Telling Tales Poem by Gary Diamond

People admire a good storyteller, even if they can themselves.
Everyone loves your favourite drunken story.
The fighting naked in the street brandishing traffic cones
And so on.

Telling tall tales - it's pretty easy to.
You just make sure at least some of what you say is based on truth.
Because people can tell if the house of your story is washed away in the sand.

Anecdotes those are great.
A short, funny tale.
But incidentally I find all those stories,
Even the one with great tragedy
Exceedingly funny.
There's nothing so absurd as life you see.

People crowd round the storyteller, whether he's at the bar
Round the campfire
Perhaps on the television.
People like to take it in turns and pick the leader
The leader is the one who kept the hive mind occupied longest you see.

Don't the best stories have it all?
That's why we're suckers for a movie.
A near-perfect one seems to encapsulate the entire spectrum of life
The joy, the tragedy, the humour.
The bravado, the heroism, the cowardice.
The love, the spite.

It's all good stuff
as long as the concentration is right.