Apologia for the Unsalvageable

Plato built his cave from shadows—

I lit a fire

just to watch truth blister.

Heraclitus said the river moves.

I stood still.

Let it rot around my ankles.

He was wrong—

nothing flows but failure.

Zeno tried to prove motion absurd;

I proved love was.

Laid out every touch

like paradox,

measured how your leaving

took forever

and still happened.

Parmenides denied becoming—

called change illusion.

He’d never watched someone forget you

with perfect ease.

I ate figs with Diogenes.

He spat the seeds at statues

and said, Look,

another man who believed in meaning.

We laughed

until meaning gagged.

Even the stars—

those pompous cartographers—

map destinies in reverse,

tracing scars

and calling them futures.

You want redemption,

ethics, the good?

Go ask Socrates—

see how he chokes

on hemlock and hope.

As for me:

I wear my contradictions

like a philosopher’s robe—

stained with ash,

lined with mirrors.

This is my symposium:

wine,

ruin,

and a tongue sharpened

on reason’s brittle spine.