His skin burrs muffled metal edges. Neck
In cold, encasing ring. His eyes entrapped
In pictograms: dark absences cast on
A speckled warming, imperfect light.
Rough heat of other-body
And other-body-probably.
The mishapen lumpen
Masses are fuzzy in the
Outlines of his eyes.
Sparse noise parallels cut-out rising "Sun"
And "Fish" and "Lake" and
"Tree". He watches the
Cut-out "Sun" be
Replaced by
The cut-out
"Moon".
Cut-out
"Fish" half circle
Surface of cut-out
"Lake". Cut-out "Man"
Sputters cut-out behind
"Words" in cut-out "World"
Next to cut-out "Tree". He would speak,
Too: "Cut-out" "Words"; "Cut-out" reply.
When the crescent absence
Falls, the "world"
Stops.
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Cloaked hands would then
Bring the smothered dark.
And their cold recess, filled with
Warm gritty mush. Glooping
Sustenance is received
Gleefully; pumped thrice,
Leaving him
Messy and grooling.
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After the shadows consume
The screen, sleep comes wistfully:
Hollow echoes of broken speech
And absences, dimly cast on a
Pulsating orange backdrop.
.pindrop memories a light clatter of meaning.
cocoon warmth,
pulsating orange glow,
speckled red vines,
muffled laughter,
voices
and red pain.
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His fabric blinker eventually
Disappears into the ground.
Chains unlocked
And left sagging
Next to sagging
Man.
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His folded appendages began to unravel;
He stood. And turned to look
For the effulgence
That gives the
Absence
Meaning.
Splayed
In crescent line
Blinded figure-like
"Stones" are balled and
Passive. Shadows: lifeless. Dim
And vague embers splutter behind
Him. A dark, rectangular slab is silhouetted
By the licking flame:
Tucked and rearing.
Ahead, a passage;
Dark and comforting.
He shifted slowly,
And
Curls.
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Eventually, "sun" rises and
Parading echoes
Perform melancholy
Dances.
When "moon" dips below
And the "world" is empty
He waits agape for
Filling slush.
None came.
Empty, his wire frame
Activates and drags him, he
Clawed on the felt sand, that
Carpeted carved stone and the
Block stairs leading to the:
Open
To the:
Not-always.
Depleted limbs collapse
Onto muffled flat stone.
A slightly darker crevice
Offered him solace.
Here, cornered up,
Pressed against
Cold and wet,
Sleep came
Dutifully.
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Piercing,
Searing,
Savage
Spikes,
Sudden
And
Swift
It was
Sordid
Violent
Damagings.
Holy fire lit him aflame.
Blinding light
Engulfed him in
Crackling static.
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He assimilated deep in the foot of his
Nuzzling slab. Solid shadows stretched
Below. More true to him than the infinite
White heat that cast them in vast strokes.
He sat face-down, between two
Scrunched twigs; bent like
Mantis' claws. He held his
Eyes-open, absorbed into
His own shadow, now crisp.
Not fuzzy and undefined.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
The "world" always
Recurs. Soon, his own
Silhouette will
Return to its
Silent delineation.
And he can creep
In cold trepidation, back to the
always-dark, the "world",
The always-tickling-tension.
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He returned to
Find that
The "world", once:
Sharp and clear, with an
Orange glow that casted
Neat outlines - meaning-bringer -
Now: grey-black and
Always dark;
An absence of
Everything.
In an unknown surging he
Caressed the "World's"
Surface and traced
Its smooth rolling dents.
He pressed his nose
Against the stone
And inhaled.
He caught the sagging - sometimes-speaking -
"Rocks", always in peripheral. Now: direct. They were laid curved, in a crescent-moon.
He wondered what the texture, or warmth or, Musky smoky scent might appear from Probably-a-"rock".
Bending in the same way he used
To observe the "world" he crumpled in
Front of the thin, pointy, oddly-shadowed
Thing.
He held its face.
Feeling its warm
Recesses and feathered
Curling beard.
Briefly, blank black sockets
Darted to meet him. Only to
Return, back: fully in-the-world.
A dim bulbous pain
Rose, like the crescent
"Fish" deep in his hollow
Body. An elemental appetite.
So, he left the
Always-dark,
The "World".
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He crawled up. In the absence of
What was always nothing.
Distant drum of expanding light
Radiated, circling and enveloping
Him in wide and open crushing arms.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
He sat bent down in front of the light.
Facing dancing patterns under
Moist soil and jutted crumpled grass. Or,
In his own lumpen mass, mishapen, the
Silhouette most often in his sight.
Before he felt the
Form and finish
Of the not-always,
The casted spells
In crevice and
Under stone
Held comfort.
Now, he traces them with
Swollen weary eyes. They seem
Void and
Vapid.
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Bulbous echoes ****** permeously,
Abdomen seething desperately.
No glooping sustenance
Force-fed and welcome came.
It signalled distant pin-drop time-before.
Blindly, he burdened sagging limbs;
Face gnawing into dirt and worm and grass.
Screeching solitude kept his fingers clawing,
Raw and thin, now punctures permeate:
Tiny everything always everywhere
At him all at once.
He mounted his haggard body,
Tugging at his wilted stalks,
Imploring them to save him.
In distant tones
A hollow echo
Of broken speech
Disperses past him
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* * *
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Huddled shadow, hunched
Under rugged oak tree
Carp swim in darting
Pummels, refracted scales
Shining rainbow
Droplets
Shimmering on the shifting surface
Was him, an-other face, unknown and
Alien: crinkled with crevices and dark
Swollen eyes.
His ear twitches:
Voice. Dripping
With full-throated
Fervor
He turns to face
An-other man
Distant shadow
On the horizon
Waving disjointed
Stick-like appendage
Silhouetted by the
Setting sun.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
He awoke: swollen passivity; embraced in
Canvasing warmth. An-other stood taut.
Now they folded over him, caressing him,
In his sagged skeletal frame. Embroiling him
In frantic whispers. They held his sunken
Face: wet with old-worn sobs and tears and
Shouts and fears, primal moans and hunger.
He turned to look into an-other's eyes:
His brimming.
Next he would come to see
The things themselves.
[Wiki Summary]
In the allegory, Plato describes people who have spent their entire lives chained by their necks and ankles in front of an inner wall with a view of the empty outer wall of the cave. They observe the shadows projected onto the outer wall by objects carried behind the inner wall by people who are invisible to the chained “prisoners” and who walk along the inner wall with a fire behind them, creating the shadows on the inner wall in front of the prisoners. The "sign bearers" pronounce the names of the objects, the sounds of which are reflected near the shadows and are understood by the prisoners as if they were coming from the shadows themselves.
Scholars debate the possible interpretations of the allegory of the cave, either looking at it from an epistemological standpoint—one based on the study of how Plato believes we come to know things—or through a political (politeia) lens.