O BRENDAN FRASIER
with your swashbuckler’s jaw line
and your three “r”s
like hooks in your peg board garage wall,
outfitted with a cutlass lined lawn mower for the summer
and a dragon’s breath snow blower
for the winter—
O Brendan Frasier,
your lifeline on your palm is etch marked with cliffhangers,
broken like an ancient rope bridge—
spliced down the middle,
broken like how your nose should be
at all times.
What do you think you’re doing,
wearing linen!?
Your fingers are finger-guns
Bang—clickthumb—Bang
shooting time-traveling
time-capsule bullets to the cretaceous—
Hello dinosaur, meet Mr. Frasier—
Pleased to meet you dinosaur—
chocolate milk for everyone!
My nephews, dripping in chlorine, salt,
and buttery liquid call your movies films.
They take crayon notes
in the dark of the theatre,
draw your torso a yellow-green center,
inscribing each “r” with a wonder
akin only to imagining Jesus
spelunking in The Batcave.
O Brendan Frasier,
are you 3-D in real life?
Or are you an animation cell,
flipping 24 frames per/sec
down Rodeo Drive in a station wagon,
the kids and the wife layered underneath?
You love your wife.
You love your movie’s wives.
You have been telling us for years
that you really really really hate mummies,
but no one listens to your cries
because we love you for fighting them.
There is no tender unraveling
of the seven shrouds,
caressing of aloe vera,
or rejuvenating skin therapy formula
on their ancient wrinkles,
there are bullets,
you kill dead deader,
so when I see the casket at this funeral
and imagine with x-ray vision
to the formaldehyde Tutankhamen within,
glistening under his White Sox cap
which hides the surgery stitches
along the latitude of his brain—
a brain like the Library of Alexandria
on a summer Sunday—
I almost think I see you
in the picture-laden corner of the service,
sharpening a machete with your teeth among the chrysanthemums,
ready to put everything in its place
until it stays there forever,
like Brendan Frasier was born to do.
