by Joshua Cohen
Thank You For Visiting
Our Tour’s over, finished, sof, thank you kindly, we all really enjoyed our time together, the little we had to spend, here on earth, in the world; maybe we’ll do this again, get together one of these days, a reunion, to reminisce, remember already, it won’t be soon enough: my heaven or yours, name the cloud, we’ll be there…
For now, though, it’s time to settle up, and to fortify, too, one’s position, armed with nothing amid the turrets of a castle of cloud—time to validate a status on the books: to grave an encampment deep within the lines of the ledger, wisping smoke to burn at the bind. Affiliation’s moved in, demanding its dues, and the Solutioneers, professionals that they are, expect prompt payment. Their remit, pounds of flesh impounded. Less a revival of an olden play, less to rule a ruleless game, more to revivify for the sake of spiel, they extract their knives from a cast of smoking, boiling vats, sharps culled from dripping wicks—to cut deep at the primordial rib, then turning to flick at the quick of wrist, exacting their dribbling tribute: incising a gash of mouth at the gut, excising the imprisoned flesh, the imprisoning flesh; a ribcage: a cage of ribs, caging the ribs. Once gutted from mass to individual, with appetites, wants and needs, with indulgences, with schedules and itineraries of their own, they’re regrouped, again coagulated, permitted to circulate as currency of newer veins: assembled in nerves, bundled in sinews, heartmusclebound, freed from the tight pack of trains, regurgitated from the boxcar tract, the intestinal track, then rearranged in limb. Allowed just a moment of air, an eye’s breath of outer light, they’re then reassigned to inner dim, a roiling gurgle, to these bowels of barrack, these quarters halflived. Drained of starve. Shivering, bluelipped, blacklipped, without lips or voice. Made fit to slip into bodied bunks, between meager slabs of spine, columns brained, rows shorn of ornamenting thought…they’re numbered as if all are mere vertebræ in a mythically infinite serpent, stingily coiled yet envenomed with combustible poison: it sheds its skin as it slithers its multitude, forever stretching out to the outermost end of its endless span, to make its greatgorged swallow—the enormous prey, itself, fixed to the tooth of its fang. Helixworming. Petrieyed. Lensed in reversible time…
Understand, what we’re confronting here is a reversal, Peripeteia: call it the evil of banality, the protocol by which we enkitsch the lives of the no longer living, rendering the rendered unto Caesars unceasing, offering their memory up to the dicts of any armchair dictator, to the pronouncements of any weekend historian, decrees from the sofa, the judgments of the further den. Here’s what we’ve only now understood. You’re either historically alive, or you’re historically dead. There’s no argument there. And that the purpose of life is only to revolt against dying, and that we do this, all of us do, through our rallies and speeches, some delivered to millions, others kept locked in our heads, marches and parades through what was Berlin or our bedrooms, through wars both global and intimate, fought forever and on infinite fronts. Please, it’s all about relations (discourse with an image, intercourse with the imaged and yadda), all a matter of access, of narrative angle, story arc. Institutional support. A career track. O the tenure of breath. Pay attention. Important. How we live amidst the publicity of privation. Witness the unique willingness of our people to package the product of experience both collective and individual, only to market it—that experience of living through history, that experience of being forced to live against history (as simulacra not impelled by duress but by choice, it’s been said, not compelled by oppression, torture or threat, but amazingly by elective affinity)—it becoming a matter of preference to engage such sensation, to become occupied by such strange infotainment, as virtualized in seemingly every medium to be just enough real that you’ll come out of the commerce alive, and perhaps even willing to be upsold on an ever newer revelation, an even more intimate experience: that of your own life no longer yours, lived only between the deaths of your preference. Identify and die, deny thrice and survive, up to you. Debread the morning. Crumbling noon. Mooncrust saved for soup of nightsky. Birdfingered. Candletoed. They’ve drunk the dogs, they’ve eaten the hooves…sleepless—they’ve forgotten how to dream, in what language. This is what they remember, from what they never knew, from what they never experienced and never will, and we all say—Never Again! Camps are reconstructed. Reopened. This Camp Has Been Reconstructed Thanks To The Generous Support Of The Lauder—Muggston, Corp. Reopened, but less to host the victims than to provide for their subsequent visitors: admission’s always flowing blood and coin when your guests don’t die on you; it’s only once the last body’s burnt that the real money begins coming in—green growing from ash…in the end, it’s better to set up a spectacle, a landmark attraction, and all for the sake of peddling its image to fade, all for the purpose of licensing its horror, of merchandising its terror unto the umpteenth generation, trustfunded, that of the greatest inheritance, than to actually believe in the truth of an unchanging cause, a ceaseless crusade, the given and graven.
