1/24: Platonic (a rex)

The sea can swallow cities but chooses not to
                 would rather wash the population inland and
                                               erode the infrastructure
                                                             than drag
more of the world into its already full belly
Plato didn’t know this and so
generations of historians who didn’t understand allegory
                                                        didn’t know this
and so optimists and pirates dove
for an Atlantis that never existed
When I was at my most twenty-somethingth
someone I’d mistakenly labelled friend
                     told me to give up on finding love
                                       that it was fiction
                                       people wallowed in infatuation until
                                       they found someone equal parts
                                                                roommate and
                                                                sex doll
                                        that everyone closed their eyes
                                                  when they fucked
                                                  because the truth was never
as good as imagination

Maybe the truth is
friendship is fiction and love is real
history is fiction and advice is hope
sexual chemistry is more religion than science
touch is imagination and desire is memory
Maybe when we want something
we should cross our synapses instead of fingers
  
I didn’t find love when I was looking for something else
I found it when I was looking for love
It wasn’t in the most obvious spot but
             like my constantly shimmering keys and cell phone
             in the place where I eventually found it
and I grumbled to myself that it wasn’t there
when I looked in that exact spot
                                a few minutes ago
And you best believe that a friend who fit
                                              the same hole in my judgement
as the man who told me love wasn’t real
told me that even if love as a concept was real
what I was currently holding in the night
                                                                was not love but
                                                                         desperate imagination
 
I don’t know why Scott told me
                                      love wasn’t real
                            that I should just shut my eyes and
                                                        fuck my imagination into
                                                                   whoever was willing to lie beside me
                            why I believed him enough to close my eyes and
                                                                                             love him