Moshiach

by Steve Ely

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson
was troubled by this dream. 
He'd die and go to heaven, to be greeted
at the gates by Sammy Davis junior,
singing Mr Wonderful from the right hand of God.  
It preyed on his mind: he ran his caddy
off the road and over a nigger
on the corner of President and Troy.
 
Dovber, his shvoger, took a look at the zulus massing
and said oy, the fuck out let's get.
Shneerson whacked it into drive and snowploughed
the crowd, sending teeth and eyeballs flashing.
He made it to Eastern Parkway and holed up
with attorneys. They surrendered him
for booking, then walked him out on bond
to guest on Larry King. The spook's bitch
 
smelt gelt and solicited the darktown A–list. 
Al Sharpton turned up in furs and a purple mu-mu,
screaming ethnic cleansing. Farrakhan riffed
on the Jew-nited States. Johnnie Cochrane
thumbed his suspenders and ball-parked thirty million. 
Fox wheeled out Bernard Goetz for balance. 
Bernie called pre-emptive self-defence.
Osiris called a meeting in Central Park:
 
can you dig it? Some umbatz mick
took a potshot and iced him. 
Everything went to fuck, jigs squaring off
against mighty-whitey. The Eight Tray Crips
MAC-sprayed Fifth Avenue. A Klandestine Kop Klavern
torched Muslim Mosque Five. Ed Koch called in
the National Guard: Nicky paid them off,
flooded the streets with horse.
 
Elijah Muhammad called kike konspiracy:
the Jew keeps the Negro sedated
with heroin,culls him via drive-bys.
Shit developed a warped dynamic:
Biggie clipped 2Pac for fucking his wife. 
2Pac clipped Biggie to see how he liked it. 
Tim McVeigh shouted Helter Skelter
and called to hire a Ryder truck.
 
Angela Davis flew to Tripoli,
shook hands with Abu Nidal - 
Leon Klinghoffer walked the plank like Evel Knievel.  
Vicki Weaver turned up on Howard Stern 
and declared a Racial Holy War. 
Howie called her cracker trash
and tried to score some shotguns; 
Vicki said ain't you a jewboy? 
 
ZOG got on the case: Bilderberg called U Thant
who gave the order to Dick Nixon –
quit bombing the gooks and cosy up
to George Jackson. Fuck America.
Schneerson, meanwhile, was holed up in shul,
prayer-shawl hunched over Yes I Can:
Sammy telling Goldwyn to shove it,
when he asked him to shoot on Yom Kippur;
 
digging on Zion and Moshe Dayan,
opting in to Jewish suffering and forbearance –
this one-eyed goyisher-schwartz thinks he's chosen!
Dovber peered through the panel in the door
of the study. The Rebbe was circled in flame,
engrossed in the merkevah no doubt;
then a second molotov cocktail exploded
through the window. Dovber put out the Rebbe
 
with a CO2 extinguisher and dragged him out. 
The whole place went up. Singed alephs
and taus ascended. Flash-burn smouldered,
strapped to the ambulance gurney,
Schneerson felt the mob crowding and chanting –
Auschwitz, Auschwitz – and flinched each time a rock
beat the riot-shield cordon and boomed on
the panelling. He wondered out loud:
 
is it time for aliyah, Jerusalem?
Dovber threw up his arms. Crazy is this place.
Maybe we should bail and on the Sabras work.
First degree burns hummed the Rabbi to sleep,
and there he was again, the Candyman,
in top-hat and tails, flash-dancing around
a silver-topped cane. Behind him, two angels
in white fedoras cradled violin cases
 
and spoke on Sammy's cue – Meyer Suchowljansky
out of Grodno and Grand Street. 
Don't do it! In Rooshish I was a musselman;
in Zion a shtarke verboten; in America,
bigger than US steel! Tell 'im Charlie!
Charlie gurned a greaseball grin: dere ain't nuttin'
like da States! Sammy levelled his cane
at the camera – a one eyed nigger convert
 
running the joint for God? Only in America!
Scheerson and his shvoger spread over the velour
and bad-mouthed the States. The cabbie took exception –
in my country, nothing. No work,
no school for children, sometimes no food to eat. 
Here I work two jobs, my son learns much in school. 
He pulled a snap-shot from his wallet –
one day, he will be lawyer!
 
The schwartz charged them sixty five fifty
and dropped them off at the Brooklyn Hilton.
Scheerson met Marina in one oh four.
He struggled for wood, even in her mouth.
She teased his age was catching up. 
He blamed the meshuganer USA. 
She said what, you wanna go back to Russia? 
He shrugged, said Israel maybe.
 
She said with all the terrorists and crazy people? 
Joe looked at Uri and Uri asked the Rabbi
if they could say it like they saw it. 
Tell me, he said. Joe said it was a shithole
full of fucking immigrants. Uri cursed the Russians
and the Arabs and the fucking religious – no offence, Rabbi. 
I lived in a doss above a Tel Aviv brothel,
I drove an '86 Opel Rekord.
 
