky or Heaven, if that you prefer; these two hands disappearing, as if they’d never once been of our earth: without charity, without benevolence, grace or warning, their entire ascension in its cracked chap jointed point resembling nothing so much as a shrug…as if to say, sorry — I tried.
To find myself stranded with no thoughts, no needs nor wants, neither why, without hither, thither, or slither: snakey, how there’s no choice anymore, only chaos, a blood relation to night. I make my way up its mountain, a hill of mud, a hillock of bodied trash mounding bloodflecked — this mountain the middle ridge of the two valleys created whether by or as the cup of the hands, following their rise as unearthed height seeking between to clasp prayer for a peak. Tapering, wicked. A braiding of dirts by the weather. A limb’s wounded leg. An armway this straproad, this strop’s path, tabakfingered pointing the way between the marked lay of the hands and their arms outstretched, disappeared — and now, toward me comes this mensch, stooped as small as his bird is wings, is shabby and large.
I think, I can’t help it, is that who I think it is…come again.
Now, understanding that history means so much to us with its names and dates, and the way in which those things serve to make such history relatable, real — allow the Record a moment in which to record its ecstatic detachment, in which to renew its promise to serve the relations of future generations, future degenerations, with an unburdened account of the following…who could believe. Apparently, the rumors are true, that the gossip of the great has once again proved to be verity — the lashon for once having harangued the right mensch. Him, he’s the Pope, or once was, Pius Zeppelini da Foist, I’d recognize him anywhere, even like this: having exchanged almost everything of his save the yarmulke down to his now naked feet, robes for robes, his formerly supreme eccleisiatical power traded in for a powerlessness even greater, that of the nobody, the nothing ascetic, as if a king undercover, gone slumming, among: he has to live, goy’s got to eat, bird’s got to fly’s what they say, so I’ve heard — and so he’s converted, become as a schnorrer remade, Propheting Elijahstyled; I slacken my pace, hope my face won’t betray me. His riches ragged in three threats flat, he goes town-to-town, making the updated beatitudinal circuit urbi et orbi, his lapsed holiness bestowing blessings upon any head, in exchange for alms, psalms, straw, hay, mashke, noshke, and prutahs, anything else you might give how he’ll take; the once Holy Father and believe it, I can’t, behold it with your own allseeing thirdeye — he’s the nihilmensch secondcometh, thirdhanded bearing news of anything he can remember, invent on the wing, on the fly. Dethroned, how he couldn’t sit still anymore, began to walk, abandoning the pretense to any Dietrologia, it’s what you give that’s what he gets, and so one Shalom to the Vatican and another Shalom to the road; how he’s become likable, almost too, understandable, makes you think, makes you feel, real salt of the earth this mensch just wandering the earthly See, globetrodding Messiahways, the humblest thing you’ll ever stumble across, I have, it’s slowing me down, tripping me up — not even rocks can compare, not even thorns can compete — for leagues, for parasangs of stones silenced in any way of ice, of mud, body, and bone. My son, I’a thank you…goes his spieclass="underline" works most of the time, so it’s been said by lesser — may you be blessed with’a many masculine kinder…
Into a village, a town, any of which, his accomplice the stork leads him by a leash rendered from pallia. Once out of town again (and it’s so hard to know when you’re out given all the ruination, these days), Pinchas, that’s what he wants you to call him, Phinehas if you must, he again leads the stork, holds a crosiered stick to help image his pace, just a wither splintered from the crook of a bishop found dead, in his other hand the ecclesiastical sash tied tightly around the gullet of the stork soaring above him — tugged this way, then yadda. As a schnorrer, nu, nothing’s too good for him: when he can, he’ll demand the best, and when he can’t, he’ll kvetch there’s no better; his dream: to merit upon the strength of his soulwork alone maintainence by charity unto the custom of his lifestyle former. Of course, without that naggy I’m here for you shtick — just got in the way, cramped his kneel.