building upon a foundation of nothing
the artisan's work collapsed.
surprise?--no, it makes sense.
for one cannot build something on nothing,
even if nothing has a facade
a veneer more glorious than even reality.
but that's what i did, foolishly misled
by the lying face of nothing, your nothing.
and though i tried to manifest
this nothing into something, still it
remained blank.

and nothing has changed, except now--
this tower has come crumbling down,
babel! babel! irrational belief in
nothingness.
and now up is red and down is eight
for nothing makes sense and we are all
from sodom, from gomorrah, and babel
and russia and england, and cultures
crash. the mafiosos line up only to vanish,
all because they lived their lives on this space
reserved for nothing but lying about everything
a regular siren.
but now the rock is on top and the siren beneath
so that all is an extension of the sweet song
that leads us astray.

epiphanies lead nowhere--realizing this limbo
is just that and nothing more is too much
and so we return to sodom and babel
to be who we were, ignorant and joyous;
puppets of the great mafioso in the sky.