I'm pretty sure Plato is pretty mad to find out that a ton of people have been inside his closet since nineteen ninety eight
I'm sorry man, people just can't resist your clothes!

Through translucent eyelids,
the light increases.
Wherever we are, this is so.
Time zones delineate regions
where the light has been,
and where it is heading.
As some stretch slowly in  
morning beds, dusky birds
across the world sound
soft evening songs.
Rambunctious, small boys
outrun their mothers,
somewhere in between.

Plenitude is with us,
in all this abundant life.
We can create an end
to the rampant, senseless
tragedy, to the desperation
looming hard upon so many.
It is what we are here to do.

My girlfriend has coveted
Installed bookshelves
For over thirty years.
She has imagined them
Bookending her hearth,
When a visitor walks up
To scan her collection.
She has books lying about
On her tables, my tables,
A few on outside tables.
She is an insatiable reader,
But never had shelves.
So, as a double gift,
I fabricated,
Installed and stained
To match her gum wood mouldings.
From vision to reality,
Better than Plato.
She's so pleased and proud
She refuses to use them;
To distract the viewer's looks
With books.

Socrates as well as Plato have nothing on my father.

© Matthew Harlovic

In pursuit of an elusive harmony
     summer nights rolled away from us
     reverberating into a numinous bass line
     while reconciling our dreams
     with a burgeoning truth

Flustered with desire
     and walking in a non-ordinary reality. Lost within the Source
    of all there is and ever was. We re-animated
    navigating through portals unexplained
     to retrieve this love

We plied our differences into commonality
     and re-aligned our fractured selves using the agency
     of synchronicity - having found
     an immutable archetypal truth
     and having found from where our self-portraits flow

Much more than soul mates, Plato
     offers stories of Zeus splitting souls in half
     as punishment for pride.
     In this incarnation, have we found humility?
     Will this be enough to carry us back to nobility?
    
It is challenging to find your way back
     into a lover's arms. Mistakes haunt us eternally (if we allow for that)
     but every morning if we awake
     and let go, using the suns setting and rising as a reminder that
     with experience, guidance, and repetition ... it gets easier

My half soul
     awoke as my mortality decomposed
     when half becomes one, then the real turmoil begins
     from the shores of St. Mary, Raven calls
     and I follow my destiny into an Obsidian Night

"Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything."

-Plato

Dear Autumn,
I feel that with the arrival of you, my favourite season,
I have found myself on a path that I wanted to never again tread.
Whilst your leaves are falling, they do not crunch
like they have in the years that have passed.
And it's started to rain, Autumn. The novel that is my life,
it detests the pathetic fallacy you provide.

Last week your wind forgot me, forgot to fill my lungs
with life and hope and I still struggle to breathe.
I did not shake because of the cold, Autumn,
but because of this cave, full of puppets and shadows and -
Autumn, I am not rooted any more but I'm not free.
And I fall, Autumn, like the rain and like the leaves.

I'm not religious;
but,
today you made me want to shout to the heavens.

I try my best not to be pretentious;
yet,
you had me feeling like the greatest person who ever lived.

I'm no philosopher;
however,
if Plato saw me today he might have thought that I had figured things pretty **** well out.

I'm not my normal self around you;
although,
that guy wishes he felt like me.

Its frightening how
being alone and being lonely
are not the same.

A wise Greek spoke of a cave
and a fire in the back of our minds
with lips pressed to our palms
casting shadows of false reality
and puppeteers with hidden strings
and chains that sit
comfortably on scathing skin.

We were born in the cave.

I've come to realize
I am not the same person
at three o'five AM
and half past eight.

Yet ignorance can be bliss
The unknowing of things
Is a gift we never wish