Jezebel: Prologue

Whose story is it,
that most demands the tell?
And who does the telling,
who the listening?

Untold stories rob the dead
of glory, turn defeat to
notoriety, suffering to mounds
of city grit and melted slush

trickling sewerwise to the sea.
Victory confers stewardship
of history and the fable-making
mechanism, the right to tell the story

suddenly the right to lie. Just so did
Eve's story become Adam's rib
and Baal the god of rain and sweet water
become corrupted Beelzebub.

Just so did the monotheists
supplant the polytheists.
Just so did Christianity sign
the new covenant with god

and make believers of some of us,
except where Islam told a taller tale
and left infidels behind. Lose the right
to sing one's own song

and become the villain
of the story, or be forgotten
all together, erased as one
who never mattered, dead as yesterday's flare.