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Gale

By William Ward Butler

Boo, do you remember

that song about how
having a good life

makes for bad stories
 

and having good stories

makes for a bad life?
I didn’t think it was true,

but once we had good stories

 

our lives were worse—

we had to suffer, so we did,

the gods cannot bear the happiness

of mortals wrote Gore Vidal

 

when his life-long lover died,

although he called him a companion—

a word so vague it could mean anything.

                                                 Forgive me,

 

there was a time

when all I wanted

was for something

interesting to happen to us.

William Ward Butler is the poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. He is the author of the poetry chapbook Life History from Ghost City Press. He has received support from the Community of Writers and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. He is a poetry reader for TriQuarterly and the co-editor-in-chief of Frozen Sea: frozensea.org 

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