The reader should be warned that although Moses' status among saints is secure, the legitimacy of his Proper is hotly debated. Various reliable but anonymous sources suggest that Moses' proper Proper was stolen from The Alhambra Christmas Eve 1491 by a pack of Basques and replaced with the following, of dubious authenticity. Dr. Louis Vanderslug, Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar Dental Chair of Neoontology at the University of Azpeitia, for example, has written in his seminal work, Propriety and Proper in the Whopper of Faints,
… the [present] “Whopper of Poses,” aside from its overtures of thinly … disguised lunacy, rests its authenticity on the most doubtful of foundations and thus should be … considered with only the most considered (sic) skepticism by even the most (sic) receptive and naïve reader. It is … the opinion of most [scholars] today that the oldest and most reliable “text” consists only of every second “the” or possibly “e” in every second “the” in the penultimate … paragraph.
The reader should thus proceed warned … or not at all.
(The reader should also be warned that Section IV of this Proper--the proper of this Proper, its eye and wound--has not translated well into the Kingdom of Blogger and thus has lost key elements of what might, in polite society, be called meaning.)
***
The official records of the West have it that God, the Lord Almighty, Yahweh Sabaoth, He Who is Beyond Names and Outside Time, manufactured the world, its satellite and sun, the surrounding cosmos and stars, the waters and heavens, trees, grass and flowers, the fish and firmament, birds and all multi-legged creatures, from nothing. As has always been the case, however, the story behind the story is another thing.
I was there: Moses, a chosen scrim in the kingdom of masks, drawn out by the Council of I to be the journalist of the world’s beginnings. The whole pantheon was chattering - names, unnamed, the unnamable - in putrid scrimmage and credit, and garudas screeched from the Aumaum trees in bliss and discord:
I
Life sat in a hut of herself on the edge of Nod, munching on memory gristle, stoking the firmament of her thighs. A troubled youth, yes, a troubled youth, Life had had. And nightmares that would have killed one killable. She wore baggy magenta stockings and a douse of rouge, and peered at herself with the scrutiny of a committed lush. I have been, she muttered, been to Lusitania. To see the coronation of a queen. And been had by the regal stockboy. Had, on a stack of sounds. Life sang a little less than sweetly on Nod’s gnarled edge and poked her coals with a trammel hanging from some violence. Perhaps, once an egg always an egg. Alway, alway, sausage, assuage. I think I will. And the stockings, roused, bestrode the firmament and Life was Life and Life came forth and Life had another round.
II
Ho Hsu lounged in an anteroom of Heaven, smoking turtle. His Kiton suit was tidily pressed and the rosa rugosa in his lapel shone like a lack of virgins. He had the numbers. He had the charm. When the steward gave the sign, Ho casually cantered to the middle paternoster and waited magnanimously for its arrival. Bouquets of spelt tickled nostril hairs with scents of swoon. Dingless ding and yawn. Only she from that other region inhabited the lift and the two communed egregiously and not lukewarm while their carrier wooped unimpressively to further heights. The Committee of Perfect Happiness awaited, as expected, as did PowerPoint, projections and a flagon of pipsissewa. Ho Hsu speeched. The noble members foibled. In the end, the vote was 22-21 for yes.
III
Gaea picked a worm off her face and examined it in the imperfect light. Tear 2. But hunger being what it is and worms being worms, the cenotaph did not last, but ceased, somewhere in the banter of the Chocky Mountains. Itstory or is it Hitstory? Oh shit, I’ve had a historectomy.
True and noble, rouble, trouble, woeful is the worm: this is the claw and the profits and everyfling you need below. Bloo bloa beraign, hearth, the birth, is good. Rue and rubble, stew and stubble. Another one. Juicy? Yes. As juicy as a newt. Ooh, and another. And a brother and a cistern and a dotard and a gun and a mortar and a fodder and a blarney and a fanny and a shrew. She ate, oozy bait, the webetreefate, but the corms kept on woming and I-uh slept on stuffing and AI bent a-bloating till the ace of worms pulled a rump and there was Eve.
V
Just seven minutes after Timoshenko had received the Odor of Ferret from the No Bell steeple in Eden, he returned to his rabidatory nonchalantly and closed the door. I’ve got another few beers to live, he thought, I’ve another few whores to hose. And he opened up his Babble to stage 9 where it spake of Tubal-Cain yammering a word together on a rhyme. This is me, he told his knife. I yammer worlds. I’m the lead clinger in the junk kettle band, Three and Two Makes One. Good name. Where was I post-eward? Oh, yes, in my widdiful rind. I will bam some continence together. I will ham a price. Timoshenko paused mid-hammer. He looked into the widow of his goal. I will baguette with my patent demon and my need a fetal url. Amen. Hymen. Ramen.
