what worries me
\nis the last meal
\nthe food stomached
\njust done dying
\nchewed up and swallowed
\norganisms still alive bacterially
\nwhile there I lie stiff as a surfboard
\nthe laughing cosmos and dogs
\nthe rosemary milk and wet shoes
\nthe tattoos unfinished the girls
\nand the lies I never said goodbye to
\nSeal Rock at the bottom of the street
\nwhere San Francisco ends
\nthe whole business like ice in a glass
\nnever as much well-known as finished
\nwhat bothers me
\nare the clothes left over nobody wants
\nthe patchwork of socks and drawers
\na clip on tie for a wedding ending in divorce
\nand the gnats of my resistance sucking air
\nlying there with only pint bottles of breath left
\nthe voice on the voicemail
\n\u2018please leave a message’
\na testimony to melancholy tenure
\nthey say don’t leave adjectives
\nin the wake of a living born on the surf
\nand ebb of planetary deception
\nbefore the pier engulfed me with police reportage
\nbefore the gulls fed from crumbs cascaded from lighthouse window
\nas God crowded out the blue light with shortcomings of apocalypse
\nas the shit hit the vein and the gullet wondered what happened
\npopping one in the gut and ended up in the ER
\nyellow bile and the familiar urge to awaken full of ire
\nbroken by mindless straps of bedsprings screeching
\nfeelings weeping and gas company on the prowl
\nempty bank account and the last supper gone to collections
\nolive of Laconia basil of St Andrew apricot of Cappadocia
\nback to the soil from which sprang the original hunger
\npainless on a slab of modernity
\ndelegating compulsion
\nto lesser means
\nwhat slays me
\nin the heart of my being
\nis lamb chop and bitter greens<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sinatra Like A Bulldozer Over Paris<\/strong><\/p>\n In my mind I crowd the world with my tongue <\/p>\n Candle<\/strong><\/p>\n they come in the night <\/p>\n Leah<\/strong><\/p>\n I miss the names of your children tattooed to your wrists <\/p>\n The Envelope Please<\/strong><\/p>\n By no means were the smashed windows They slashed the tires gave credence Utter disdain Popcorn and soda and a trailer for an Oscar- <\/p>\n By Jay Passer<\/strong>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nHeroes wield gilt-shining microphones
\nGeniuses lounge in European cafes sipping cappuccino
\nNo
\nWait a minute
\nAs all Europe burns exceptional scientists export nuclear devices
\nIn my mind the grass is black moss of indigested peace treaties
\nProgress determined by American barrelhouse gag-reels
\nThe film industry gamut on all rational thought deluding intellectualism
\nAnd Europe moans like a porno queen chained to the bedpost
\nNow just
\nOne minute
\nI woke up lying on my back in the grass of the park off MLK Blvd.
