Eventually, movies become more popular with the dead than the living
Sometimes I think they are watching me as I act through my parts
Like rats scurrying under frowning dance floors I feel them staring
But all I hear is a reverberating vacuity amidst their silent applause
And the rat-a-tat-tat of the loose end of a noisy film reel thwapping
Sometimes I feel like an unpaid extra in a noir detective flick
Or a lurid villanelle splayed out into absinthe induced prose
Perhaps a restive gambler in a dusty black and white Western
Pulled into thrawn saloon brawls that once started won’t stop
Like blood, piss, whiskey and a maddening desire for connection
I’ve saved up all my best performances for my worst critics
Upbraided upon the horns of those with too many demons
Blinded and scarred by halos of those with ones too scarce
I’m a wounded and aging documentary film showing the credits
Simultaneously, a bildungsroman whose dog ate the next verse
Long after our final scene together
And the popcorn swept up for the night
I will hold in my chest an embroiling,
And coiled capriole of purple light
That given a long enough spark
Ample oxygen, and good timing
I’ll sear across the winged eternal sky
Millions of clinquant pixels exploding
In a grandiloquent and epic final scene
The flash of a shooting star, slowly fading
Like the whispery glow of an unplugged screen
The Tigress Awakens 