VI
Mr. Suzuki, while I have been led to understand by the formulae that have been crowding out my life, howling like banshees in drag in day, to imagine, not under the influence but in complete sobriety and wakeful, that the dictionary is the adjudicator of time, the architect of space, a holy poly balloon, the pissing cousin of make-believe, a mote of might, a walliwash of power’s hour, approached, slinking and stinking like a fog, and intimidated that you, whom the world in all its drawers and hangings adores, not least since you have sockumented¾this is the claim¾that everything I stuff into my ugly face is made from refracted zeros and pis and golden ratios in the armature of mathematics’ gross defense, some cosmic calculator on crack, think otherwise, would I be abable to take this opportunity to ask you if it’s true?
VII
Dis does not desire death but daiquiris. Dis digs da utter side: great vats of prostitution, laws tumbling down the mace of justice, monkeyspheres in metaverse, slabs of MMORPG tears, e-whoring with the Pope’s maid Mary, that construction of my face in alt.more, rampant blogs of yggdrasil, acid raining down like bootcake, surf and rinse forever san san francisco, post-post and popo in the sage of now, pop the posthuman tart, my body’s like uh like a borg in Sweden, let’s google truth in Talkohm, we shall slimudate damnocracy, assistance is utile, I love you like a velvet sweatshop, Christ is in the stem cell, holy wheezes, fook, there’s Steve. Dis summates desire, but finds possession is still an e-eternity away.
It was then, in the midst of this pantheonic conversation, He came, Yahweh, that being beast, came from the dark deceptions of my soul, and said, Moses. Fool. These others, they are chaos and void and nothing’s good. Stuff their cackling down, Moses Fool. Would you sit in their inebriations forever? Would you name their babble wise? I have a nartive stuffed in my yam; it twill bring order to the udder’s mess; here, tis hidden, wiggling, goodly, in this apple; for my sake, for his wake, for Bill Blake, slake a byte.
I did. I ate his nartive pomme. And that, as they slay, is history.
***
Friends, this Moses, this one drawn from story to story, was himself drawn from a yarn, a spool of earth or death or heat, a linen chat. He is the son of my mind and the child of my soul. He is attacked on all sides and discredited in the resolutions of the world, but he is not drowned; my fabled boy. He is begotten at the dawn of night, he is birthed when love lays dying. Do not think, then, with this elusive ancestry, that he is less real than you; that his filmy kinship to time leaves him somehow fictional and you a truth. Hasn’t my mottled man demonstrated through the dating dance of cinema and history that you’re the dream and he a giant in the stock of being, an ineradicable hunk who dams and liberates days and Danes?
I don’t care, honest colleagues, whether his story is true, whether his body was real, whether you exist. I don’t care about crawling back to zero to rock the cradle of light. I don’t care about the source of anything, solid origins, calculating ends. You go ahead … excel in nailing numbers to the sky. But I, I shall believe in grey, grey’s mascot, Moses, who walks the divisions of the earth like one who’s been confused, who sees the earth as now and then and always, as the story of a story of a dream.
This old old saint, bold enough to write his death, dancer in the diaper of the stars, is my father if genealogies are woven from different threads. I look in the chapels of the world for neglected datelines. I sit in the lap of one who made belief. I smell his hoary nascent breath. Moses. Moses. Moses, son and father of the man: we will honor you today with our souls and flesh.
***
Don’t be taken, seekers, after facts. Poses was the greatest fraud in history. He had a pedigree in dissimulation from the University of Canine. He was a member of the Nude Yerk Chitty Priest Divestment. What separates Moses from Poses in the history we call word? Only no. So, say it with me. No. Then say Poses. Poses. There, you’ve got it, Skank: Poses had us all. He smeared his rotten nartive on history’s eyes for three souchong centuries; the sorry Orient ignored him and the rest believed him. Creation out of nothing’s the stuff of drunken dreams, parted seas and chosen faces delusion’s oldest schtick. How could one story ever satisfy anyone but one? Poses played a game; he won, but only till the time we found his no and rhyme. That trickster of our worldview, of Bethel and Babel, disgospel and drivel, never existed; plus his story’s maladjusted, it’s diseased. So we from our sinus heights, with dishtowels and caramels, of libels, spaniels, yokels, zinfandels, umbrels, supermodels and newsreels, defame today that bastard of Carmel, that charlatan, that poser, Moses - no, Poses - with our burning flesh.
