Diagnosing “Nothing”
By Nathaniel Seres
That two-syllable armored car crashes
through what we can and can’t see,
a smoldering clay that builds and smashes
invisible Michelangelos that we know of only when they’re gone.
Eyes are refugees, struggling, reaching, searching.
Confidence icicles that stretch but never reach,
words inquisitive but never set to breach.
Dark shadows beneath that fawn—
on what’s come and what’s gone,
they see only the car that drives away,
cannot fathom its destination.
Passing magnificent chapels in desecrated veneration—
bids willful gallant gold to raucous rust temptation—
a word with no aim, but a singular set conclusion—
Decimation.
Spawns fresh from telegraphic typhoons confusion
blind idiot gods laughing in collusion—
we can only feel them, hear them if we know them,
never bestow upon them
some semblance of cohesion.
Our Louvre is defiled, drowning in mucks,
Mona Lisa is in surrealist flux,
cruelty is taking Van-Gogh’s ear,
and with sacrilegious sear
allowing him at once, to hear—
The invisible impetuous, capacious waves
churning gusts into hurricanes—
the barbaric ballistics of remarks bade.
Capricious, insidious, infallible, intangible,
Romans that make the soul
into a flaming crucible.
Regardless of what was said,
whether stemmed from lead-heavy love or dearest dread
or from monstrous indifference,
this two-syllable tank will make sure despair is fed.
And what’s truly amazing,
the Thing that stands out the most—
is what damage can come from this little word—
to the recipient and to the host.