The movie of my death has not been made but it will suck, get O stars, a thumbs down, the bad final review no one will ever see or care about, not because the life wasn’t glorious- it was- but because death robs life of glory and action, and movies are called motion pictures for a reason, for the same reason life must move not stop dead, full stop tumble into no plot, no sets, no dialogue, no one in it other than me, just falling away from light into darkness until I hit the concrete or the muted earth. Death is life still, a photo, photography, a picture epigraph on my tombstone with the witty or morose caption underneath. Nail a photo on my tombstone but bury me with my DVDs with the two director’s cut, all the deleted scenes, the blooper reels, the trailers and the eternity of credits so I can watch it on an endless loop just in case there is a technicolor heaven, or death is just a pause in the broken reel waiting to be spliced back together and projected from where it died, or death is the scene just ended waiting for the crew to change the scenery on the other side so the match cut from black and white Kansas to the vivid color palettes of Oz restored to originality is perfectly true and even better than I ever remembered it. Better yet, burn me with my discs, all of my celluloid dreams, nightmares, even the happy and sad boring moments flickering to the skies to be added to God’s great film festival at his choosing or be reflected back off the screen, so the ash that settles on humanity, settles existence as the final reel, the nitric burn, THE END the end without the credits— either way, the best thing I can do is go to the movies.
Note: This is the first part of a four part prose poem– the title suffixes: the commercials, the trailers, the feature presentation, the final credits.
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