I’m in Trouble By Jay Passer

 

Like being torn apart and eaten alive by a frenzy of sharks

I remember being squirted out of my mother

but not too well

Delivered with deluxe chopsticks

weaned on soy milk

stored in a shoebox.

I’m in love with a pubescent fantasy construct

born from a SuicideGirls babysitter

it’s terrifyingly

overwhelmingly

obvious and passé.

I’m buried in a heap of bird feathers

I’m a moron dressed as a matador

a surgeon operating on double-A batteries

a pterodactyl in a tutu.

She’s not the usual kind

she’s not somebody’s wife sister cousin grand-niece 

baby-mama auntie stepdaughter

she’s not even a she or a he or a he-she or she-he

or anaconda or spider-monkey or zebra

or fire hydrant or exhaust pipe or keyhole.

I’m in love with my own damn self

my predilections

my insecurities

my obsessions staring morosely back at me

from the mirror hanging on the wall

the wall supporting the ceiling

the ceiling keeping me from shitstorms and sunburn and 

the world in chaos and dubious heavens and the Man Himself

and by the way

That son-of-a-bitch owes me 4 decades worth of rent.

I’m in trouble

because I’m in love with the Mona Lisa the Queen of Sheba Venus de Milo Joan of Arc Esther Hadassah Madame Curie Camille Claudel Isadora Duncan Tawakkol Karman and that one Thai cutie from Blackpink.

I’m in love with a cross-country-bound Greyhound busload 

of traumatized Nobel laureates

with a goldfish posing as a mermaid

the natural spawn of an apocalypse cult

squid ink and bird droppings.

It’s a testament to acceptance of the boomerang’s return

Meat on the grill and a pain in the neck.

I’m in love with 

trouble

a child’s scrawl on the face of a flower

horns spurting from halos

black seas of chlorine

cool rain for blood.

The poetry and prose of Jay Passer has appeared in print and online periodicals, magazines and anthologies, in subterranean basements and men's room stalls, cave walls and space shuttles, since 1988. He is the author of 15 collections of words, symbols, diatribes, missives, isms, schisms, rain drizzles and blood fizzles. A cook by trade, he's also dabbled in daubs, photo-montage, reverse Feng shui; while failing at mortician's apprentice, news butcher, and criminal savant. Passer's most recent chap, Son of Alcatraz, was released in February of 2024 from Alien Buddha Press, and is available on Amazon.