Why shouldn’t I live like’a dat? he’s always asking the molting, weatherworn stork, who’ll never answer him if they want to keep up the act, the showy front that’s keeping them both fed and warm.
Da highlife, don’t I deserve it?
Hymn, a goy’s got to dream — have patience, have hope: the last two coins begged from the eyes of a cardinal beggar, asleep by the side of a road: he’s taken his wine, too, a shard flint.
Denied Jerusalem’s asylum by the Abulafias, begrudged immunity in the Shade, condemned to vagabond on, how he attempts to schnorr all the spoils, all the trapping pelts of the Papacy — but without that pesky Title, without that puny responsibility rub that was both miraculous and, admit it, a bitch. A pain in the prostrate. Frontmensching with his pet stork, this savvy bird with, you’ll excuse me, just a bit of an ego, a bite or peck of a complex, though his only friend he’ll say as if right on cue, his best, how he loves it like the son it’d never deigned to deliver him (though offhours, he argues against its silent grudge, threatens clipping wings, cementing its feet — once again raising the topic of tricks, just a handful, wouldn’t hurt, a little tightrope, juggling herrings, all while riding a tricycle); together, they slum plotz to platz, vagadicht raggy from court to empty of belly, shack shedding its lean to strawpallet, strippeddown to plank to nail at his sandals whether stolen or lost, and so with feet bared to thorn the road again, bloody: following the muds, wherever they take him, you know, he goes with the floes, I’m impressed, God, we all are.
It’s begun snowing again, and the stork flies over him, to keep the freeze from his holy.
It’s the gesture that counts, though it won’t buy them supper.
I meet him on the fly, what do you know. Slowly but not too, make to pass him unknown. My face held down not to respect his fallen estate as much as it’s my begging not to be hassled. Just another fellow traveler, I’m trying for…yet another wayfaresharer, we’re all related somehow, somewhere, down the road a turn or so, one town overed. Only thinking, as I leave him what a shtarker with his stork, unkempt and I think also kronk, it’s unfortunate, always regrettable…what can I do, he’s my kind but not my type.
Wish I could, bless him.
Then thinking, as he’s gone disappeared, reborn into nothingness, into the dim that always accompanies and yet is itself nothingness, too: the night, as voided by night…and then, by the darkening of night with a storm, this windwhip, such a merciless fire and fall — was that a wink, maybe…how he might’ve winked, then again maybe not, a mote of muck in the eye, a mite of whirling weather. I heard no words from him, though, as if I could speak one in return…and there were no signs exchanged, neither secret handshakes, nor any hermetic knowledge passed; it’s wishful thinking — next time, we’ll prepare. In passing, I’ll say I felt only a chill, a clasp gusty…how to account, and yet how not to: I’m sorry, but I think he tried to pick my pocket. For what, for passing — all of nothing, nihilum.
To embolden, I lash my back with a final foreskin, trailing scrappily from behind me devilforked as if a taiclass="underline" sheddingly shod with holes and pincer pricks and stinger rips and smudgy tears as if from ink or ash but holes…the serpentine sprig falls now, becomes furled into a cloud, eluding all grasps, dispersing toward a summit. I only go with it, then, north by east, meaning irrespectively up…in an ascension mundane, only another form of high left for luft, the irreparable air — then without grounds going still dazedly, dizzily, further. At the height of the mounding, if that, too, can be believed: shaky as it is, founded unsound, with the mudmix slinging around…sloppily fluming, a mess — there’s an opening. Here above the horizon, a hole — it’s a door I think, it’s a window; delineated skyspace, a demarcation skyscaping; an air escaped, set aside: an old provocation imposing anew, the idea that the window’s the hole in the sky, or that the sky’s the hole in the, you understand, exhausted. Is the window that that’s bound? or is the window that that is around the bind? just asking, just asking.
Here’s where the Pope’s coming from: this tickytacky woodenchair militantly straight of back, in which to rest a while amid the remains of its neighboring pissedupon fire (one leg of the chair, the northeastern, had been amputated, then snapped for the kindle), set atop this peak sheltered from the face of the wind, sheltered from the very faces of the wind’s northern face and the wind’s eastern face, by this lone wall white as it’s been so far faceless, save presently set with that window without glass I’m imaged both into and out of at once, my reflection in the rise of the sun through the morning — as the Law had been handeddown upon that lesser mountain, the least of them no more than a paunch or early pregnancy, a mere bump or stump’s crop, and there with each of its spattered tablets understandable to all right to left, why not, but left to right also, scribed to our scrutiny from the burst cheek of every wind that’s both weather and the breath of weather’s God, graven with fire by the foremost finger of That force mediating in a nailed incarnation, too, don’t you know? And the only way to pass is to pass through it, to the nothingness just…only a burl of cloud, parting. I arise and make the last step, from the chair wobbled to lean against this wall lifting myself onto the wall, creaky the chair’s giving beneath me — as I lunge, make a leap, to snake through the sill unglassed, to worm headfirst over the hunch, and then through it such hurt, slicing myself to flame on the sill, its knifely edge, a sacrifice of self here at gut…a humpwound, it’s like birthing; I’m bowed to pierce at myself, at the window and wall, with my horns. A glow from under the saggy flag of my — womanhood, blood burning to grease passage over, my arms now and legs now and balance, just balance, meet me halfway…to raise my horny head upon the Other Side, and then — to behold.
The Last Supper
A recipe for Baked Mother…rest assured, it serveths all of her son(s), whatsoever be the number.
Ingredients:
1 Mother, preferably yours
(others’ maketh for a poor substitute)
3 Onions, their size depending on size, weight, & structure of Mother
Olive oil, with which to anoint
Salt, kosher
(don’t her wounds deserve it?)
Instructions:
Purify
Shaveth
(everywhere)
Then slay:
Slaughtereth her with a knife, ritually only if the most mere overture to kashrut’s desired.
If not, then gaseth, bullet (to temple only), but let’s not be crude: we know, don’t we, that the methods are all out of bounds, which is to say…boundless — the outermost limits of resentment, the strain of our memory bordered by memory, it’s always memory, it’s always…
Imagination surely helpseth.
Be creative.
Though be sure to causeth as little damage as possible to the flesh. Be sure to causeth her not much pain.
Note: Drowning imparts a wetness that is undesirable, resulting in a toughness of the flesh (unless she is drownedeth in a brining, or curing, solution. See PICKLED MOTHER).
If you can’t bringeth yourself to kill your own mother, then have another do it, preferably her husband, if your father, or any other immediate relation to the woman (one’s siblings are suggested: remember, however, that money must not changeth hands).
Just prior to the onset of rigor mortis, deeply rubbeth her with salt, then anoint with the oiclass="underline" anointment should taketh place twentyfour (24) hours prior to serving, during which time Mother should be kepteth at room temperature; then, placeth gently, do not force, the three onions, one each into her mouth, vagina, and the orifice that she calls her “tuchus.”