Understand, because there will always be change, please, there will always be cease, that’s important, and that the only ones who ever survive then survive their survival are those—schmucks, mamzers, up to no good—who are always, perpetually, reinterpreting themselves, reinventing themselves, remaking themselves along with the antipodal identities (theirs always, too) of victim and victor. Protean. Praying the mutable. If you don’t like my morals I’ll get new ones. If you don’t like those, I’ll just have what you’re having. If you’re not willing to share then I’ll take. Of course, future propositions aside, prophecies, predictions, plans however inspired tabled upon the deeprooted, belled as innumerably rung surfaces of cedartree stumps, postponed to bygones, exiled to the dark of the clock—of course, they’re put to death, here and now, we’ll spare you the details; that’ll all be prorated into the newest Tour leaving shortly: whatever screaming shouting praying promises and negotiations, whatever resistance there was, it’s merely a gesture, a measure of the mercy required; neither party would’ve wanted it any other way; quiet acceptance would’ve satisfied neither, docile fate (even if interpreted as token, as such gestural nonsense) would’ve gratified none. Though most are killed, the vast majority being accorded the privilege of massmurder, are put out of massmisery, many others, we’re sad to report, die just prior to the opportunity for such rarefied martyrdom: dying too early of fear, too soon how they just drop in their socks; though it’s less fear, some think, than it is inchoate anticipation, uncontrollable, they say, undue excitement at the possibility of being so chosen…some soil themselves, others feal, fall into a giggle, hyperventilating on their happiness at this prospect, this privilege, this right—at being condemned to suffer such an eternal condition, what should we call it, maybe by every name we’ve ever been called; a prospect so elementally sad, and a privilege so maddening, a fate so existentially gorgeous, and yet so bewildering, so gorgeously crazymaking, too…O to be ingathered into that most glorious State that is the eternalized promise of suffering, which is bordered by seas of jealousy, its shores zealously guarded by the most vocal, if gentle, of wolves. And yet again, for those still alive: history’s known, always has been, on record, and in every format your nostalgia might fetishize; once again, nothing’s ever denied an initial existence, never is or was, never will be. Surely, it’s terrible—it’s terrifying even to think, to test as Abraham once was tested, and once tested himself, if only metaphorically, or lamely angelically, your darkest convictions, your most vile capacities if ever reborn to an opposite side, remade into an oppressor, reinterpreted as victor, lord of the manner, king of the dunghill if only for now; a horror for one, then a horror for all, a horror once then a horror still and always forever. Never never again. Surely, once it’s known such tragedy can be forever forgotten—unless, that is, any of us might wish to avert its return.
They’d known if from the getgo and keep going, don’t run, that just calls attention—just walk, head down and fast, don’t l
ook back…but the very fact that they’ve stayed on all this time, keepingup their participation through to the end, never once flagging or even thinking of flight—despite all how they’ve kept dumb on the safetyword, I forget, the very fact (less false than fiction, fictive) that they’ve in the end gone and turned in their vouchers, readying themselves for what they knew, what they have to know, was necessary and yet also knowing, they have to know, was never required (surely, probably, maybe—we each make our own Laws, carve into our eyes our own sets of commandments), that means history’s borne into the balance, hunks of dateflesh being judged in the scales of our eyes, yearmeat hung from the hand that tells the weight of our time. Means that this’d been Bereishit from the very beginning, preordained. Understand that lastminute, last moment Affiliation’s always an option—whether if you knew someone, possibly, or had a few friends somewhere or other, that’s the gossip, that such redepemtion’s on offer as unofficially as anything else: a rumor though who knows how wellpublicized. Perhaps such recourse’s kept whispersoft, it’s been suggested, never even mentioned at all, it’s been said, except, that is, in the loudest and most regular of announcements over the Polandland PA: offers to convert, openly voiced, if stridently exhorting, coming at all hours of the night, incentives offered then doubled to trip…join up now the gargle promises and you’ll receive what—your choice of home and a wife.
