Everything So Seriously

the long version

The Ancient Mariner buttonholed the Wedding Guest for the telling of his story. In Douglas Treem's *Everything So Seriously* the poems and their denizens seek to tear the world a new buttonhole. They are souls in torment. Bodies filled with pain. Hearts being spoken from. A violent psychopath in search of his own death. An actor attempting the opposite of suicide. A sex worker numb to all human connection. An icon. A myth. Those with needs mutated past the possibility of ever being met. United beyond the common threads of flesh and blood by the uniquely human demand to tell their stories and the shared position of having no one on earth to talk to. Except you.