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 putz 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.
Mos-s-t importantly, keep everything in pers-s-pective…then the snake slithers back down the way it’d arrived, though it disappears into a pucker, flicking up the hole in his tush — forty years-s wandering the wilderness-ss, a generation dead, and you think you’ve had it rough?
Try an eternity being me.
