ACCUMULATA

So you string together a number of moments

and you call it life? You say My life?

And is there a moment in which you notice

this moment is disconnected from the rest?

So all you have to say in your own defense

is I believe the lie of temporal continuity?

And you think you can discern a single story

or several stories threaded together through

the accumulation of moments, like a rainbow

soaring through individual raindrops of time

that makes them something more like rain

and less like separate drops? And this being

the case, do you not regard the darker drops,

the desperate drops, the drops of horror,

drops of failure, flat drops, mingled or rather

inexplicably interleaved with the funny,

the sunshiny, the naps, and see, can’t you see

that this is your ordinary? That these, each

and each, and all, are neither total nor definitive

but are rather, say, She left. There is a

moment for it. Or The last words she spoke,

which haunts you like a bell whose peal

continues to echo down through dreams.

That these, none of them, will damn you.

Because there is something greater than this.

CREDITS

When the credits start to roll

we fuss with our stuff—

purses, coats, popcorn tubs.

There is nothing left to see.

When the credits start to roll

it’s like an accident scene—

nothing to see here, folks.

Move along. Move along.

So we move back into our lives.

When the credits of our lives

start to roll, what do we fuss

with? We don’t like ends

of things in general, but

especially not the ends

of our lives. Because what

will come on the screen next?

And is this a double-feature?

Some of us stubbornly wait

to see if the director included

something after the credits.

An extra scene. More drama.

One stray joke that didn’t make

the final cut of the main feature.

What I’m saying, honey, is

that you were a stray joke

cut from the movie of my life.

I stuck around and laughed.

I felt included. Then I left.