The Light is On

Thoughts, Stories, The Poem

Not Plato’s Allegory

What I saw was madness somewhere in the flame

and I heard a voice speaking to itself in riddles

sipping a poison masquerading as a cure

Those hands with scars that told a thousand stories

held over the fire, ready to catch the embers

and burn away the lines of age and sorrow

The shadows on the cave walls danced and whispered

hinting at strange answers to the riddles

collecting in the moon-craters of a forgotten battlefield

The night called out for company, imploring me

to abandon that gathering of ghosts and brave the stars

which light this broken land, this passageway

back to a time of soft whispered secrets

long before the world shattered

and I crawled away to the shelter of the cave

—

Spent the better part of the weekend researching and submitting to literary journals. Easily my least favorite thing about writing. Hopefully one of them bites.

—

Photo by Parker Coffman on Unsplash

Mitchel David Ring

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15 responses to “Not Plato’s Allegory”

  1. I like the allusion to Plato’s myth of the cave.

    Did you look into Jules Verne? There must be a cheap omnibus of him available online. I got mine from our local Barnes and Noble twenty years ago. Sometimes they offer some great bargain books.

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  3. Surely you’ll receive multiple bites–your work is always and ever “knock-me-over” good…it’s a mystery to me how you can do it everyday. But then, you’re a young man… 🙂

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  4. I agree that your writing should be put into a journal. You are a very good writer. I’d like to know which journals will accept writing that you’ve posted here already. Submittable.com has many places to submit poetry, but many of them require poetry that is previously unpublished.

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    • Thanks so much! And yeah, the previously unpublished thing is a bummer when I publish all my poetry on a blog. When it comes to the magazines I’m focusing on sending in short stories, which I haven’t posted on here for that very reason (:

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