---
title: The Death Zone
genre: verse

id: death-zone
toc: "The death zone"

epigraph:
    content: And my life became death.
    attrib: Philip Gould
    link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/11/19/245996903/embracing-life-and-death

ekphrastic:
    image: gould.png
    title: Philip Gould
    link: 'http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/11/19/245996903/embracing-life-and-death'

project:
    title: Stark Raving
    class: stark
    order: 7
    next:
    - title: The Big Dipper
      link: big-dipper
    - title: Exasperated
      link: exasperated
    prev:
    - title: Exasperated
      link: exasperated
    - title: AMBER alert
      link: amber-alert
...

| When I think of death I think
| of Peter Falk in _The Princess Bride_ patting
| [his pockets][] as he leaves the room

| Life is a series of doors or so
| they say but I ask them this
| where does that last door lead?

| For Falk maybe it leads backstage
| a black-walled catered affair with stage
| lights slowly baking stale muffins

| [Sweaty cheese][] leaking onto dried-out
| grapes a chocolate fountain clogged
| by some errant strawberry crown

| but this is not where it leads for you or
| for me that door opens onto darkness marked
| only by a trellis or the lid of a casket

| the door of the [earth's womb][] opening
| finally to accept us and with us the dirt
| not to grow more strawberries for Falk

| but to pad his feet as he walks overhead
| to visit someone he certainly cares about
| but whose name is lost to posterity.

[his pockets]: creation-myth.html
[Sweaty cheese]: i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html
[earth's womb]: about-the-author.html