Marlon Brando Died Today

It's January 5th, 1953
And Marlon Brando
Died today

It's July 9th, 2057
And Marlon Brando
Died today

He died before he got a chance
To fuck up his potential
And, more importantly,
The memory of his potential

A hundred and four years later
His hologram would malfunction
On the set of Streetcar 2: The Desire Returns
And Vivien Leigh's hologram would get pissed off 
And shut herself off
And nobody could really blame her

Even Marlon Brando's hologram was kind of an asshole
And yet, undoubtedly, way more talented than all the other holograms

The real Marlon Brando
Died sometime between these two imaginary points
In history and in history-yet-to-come
But of the three potential Brando deaths
The real one is the least interesting

In the first imaginary death
Brando overdoses
Or he gets drunk and belligerent at a bar
And some guy stabs him in the gut

Or he gets into a car accident
Like James Dean

Or he dies in a plane crash
Like Buddy Holly

Or he takes a nosedive off a bridge
Because he goes to sleep one night
And imagines himself getting old and irrelevant
Doing anything for money
Losing every ounce of his trademark sex appeal
Finding his legacy tarnished by bad decision after bad decision

Once he sees that image in his mind
That vision of the future
He can't bear it
He drives to San Francisco
Makes love to a woman named Carla
And then dives off the Golden Gate Bridge
Every fiber of his being certain that he's making the right call

Marlon Brando will kill himself thousands of times
Before he dies of old age in a reality
That is about as depressing as any real reality can be

The first few hundred suicides all have the same effect
Brando is jettisoned from icon into legend
A mystery surrounds his life and work
That can only exist
When the person himself is no longer around
To talk about what he was thinking when he was filming that movie
Or what he thought of that director
Or which of his co-stars he screwed
Or why he's never been as good since then

The last suicides are all just tragic
Because by then the damage has been done
And the ending of it all just seems like an acceptance of defeat

An agreement that life had gone too far
Without really going anywhere at all

When Marlon Brando's hologram is created
It shorts out the circuits in the holo-lab
And permits a virus to enter the system
Which infects the Gregory Peck hologram
And from that point on, he's never quite as good
As the original Gregory Peck
And he speaks in an odd French accent
That can't be corrected

Brando's hologram is a box office smash
But notoriously unreliable and totally unreprogrammable

The Director of the holo-lab didn't even want to do a Brando hologram
Because of how difficult the original model was
But the Programmers assured the Director that the quirks would be un-quirked
Without losing any of that signature, Brando spice

Unfortunately, there was no way to get the spice
Without putting together an almost identical model
Of Brando One

And, in doing so, film was reinvigorated
But so was an ulcer the Director thought she'd seen the last of

When the hologram malfunctioned for the last time
It was the Director who pulled the plug
Pulled funding for Streetcar 2
And swore that would be the last time they'd resurrect someone so volatile
Even though they were already halfway through completion
Of the Joan Crawford hologram
And The Revenge of Mildred Pierce had been greenlit for months

Somewhere on the Golden Gate Bridge
The wind was in Young Brando's hair
And the smell of Carla lingered on his skin
Below cars were going by
It was still early in the day
Maybe it was a weekday?
Who knows?
Young Brando had lost track of time
Both forwards and backwards

A bird landed on his shoulder
But not a real bird
A hologram of a bird

The first hologram ever created in the holo-lab
A robin named Lucy
Who malfunctioned after six years
And was never replicated
Out of respect for such a monumental achievement

Brando tries to touch Lucy
But his fingers go through her
And she flies a few feet away
Until she disappears the way a television show disappears
When somebody changes the channel

Young Brando knows in that moment that he is both insane
And sane in a way he will never be again
If he continues on with life

He sees outcomes

One where he gets down
One where he jumps
And one where he doesn't move at all
But lives out his days on the Golden Gate Bridge
Creating a new life for himself
As an eccentric who used to make movies
A designation he will end up with anyway
So why not just stay put?

Then Option Four reveals itself:

Young Brando rewinds himself
To the moment he first saw a movie
A moment he didn't even remember
Until he worked his way back to it
Carefully, skillfully avoiding all other obstacles and impasses
Until arriving at his chosen destination

The First Movie

Young Brando finds himself sitting next to Younger Brando
Perhaps a Brando that never existed at all

For this doesn't resemble any movie theater
Brando remembers from his youth
Nor does the movie on the screen look like any movie
That would have been made when Brando was that young

The memory he needs is from a dream
And so he dreams it

He borrows some popcorn from the bucket the Younger Brando is holding
And gets a glare from that cherubic face

Yup, he thinks, that's me all right

He sits silently and watches the movie with his younger self
Onscreen, a version of him--a digital version, a hologram
Screams out for Stella
Screams out in the jungle
Screams out that he could have been something
He could have been--

He looks at Younger Brando
Who seems interested, but not impressed

Not a bad way to be, thinks Young Brando

Not a bad way to be
At all