O pity this Kitschenmensch fallen, semioticized Semitically exotic, hermeneutered to death! It might be better, the Garden thinks, if all had their own individual Bens, then, a personal savior to call each their own, or Ishmael — that would make more sense than such overscheduling, these lookalikes who themselves have to be minded night and day to keep sober and kind. A figure, a figurine, poseable, plastic without soul. An animal stuffed with dream, stitched up with silvery linings. Scarred. Expressionless. Name it again what it is, not an idol but an idol’s idol, a God’s imaged god shelved Aisle Ten, opposite the mirrorlike void. Too bad you can’t massproduce stars. Stay with us, it’s part of and parceled with research, that’s it, at least that’s how R & D’d try to sell it to Him: trying to find out if Ben, both the concept and human, the menschboy, the boychick, would be more viable as what, a woman — with a pair of those, Doctor Tweiss snickers, the other Tweiss sniggers, and a you know, giggle, snort, tsk, tsk, down there, with baby chromozoans helixed just right, nice and neat to further the line. Twistingly turned. Have Him mate with Himself. Cloning, no buts. Stroke a schlong. I need more. Lightning and thunder. Frank & Stein, a firm whose services He’d be smart to retain. Idea is, nu, how Der and his inner tisch they don’t say what it is as much as it’s implicit in whatever they the doctors are allowed to be told: to make Him as versatile as possible, opened up to the widest possible appeal; though only after identification of the maximum number of permutations to be had from among xdemographed incarnations and yadda y furthered through z. Basically, as it’s lately explained, once the value proposition’s been defined in committee, to go right ahead and, synergistically proactivate the deepest spiritual desires of, fill in the blank — what was the budget of Babel, how high overhead? Forecasts, predictions, a waste of time, resources, money money money say the angels up in Accounting; it’s that we have to tap into dreams, sample only the tenth or so of the stuff that’s represented as prophecy, according to our Sages, their entitled fraction, the terumah…let them make their beds to lie in them, we’ll be the richer for it; let them grope for amelioration all they want upon waking, it’s not going to change anything soon. It’s too late to toss, turn, rollover, around; it’s going to be that they can’t tell when one dream ends and another begins, and what’s best is that they’re not going to care — as long as we’re always a delusion ahead.
Awake, Ben’s lying in bed. His room, a hotel, motel, don’t ask, He doesn’t, not anymore where. Bottles of butts with the teevee on weather, He’s on in an hour. To be due in Makeup & Wardrobe, stat, doubletime. He sits up, takes in the carpet, the cabinet and dresser and the grain of the desk, the rack and the luggage, its guts sliced open to air; His crib, too, never used, they always bring with to hold ice. He’s wrecked, doesn’t know what time it is, light or dark. And so He goes to the window to up the shades and stands there over the west laidout below Him — unable to remember how He got out here this far: parkinglot A, parkinglot B, parkinglot C…asphalt sanding away to the highways, the open America, nothingness deserted, disused; downstairs floors below the hotel complex a horde of extras going through a round of rushed alterations — the unionized seamstresses hemming and hawing; the animal wrangler’s bathing the goats, lions and lambs, as his assistant’s hosing the rank wet from their cages; the properties master’s inspecting the sets—Egypt, Venice, Poland, and Tenement: East Side—redoing the Yiddish on a sign set to be the frontage of a butcher’s; the harpist’s getting herself tuned in the pit to the strains of an anthem different, made minor. Outside, lit in the gloriole of the three letter marquee — there’s a kid, standing at attention, a pole, hoisting up the new flag. Its lone star shines lonely. Its six points, spiting. Martyring the sky surrounding — the pitiless desert, its insomniac pulse.
O the eve of the Fourth, the erev of the fourth day of Ju-ly — and there’s no better shrine at which to celebrate, nu, To observe, than this here: a city only recently risen a bright hump from out of the bleakness of dunes, the newest capital of what was once known as the West, not sure if you’re familiar…no more wondering around enough wandering hotel hallways, then down any that might seem, if just for a moment, a frayed thread of rug, a gilded mirror glint, auspicious in their direction, their winding, portentous of eventual give; begging bribing answers off porters uniformed and not, offduty, dishwatery waiters and wrungfaced nightdesk personnel; through the window left open, go forth and sin with your eyes: the globes revolving dizzily, above the fountains spewing radioactive — an empyrean stripped, fallen to its tar knees, openmouthed, sucking freonated air and noising urgent. Cut the crapola, the decks and deal, we’re talking the glittery take them off tits, the sparkly cunt graven deep between the dunes, then beyond…trudging heavied, pockets emptied of everything but sand: O the skulls and the crossed bones, the brittle cacti, the desert. And then — so much — the fade of these sounds…the bringing bling, the rubby, grubby coin ching, die’s deathrattle weighted for snake eyes — it can only be none other, fellowtraveled good friends. Knowest thou the whirlwound where of this Sodom? Givest thou the proverbial futz as to the hidden name of that there forbidding Gomorrah? He asks, fregn, farlangen, or environs. Welcome to Los Siegeles, baby, a cocktail maydel whispers in His ear, then quotes Him the price for an hour.