Charles Rammelkamp
Life Equals Art
Angelo didn’t think
his life was very exciting.
He worked retail,
anchored to a cash register.
Watched his life unravel
effortless as a movie on the screen,
no dilemmas, decisions, roads not taken.
He suspected the film was boring
but wanted someone to deny it.
Colorful characters popped up daily
like bright gumballs tumbling
down a metal chute.
But they weren’t essential to the plot.
One day through the strobe
of the Venetian blinds he saw
a man strapped to a gurney
wheeled to a waiting emergency van,
life chopped into instants,
discrete bars of vision,
spliced frame by frame in slices of light.
Angelo saw the man
filed away like an appliance in a drawer.
The van’s doors slid together,
sealed tight as a kitchen cupboard.
The van drove away, a whirl
of flashing red lights and shrill sirens.
Wide awake in a darkened theater,
Angelo remained transfixed
by an expectation
something was about to happen.
