When your Tower of Babel
rushes up to heaven, it’s then I know that Gilgamesh
left you in such a bad state. He didn’t even stop to inspect
what in older times we would have called the rabble—
and that’s you—
now we just call you Ozymandias’s last attempt at some form of spectacle.
Babylon’s brave boy thunder,
made of static shock, and flaming Merlionsmanic locks,
and all your signs of wonder.
We wanted you to stop.
We wanted you to drown under
the need to always produce something new, something that does not keep
accidentally fucking recovering
all of your lost secrets, and treasure, and plunder.
Go, go,
go-go boy,
keep dancing!
There is no more time to wonder
at what we have kept under
what we call something new, something that does not keep.
It just doesn’t. It doesn’t help you recover.
It kills you. Makes you sick. It plunders
your resolve and your spirit, even worse than the legend of Sodom and Gomorrah.
We prefer this city-state in this city state instead:
absolutely torn asunder
by a complete lack of thinking things through for themselves.
Your friends were right when they said it could be such a utopia
if they stopped trying to pretend that hope can be powered solely on nostalgia.
But they won’t.
No one ever intends
to learn from their mistakes
because how can Enlil show you anything if we have already made sure that the day
where you learn of your errors never arrives?
How can you fall in love with your shadow
if the Stairway to Heaven
never has a heaven in sight?