Still, despite any fanaticism for accuracy, for accountability, no one really knows how many of them opt to enlist; futz, the Record sure schrifts the wit out of me: numbers have been censused, then censured upon the request of the convert, expunged, slated for wipe, at least any documentation still extant’s been made inaccessible to better than us, classified best to forget it, topsecret of the bottomless drawer—offlimits to all even a rough estimate tamed gentle then leashed to an iron disclaimer as to how many of them are taking their keepers, their executioners, their saviors and trainers up on such a scandalous opportunity (with excellent benefits, good dental & health, twoweeks’ paid vacation’s the hope), such a horrendous occasion on which to become one of them, one with them. Most won’t talk about it, won’t darken their mouths. Unknown, then, not only what sum but also what kind—what why they go and shirk from death, to avail themselves of a falsified salvation; unknown who exactly birthwise, bloodwise, Judas themselves to exult in such debasement (yes, many have suggested, perhaps for their most secret souls it’s a matter of the Gnostic: sanctity as merited through sin, that old spiel), then up and leave their lines linedup to execution, two-by-two to gas and fire, there just outside the fray to untie the knot that was their rope, drop their pants, strip the rest, immediately exchange uniforms—new garb pressed and kept at the ready, personalized since before any of them ever were born—to reveal to all the makeshift of a new demeanor, to take on yet another development, on the wing, on the fly: shifts of wind, crossroadchoices, personalitychange. Then, to become as guards to their own, to their kin, colleagues of the armed menschs who now welcome the converted with gun, open arms—to become the executioners of their own families, whom they’d kill to survive, they have to, responsible for the others they’ve had to remove themselves from, to belong, the communities they’ve had to excommunicate from the lonely midst of their congregation of one, if only to become, mutatis mutandis, ultimately worthy of an incontrovertible shame: the humiliation of averting their own martyrdom, and so betraying belief for the infamy of a deeper, holier doubt. Of course, it’s been said, this is probably only a few of them, an embarrassed handful or so—or so we’re assured by a source no one’s entitled to extirpate or name. Most don’t need to be their own Jeremiah or Ezekiel, don’t need to dream the dreams of an Isaiah, or require the interpretations of a Joseph son of Israel to get the idea: how this is once-in-a-life, and yet though it means death, it’s a wonderful one, this martyrdom, and how you just can’t pass that up—how infrequently an opportunity like this would come around, goes the campsite, campfireside argument between husband and wife, how often they’re asking each other, themselves, did an opportunity like this really arise back when we had the numbers, the majoritycount? As for the kinder, they have their own say in the matter, are mandated their own, personalized, final solutions—having been assigned to an attachment of guidance counselors, a phalanx of baccalaureate advisors—irrespective of parental decision. Would all fundamentalists please report to the fundament? Thank you. Agnostics in agon, atheists placing faith in only themselves—putting egg after orphaned egg into one blackened basket, Miriam’s, reedwreathed, to be sent down that river that flows to a land called Posterity, located far in the west. In the end, it’s better to decry everything under the sun as older even than the foreskin of the unbelievable, born just the day before untenable, up all night crying colic without viability, than to harm even one single hair upon the Godhead; to pluck it as bald as the death of a chicken, and then to argue what came first—the Word become flesh, first scaly, then feathered, then molting in names—whether the yolk or the egg.
