PLATO (AND HER BABY STEPS)

Plato (And Her Baby Steps)

“Do you still find me beautiful?”

She asked from in my life,

As she put her book of poetry

Down by the bedside light.

Seemed like normal Tuesday night,

Seemed like boring Autumn rain.

She tapped the spine, a wild, blind horse

And asked me once again…

“Do you still find me beautiful?

Just tell me if you don’t.”

Her mind in cheap philosophy,

As I reached for the remote.

There was pain, bled when she spoke.

There were brains in laundry piles.

She curled up close, like knotted air;

I kissed her for a while…

I couldn’t read, so she filled the form for me;

all that Truth that lingered through 

Versions of her when she’d gone.

I wouldn’t be half of what I would become

Were it not for what she gave:

Her transposed Symposium.

“Of course I find you wonderful.”

I whimpered from the dark.

Her face lit with a cigarette,

But she had lost her spark.

“Maybe we have changed with time.

Maybe we’re not who we were.”

It’s cruel to think - crueler to lie - 

What we might have preferred.

“What is beauty, anyway?

And could it live in me?”

All Plato’s verse dripped from her pursed

Lips, I just fell asleep.

Who needs looks when we have home?

Who needs books when there are bills?

Those pages danced out of her mind

On our blank windowsill.