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.