Now I got a view over Prospect Park
and I roll in a kick-ass Suburban;
I'm never going back!  Schneerson grimaced -
if these are the chosen, what hope
is with the goyim - and peeled off some bills.
Joe pocketed the gelt and backslapped the Rabbi.
So how was Marina? Still a grand well spent?    
Rabbi, you be a Jew. I wanna be American!   
 
Bare feet in iced water kept him alert
and focused on the yod; 'I will give you
for a light to the nations, that you may
be my salvation to the ends of the earth' - 
so they can be like us! 'The Lord's house
shall be exalted and unto it shall all nations flow
and worship before thee' - as Hassids!
'A rod from the branch of Jesse,
 
a shepherd of lost sheep, an ensign
for the nations …out of Zion goes forth the law'. 
They call me Moshiach; are they wrong?
Are we wrong for all these years?
No, it cannot be! We will gather them
and teach them and they will become righteous. 
But from Zion! We can stay here no longer.
Jerusalem!  Jerusalem!
 
Dershowitz yakked his weary eyes to sleep. 
He'd got the gist. Settle with the schwarzeh
out of court, kick-back to some Guyanese
neighborhood group. Let the million dollar lawyers
do the rest. Sammy lowered down
through a cloud of dry ice, hanging off
a glitter half-moon; beside him astraddle
a foil Mogon Dovid, a luminous Hassid
 
in white-fox kaftan and ermine-brimmed hat.
Hey Menachem – would you like to swing on a star?
Put your eyes back in, I kid, I kid! 
You know me? I made you! Schneur Zalman
of Lubavitch, and chaver, let me tell you -
we fucked up good! The praying and Torah
and la la la – no-one cares! You got a good heart,
that's enough for the big guy and buys you a ticket. 
 
Death is like life with the goys in the Vegas goles -
a non-stop shmooz! Tonight I'm hitting the tables
with Moe Dalitz and the Baal Shem Tov; 
after that we'll take our pick
from History's most zaftikeh moiden. 
You'll do that in Kfar Habad?  
Those shiny-eyed certain Brooklyn pork-dodgers
never lived a fucking day in their lives. 
 
At least you got your Russian whore; that's right,
God's got you all on the big screens here.
Zalman swung aloft, disappeared waving
into billowing dry ice. Sammy spoke direct to camera:
hey Rabbi! Lighten up! Live life. Worship God
with all your heart and love your neighbour
as yourself. You can waste your life on Zion
and the last days if you want,
 
but America's the promised land of the here and now. 
Don't you know? USA is the heart of Jerusalem!
Menachem rose before dawn and listened
to the traffic, rumbling and beeping
down Eastern Parkway: dog-tired Ghanaian
yellow cab drivers; Haitian illegals,
working the graveyard, booze-blurred Irish,
weaving home from bars; intense Koreans,
 
getting in early or going home late;
goles Juden in shtetl habadashery,
or with hairstyles, wearing Donna Karan:
estranged from God, his spark in them all. 
And so too in himself, no more or no less. 
Moshiach! Menachem pulled off into traffic,
crawled behind tail-lights all the way
to Coney Island, into a grey-washed ocean dawn. 
 
He parked in a lot overlooking
the restless Atlantic, salt-spray strafing
his windshield in foam. His mind conjured
ghost ships breaking the horizon,
lice and vomit rolling hulks three weeks out
of Odessa or Danzig, their huddled cargoes
swarming to starboard to gaze in weary wonder
on the dawning Promised Land,
 
Liberty Enlightening the World,
the First Amendment and Dreamland's fabulous beacon,
lighting up the Nickel Empire. 
Menachem turned the tuner, trawled static
and Espanol, before a velvet voice,
KBBL, Nice 'n' Easy through the night,
introduced Gonna Build a Mountain,
by the King of Swingers himself:
 
oy, Tatenui! A burning bush! 
A voice in the temple! Hineniy, Adonai, hineniy!
The Rabbi sobbed over the steering wheel,
as Sammy emoted heartfelt
through Anthony Newley's casual paces:
Gonna build a heaven/from a little hell/
Gonna build a heaven/And I know darn well/
If I build my mountain with a lot of care/
 
And take my daydream up the mountain/
Heaven will be waiting there.
Menachem took off his hat and yarmulke
and tossed them on the back seat with his suit coat
and kaftan. He walked up the spitting street
in shirt-sleeves and suspenders, hands plunged deep
in his pockets, heading for Nathan's Famous.
He went over the order; hot dog, coffee with cream.



[Moshiach, the first part of the long poem JerUSAlem, is © Steve Ely 2007]

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Steve Ely lives in Yorkshire. He writes poems and short stories and is currently working on two main projects: a novel set in a California State Prison and a biography of former Federal prisoner Clayton Fountain.