The Rapid Molecular Acquisition of Oxygen

To Carthage then you came,
Acquiring oxygen
En route, on arrival,

Every which way but loose.
Autobiography
Is a strange consumption.

You should write one. Then write
One about writing one.
Then one about that one.

And so on, catching up
In briefer and briefer
Intervals to the end,

Zeno’s arrow of self,
Until the last volume
Covers the life you spent

Writing your umpteenth life
And reaches this moment,
No bigger than a poem.