The ninetynine of them then one more of God, names a hundred allpardoning, undeniable and ineffable, inextinguishable and, as much, allnegating — they’re going sloganeered on traffic signs, stickered and stenciled, on the walls of public telephones and information kiosks, taxistands, bus and cartstops, nomens recently registered trademarks of Garden, Inc. (violations are being cataloged, with vandals charged only if they’re not billed). NEB! in kabbalistically diffuse red, white, & blue becoming sprayed in tunnels of the subway said to be held by any revolution convenient for comment, a loose though they’re said to be organizing group of shirkers, skeptics, and the libertarian available that might anyway be paranoid fearmongering, or just another Garden interest, disinformation as entertainment, misdirection as the only way forward, nothing new there. With the Nachmachen tasked to image maintenance with Doctor Abuya assisting, advising in matters of Law in a capacity interpretive, say — a consultancy of divination palms opened, thumbly their fumbling prestidigitation — while Gelt and Hamm have been remanded to merchandising, remaindered to the bargaining bin of this campaign for hearts and minds, wallets and purses, pocketsouls snapped, moderation getting caught in the zipper; supervising the PR initiatives, and administrating, too, the official production facilities of the Garden (and don’t ask as to an acronym — lately there’re just enough around to forget), which night through to day are spitting out every species of kitsch; barracks repurposed to manufacture, light industry, areas of lading and loading, property dezoned and downzoned out on the ice of Joysey eminently domained; the two of them standing on the floor of a factory fit for Kings, Queens, or Hudson counties, hardhattted and soft of face witnessing as Ben’s own squeezes cheeks lumpy and pasty, extruded out of every metallic orifice at once, laudably shiny, all wrapped up in Himself: here a line of gastrointestinal aids, there a regimen of heartburn pills, associated powders and tinctures reactive, inventions of the dead FBs, pharmaceutical patents shylocked for a promise, the prescription of a rare grave. Icons of Israelien inflatable to totter sandfooted, alongside plaster Bens to stand on ceremony, its columns; pressuremolded and plastic Hims even for inclement weather outdoor use on stoops and lawns (1 foot, 36 inches, & 50), said to be sainted, for a nominal supplementary fee, that is, Benblessed miraclegranting, that’s extra, it’s told — fear not, they’re faceless, to circumvent the prohibition of the second commandment; name it what it is, the newest rabbis say, an idol at fabulous savings. Furnishings for the garden and home, and a line of luggage, also, just perfect for your next refugee flee. All products bearing Ben’s stamp of approval, that cartoonishly capital almost bubbly B in their olden language facing opposite and intertwined with a Gothically fonted by way of the sofer’s stam Bet, is how it begins in another; that unmistakable B/ emblazoned in iridescent hologram across the obverse of the packaging — with a worldly dagesh or dot floating to blot their bind at middle — being the same seal that identifies the new currency, Israelien shekels entitling the bearer to His visage laurely ovaled though veiled, and in eighteen denominations, minted across the country and, soon, if the Garden gets its way, the world, under the auspicies of the Treasury, which, along with dissimulation, was Der’s old department.
Though the new isn’t even the half of it, as the relic market soars, through the roof — a chimney’s black puff: locks of hair said to be His go for a mint, wrapped for the shipping in mismatched to no matter white tubesocks, retrieved from the laundry, dirtied fetching more than clean, veils and vials of sacral saliva and if impotent seminal fluid are prized if always faked and known to be, too, forged receipts, counterfeit clippings of nail from finger and toe, bogus foreskins and eyelashes as questionable, and as unquestioned, as the proliferating public and publicized records of miscellaneous deeds done, of good works goodly worked upon billboards and within the webs of neon campaigns — Bens private and public assimilated into a bland middle, made pareve, approachable, relatable’s the term through the given mundane (gnawed nighttable pencils and pens, knives and forks stolen from roomservice carts and their dishes that chafe, yarmulkes blown from His head and from there — directly into the hands of the deserving, a blessing fallen from the steal of the wind), these artifacts of His lapsed divinity, these failures made object of abject, His. Witness the fervor for such relics culled and cleaned from the fleshified strata of this monumentally walkingtalking dig, this instantaneous forefather Ur; an involuntary authority just one appeal short of repealing Himself, it’s been said — meaning God…what tsuris, what terror!
