The Truth About Storytelling

“Human beings need to organize the inchoate sensations amid which we pass our days-pain, desire, pleasure, fear-into a story.” --Andrew Delbanco

irretrievably we tell ourselves stories

irretrievably as beaded water slides off our skin

irretrievably even as it makes our skin crawl

irretrievably if we make teeth-gnashing truth

irretrievably hope is a tightened heart noose

irretrievably we die, our beloveds will die as well, sometimes before

irretrievably aging, aging: often little wiser

irretrievably the purple wall of clematis drops its flowers

irretrievably some days Beelzebub shits flies in your coffee

irretrievably Agamemnon is splattered with Iphigenia's gore

irretrievably Clytemnestra prepares a bath for returning Agamemnon

irretrievably our house plants die from lack-of or over-watering

irretrievably St. George cannot kill those venom-dragons in his head

irretrievably we think we do our best—irretrievably, we usually do not

irretrievably we fall into black totalities of meaninglessness

irretrievably we will fuck things up even more, more 

irretrievably: without the telling of story we are irretrievably lost