A wet street steeped in wind. Champagne bubbles burst by the rain, snow, then a hailstorming of corks. Sirens split the freeze. Mel clangs his cowbell as if it’s enough to disperse them: the medics, fire, police; then unzips his fly, pisses into the sewer. An emergency artery of the highest importance, the way of first response, Eastern Parkway’s packed with observers, the curious and condemned both, in their new, newly looted clothes, in hats and wigs and jackets marked down, layawayed no longer with ten pairs of used women’s shoes in each pocket. And then into this disaster comes more, it attracts — comes his wife, or his ex, who can be sure: hundreds of them, a thousand or more drunk Misses Clauses, blind Mel’s never seen so many raw and soused wives of Ole Saint Nick in his life, never even conceived of such opportunity, missed, the squandering of sexual promise; grayhaired and tipsy, grannydresses dragging end of shift limp in muddied snow, they stagger forward in a heaving pack, talcumteeming, seething steam, a defeated army of gingerbread women gone hardened in the bitterest cold, the memory of plump, dashed hope of rosy, bonnets on their wigs on their perms, oversized purses in hand, nearing his standing gape reeking of toilet gin, peppermint, cloves, desperation. Mel elastics his fake beard down under his chin, tries to understand just from the lips of the reporter, the old Santa shtick when the beard’s on too tight you can’t hear: a bland man in a black suit and mourning tie, he’s saying something about death, the thrust of his petroleum tongue, death, licking the undersides of his front teeth, death, capped and burning, corpses and burnings…preemption of seasonal specials, the cancellation of the parades and the Passions, the manic animation of news without censor, unapproved; President Shade addressing the nation…desk, suit, flag and face; on a screen facing him, the prompter’s scrolling, snows of speech; he squints, face full with air fills up the screen, the screens, a balloon of condolence, its stem a thorn, as if to smash out the glass of the screens themselves, as if to smash out the eye; to fill the den, our mouths; our prayers are with you, he mouths…and across the nation lips are pursed to indicate gravity, quiet; volumes are raised unto the roof; shock; sofas are sat upon, chairs are brought back from the brink of recline — you really should have asked us first to sit down…from somewhere, from nowhere, a telephone rings, millions of them, Apocalypse holds the line; then, the newscaster along with his feminine clone, a doppelgänger blond and trying her best not to smile; half the stations cut to a location the other half will cut to in a moment…sixpointed star graphic: two triangles, superimposed, singeing, tattooing themselves on his pupils, Mel’s — fades, into evermore scenes of distress, then through a handful of more rapid cuts, loops of disaster, cut, cuts, scissoring fingers sliced across neck; kill it, we’re going unscripted and live onlocation…dizzying, reeling tickers, bars and charts; different stations with the same footage, different stations with different footage, grained real though all without sound, without the break of commercial. As he stands and stares, the Misseses approach; their nearing warmth sickening him, their menopaused steam and their smell. Mel reaches into the display amid a pile of those amputated, desecrated limbs, legs without feet, arms without hands, torsos without navels or nipples, and with a ragged nail he takes the screens off their mute, a flick, a flickering, raises their volumes to the sky, the very dial of the tuning moon; their blasts a coverage like light, weathernoise eruptive, as jagged and as sharp as the glass that once kept their peace, now emptying into the air, they’re sanctifying the sirens, purifying the street.
They’re dead.
AAAAAAAAAthisisnotatesthisnotatest!
Today marks the end of a glorious multimillennial history, and perhaps the richest tradition known to — is there no hope for the West — this is E.E. Tone, for A Voice in the Wilderness, reporting live, from Jerusalem — Pan — Mister Chancellor, your reactions, please — demonium — will it recover — can it even survive — over to you, in the studio — a lot of people are wondering — what does this mean for the rest of us, John—19—and for that, we turn to — mass death and rioting in the north of—39—has yet to comment — at present we have no official count — numbering toll — however experts estimate Midnight Eastern Standard Time, TOD (Time Of Death)—triage carnage age age age — a most sorrowful Xmas, indeed, Deborah—Misses Clauses in a fierce stumble, the oldest and ugliest of them leading the seething pack…they’re in pursuit, as you can hear small arms fire from just behind me, and what appears to be, yes, it’s a—I imagine the weather isn’t helping any, Helen — no, I imagine it’s not, John—Misses Clauses, all of them they’re massing into one giant Misses Claus, a grannywhite monster; they’re separate, individuated though nearidentical, and also one total woman, a great grayed grannywhite lumbering mutant with a full million eyes behind a hundred thousand pairs of glasses of every prescription, in orthopedic shoes and an apron giganticized out of their frocks that obliterates the horizon smeared in blood and in chocolate, their pearls’ strands whipping a weapon in the gusts against which it surges, past Utica toward Rockaway Avenue further, they surge forth, their din does, everywhere: Boro Park, the thorny crowns and heights of Crown Heights, Midwood and Brighton Beach down to Seagate north to Williamsburg then straight through to the borough of Queens and on to bury Long Island, the furthest Rockaway, through Hewlett and Woodmere and Lawrence, down south then, through the bedroom communities and all the commuters beached down in Ventnor and Margate and Longport in Joysey, all the way out west in Los Angeles and even more south now to Miami and the Beaches of Miami and Palm and Mexico and Panama and Rio on the water then over it to Golders Green, London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin, then Amsterdam and Paris, its perfumed bodies stacked along Rue Captain Dreyfus, further east to Berlin, Karl Marx Allee a disaster, the Empire’s Vienna, better Buda than Pest then Prague, onto Kraków and Warsaw and Russia even and Shanghai and Sydney and Johannesburg, too — and even in Eden, which is now known as Iraq, with its wadis and palms and its explosives and madness, unto Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Herself, from the German Colony unto Mattersdorf, O the onehundred gates, the gushes from Gush, Bnai Brak with no one to fix…emptied of them, emptied of us, every city and Siburb and village and town made a cemetery, a house of mourning roofed by the sky for the sitting of shiva for seven days and seven nights accompanied by no one and nothing save this very noise, its surge: all the gossip, the telephone, the radio, the shrieks of the screen. How to — Any word describe on the feelings survivors here today — No What survivors we can — Authorities make out at this are of course distance on the scene — This and attempting seems to me to be — An even the most of profound — Reports global significance from Russia are in — Our and statistics — Let’s go to show the — Do we map have any idea — An act as to what or who we’re of unparalleled dealing with Terrorism scope on an international The scale President is scheduled to address the nation tonight at ten from the White House and of course Stay tuned we’ll be bringing it to you for further developments You’re live We apologize for This technical is difficulties watching — How is It’s much this possible too? early Let’s for not anything be too hasty except in our judgment I’d hesitate speculation to say No comment://dot.comment—