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All the Times We Have to Lose

A story requiring its own telling

Met up with a man in his mind’s own depths

This man let the story have his doubt

Because nothing said is ever true

And stories don’t speak to men lacking questions

If you could see this man

You’d know this story hadn’t a happy ending.

Man and story sifted through each other

Exposing weaknesses and testing strengths

Abusing emotions to the point of torpor

They met in the most predictable place

As the man soon encountered

He could not return this story

To the bottle which delivered it to him.

For some time, they were pitted against

Rooted forcibly in abeyance

The obvious eventuality was compliance

Life stood strongly against imagination

The man faced only one grand problem

One every artist will doubtless comprehend

The story did not know how to relent.

This tale had not been trained in the practice of submission

Nor had it been beaten by a merciless life

At this point, in the ice of his whiskey

The truth finally found this man

The truth is a cold, hard bitch

She revealed unto the man the clarity

Now he saw the work of the twenty-second catch.

By fighting the imaginative wonders

He would certainly submit to life

Submit to the life surrounding him

The hate, disgust, and conformity

The idiocrasy, manipulation, and distrust

Now he was faced with a clear choice

So, he wrote a fucking story.