All who haven’t taken the Law upon themselves—as if a peddler’s burden, his wife’s pregnancy carrying high and to the right, indicative not of sex but of an enemy given quarter—they all die, and the Sandersons, too, who flame like fame in the stove, in the ovens, who pass like gas into air. And so now only the Affiliated are left. Finally, the realization of Rambam’s great prophecy, this the Messianic victory of the bornagain…enddays for those lately born upon the bow of Noah—conversion’s covenant arching above in living color, a rainbow a tainting of blood. All of them, that is, with just a few pitiable exceptions, leftovers, dross, we’ll deal with them shortly, the remnants, they know who they are—if you’ll just be patient, and you can be, I just know you can be, can behave, I know you pretty well by now, and I like you, you’re good people; if I had a sister, just wait and I’ll tell you…it’s over, wake up, our patience exhausted, finally, we’ve waited and wasted enough, it’s finished, over and done with, at last. There’ll be no more destruction that we don’t ourselves bring up, or create, no more Exile either—unless we get tired and decide to exurbiate out to Egypt again, redevelop the Valley of Kings, pave the dunes, stripmall the tombs; I hear the weather’s wonderful this time of year; we’ll raze Sweden, we’ll franchise Kamchatka, forget it, trademark Uganda, Africa, Asia, not a problem, I’ve got a brother on the board, the zoning committee. I ask you, when you own the whole planet, when all of it’s yours, and when there’s pretty much only you left and your family and those like you and likeminded, where the hell, exactly, are you supposed to exile from? where the gehenna are you supposed to exile to?
From the right side of the bed to the left.
Diasporate to the den, will you?
And leave me alone.
Exodus yourself to the corner market, pick me up a carton of milk. Whatever you do, though, keep your distance, stay away…don’t attract attention—but that’s antiquated thinking, because there’s no attention anymore, there’s no away and no distance, how we’re all on our own, that whole adrift in the universe thing, existentiallylike, atomic or I forget nuclear: we’re left at home all alone by the parents, the sitter, their God; we’re remanded to ourselves, with no one left to say No to us, to deny, deny and, thriceover, deny…left to our own most Edenic devices: we don’t need your Yeses no more, we don’t need no permission, to stay up real late, not shower, take in hours of mindless teevee; venturing outside only to loot the fruit from the tree on the lawn of our Garden. A scrutiny tears from laughter, oversight blinks—brothers’ keepers? What’s the schmuck still locked up for? He gets the keys to the castle; I get the keys to the car.
Abel, my brother, over here, come closer, don’t worry, I won’t hurt you no more…listen, I heard this voice just last night when I was out taking a piss on the lawn (I came home drunk again, I know, Kiddushshikkered, hahaha, right, couldn’t make it so I went all over the bush), anyway so listen, Abel, listen to me there’s this voice it slithers up my stream of piss, right up my put
z and around my body, my chest and like all the way up to my head where it slips its tongue forked into each ear.
You listening, hymn?
S-strangling.
Cain, it says, lis-s-ten up bud, my name’s-s permiss-ss-ion—and I’m here to tell you a few things-s.
Good & Evil, nu, they’re jus-s-t what you make of them, the only absolutes-s are a whole lot more obvious-s than that.
Nudity’s-s okay, as-s long as-s s-she’s a real s-she (thes-s-e days-s, it’s saying, you never can tell).
Lis-s-ten, the snake hisses in one ear out the other, I heard (from a certain bird I s-shouldn’t name, the other night, I think Eve) that your putz of a father he’s-s throwing you out of the Garden, thinks-s it’s-s high time you two boys-s went out on your own. Here’s-s a tip. Head for America. There you’ll live as-s gaudy and as-s loud as-s you pleas-s-e. Des-s-troy s-stuff. Make mess-ss-es-s. No problem.
Open two shuls-s, never s-step a foot ins-s-ide one of them.
Futz, never find yours-s-elf ins-s-ide either.
Als-s-o, there’s-s no reas-s-on to live on top of one another anymore, you’ve got no excus-s-e.
A word to the wis-s-e? Go ghetto the des-s-ert. There’s-s a whole bunch of S-State outs-s-ide California.
