This is the Market of Spinoza Street, I’m only guessing…and every day’s Market Day in this sewerside moneyslough, this guttersniping remnant of any vanity’s fair. Upon closer inspection — a breakingaway, a crack in the systems — the street below’s paved with gold, which as it’s abundant is worthless, no good here, take it elsewhere. No new business, no today’s concern (only the wind and its witching flies by what passes for night, which is the same as the day if you’re hungry and thirsty and selling), this is a market of ancient standing, still held to only the most paradisiacal of principles: it’s operated & owned by everybody, which is the same as by nobody, really, if more comforting why, and everyone has the opportunity to purchase everything here, to exchange for everything’s what, trading even each other, even themselves — that’s right, step right up: just decide on a price, whether a trade in kith or in kind, a bargainy cutrated, cut your throat deal, whatever you think of as honest, whatever you think of yourself, whoever you are; all’s fair in vanity, every price has its thing. All these refugees forgotten crawled out of the craterous void, clawed straight out of the jaws of cavernous incoherence, theirs, history’s, no one’s — the island apprehended as if a mouth disembodied: these losers, their names at least, their words, flocking here in a great herding of regret left behind (among their losses, bashful sheep, too sheepish to cross; they wait for their shepherds at the sheer edge of the moat — not desperate enough to dare passage, to enter you have to lose everything), here with the idea of redeeming themselves…realizing I’ve heard, actualizing, too, whatever the term, I’ve been told: in new work, new identity, in new family and so, newer hopes, to sell their souls at the going rate gone, dark-marketed to the loss of supply, the malicious gain of demand; though some prefer renting their souls before buying them outright, others lease out only those names theirs and others’, their dates or occupations, on a plan requiring installments lowly a talent or so less than usurious: you might be interested yourself, only if. Isn’t it time for a change? A revolt? This Market’s open all day every day, weekends and holidays and even the Sabbath included. Actually, it itself is every day and all holidays and all Shabboses, Shabbos — all days indeed and their nights, too, you get the idea: the substantive world centrifugalized to its barest essentials, boileddown in the vat of a centripetal hell frozenover. Might as well abandon abandonment, in with the rest: you have to go through to get out to get in…
Welcome, brother comrade, this I think a goy says as he shuffles toward me: thrush’s egg eyes, strawhair, straw coming also out from his shirtsleeves, bulging from the waist and legs of his pants — my name’s…today, I’m not sure; an escapee much like yourself.
He frowns when I don’t say what.
Here, give me a moment, and he goes to search through his pockets, their flax, to find finally a wipe of newsprint, a whimper of magazinestock.
He holds it up to his eyes, reads aloud.
Boris Borisovich Bourgeois, that’s the name…but you can call me Bobo if you have to.
And me, what can I say?
Or Bibi, B.B. or B., up to you…and then, silence, interrupted only by his perk at the wind: interesting that you should ask that question…if you’ll only follow me, and he leads on with confidence, that’s what he thinks I think but I follow — the conviction only to be found when dealing with the negligible, the middling, the though we’re all equal essentially unimportant…leads me as if to the one stall he knows how to find.
This Kapo, he says as we go, he asked me was I dead yet, and so don’t doubt I answer him sure, whatever you want.
I’m no, how do they say — putz.
I fled for moons, you with me — until I come to this moat.
I’d always known about this place, that’s how it feels…but myth’s what I thought, collusion or women’s gossip, impertinence, superstition, a nightmare in which I’m trying to dream. I know how it goes, it’s a merging like water, how all the systems or even, I dunno, dialectics opposed, they eventually flow themselves into one. And so I crossedover, no regrets. I’ve been here ever since, trying out this Bourgeois thing month to month. As far as identities go, it’s as good as any. Tells me how to live. What’s expected, what’s to expect. We pay with our lives for this life, so we’re told. I’m enlightened now, illuminated like you wouldn’t believe. I know what I’m worth. Exploitation of value as a generational thing, forget it. Inheritance has been gotten rid of, maybe for us, maybe by us; we’re remaking ourselves from the ground up, rib by rib, and all of them iron. I’ve lost my chains, my mind withered away with them — I’m crazy united.
By the way, love your horns.