\nKicked awake by a rookie member of the Police Department
\nTold I was unwelcome I rose to my feet in a swoon
\nAlong the promenade the savant nouveau of my generation
\nI look to a history of heavenly skies ultimately ablaze
\nWith the push of a button a hot glass of cappuccino
\nA tiny incision in the temporal lobe a microscopic implant suddenly to appear
\nEurope Africa Indonesia
\nHold on
\nA second
\nNASDAQ, Dow, Oil and Gold
\nStandards by which merit versus the spiritual are weighed
\nVelveteen throat a very high dose
\nThe stripe of the skunk painting roads across worlds
\nHere I
\nGo <\/p>\n
\nin the sleaze corridors of soothsayers
\nin the ice cream bowls of last minute betrayals
\nin the last ditch efforts to conceal impossible defects
\nthey come sneaking around and whispering
\nthey have ideas about you and your kind
\nthe lamplight is dim and refrigerator empty
\nyou lay on your back and feign indifference when they call
\nwhen the time is right you stir a bit and perhaps roll over
\nsince better off dead like a gorgot against the throat strangling
\nyou lie fallen or in repose like the bum on the parkbench
\nit’s Spring
\nand the wildlife is fucking righteous again
\nthose that once came in the night are now resigned to easy chairs and evening news
\nthey don’t bother to call anymore
\nand the drunks out there and the pushers and whores and the fallen stars
\nare all of the same billing flashing about so glamorously
\nwhile in the dark the brain entices whales as well as worms
\nin retrograde of the gamble that jumbled us all together
\nthe ocean of calm recedes exposing innermost pleas
\nfor the last time and final a note before expiring
\nhappy birthday world I blow out your candle<\/p>\n
\nI miss watching you shoot cocaine into your stomach
\nI miss vodka orange grapefruit and handcuffs
\nI miss spanking your wide muscular ass
\nI miss the holes punched into your bedroom door
\nI miss Taco Tuesday and you snoring softly
\nI miss watching football on Sunday in our underwear on speed
\nI miss buying case after case of beer and smoking beedies from India
\nI miss cooking eggs for Pierce your son who wanted to play drums in a band
\nI miss the fact that we knew the next day could very well be our last day on earth together
\nI miss sitting on the barstool next to you smoking and making fun of our friends
\nI miss catching you on the toilet with your pants down doing the last of my coke
\nI miss your scared drug-addict eyes wheeling about insanely when I was pissed off
\nI miss your huge tits slopping all over my face as you rode my Jewish cock
\nI miss you telling total strangers how I make the best grilled-cheese sandwiches ever
\nI miss you smiling and laughing about how nerdy I look when I use my inhaler
\nI miss how jealous you were of that silly tramp Melissa
\nI miss hearing about how you whored for old men out of a sense of pity for them
\nI miss holding your perfectly proportionate feet in my grip as I fucked you
\nI miss the way you’d hide your works from me in the bureau drawer under your panties
\nI miss the cab rides where we’d antagonize the driver to no end until he kicked us out
\nI miss making out with you a couple years after we broke up
\nI miss the utter despair of our union
\nI miss the fact we were not made for each other
\nI miss the first day we screwed like an act of desperation
\nI miss the guns tattooed above your buttocks
\nI miss teasing you relentlessly until it turned into a fight
\nI miss your clothes strewn all over the floor<\/p>\n
\nIrreplaceable and the stolen stereo equipment
\nWasn’t exactly covered.<\/p>\n
\nTo laws unfettered with baggy jeans
\nFalling down hips. The jails are
\nFull to brimming with such details.<\/p>\n
\nFor what’s missing in the classroom
\nUnder which strobe fluorescence is
\nNo glamour shot for a restless brain.<\/p>\n
\nA dark corridor leading to the secret
\nCompartment in the belly of the shark.<\/p>\n![\"img_4123\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/img_4123.jpg\")
\nABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong>
\nA native of San Francisco, CA, Jay Passer<\/strong>‘s work has appeared over the years in several print periodicals including Caliban<\/em>, Long Shot<\/em>, OnTheBus<\/em>, Fine Madness<\/em>, Nerve Cowboy<\/em>, and The Spleen Quarterly<\/em>. Most recently his work can be seen on-line in ALBA: A Journal Of Short Poetry<\/em>, and forthcoming in Calibanonline<\/em>, June, 2011. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"img_4123\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/img_4123-150x150.jpg\")
they come in the night
\nin the sleaze corridors of soothsayers
\nin the ice cream bowls of last minute betrayals
\nin the last ditch efforts to conceal impossible defects
\nthey come sneaking around and whispering
\nthey have ideas about you and your kind
\nthe lamplight is dim and refrigerator empty
\nyou lay on your back and feign indifference when they call
\nwhen the time is right you stir a bit and perhaps roll over
\nsince better off dead like a gorgot against the throat strangling
\nyou lie fallen or in repose like the bum on the parkbench
\nit’s Spring
\nand the wildlife is fucking righteous again…<\/p>\n