Jay Passer- A Poem

I CAN SEE THE FUTURE BUT IT’S NOT SEEING AND IT’S NOT THE FUTURE

I crashed my bike

At the very gates

I fell down the stairs

Stone stairs leading to a canal

Ancient stone like ballast for wooden ships

Stairs clogged with dead leaves

I lost my keys

I never knew wisdom

I lurched home at 4 a.m.

In the pelting rain

Nothing open

Nobody around

I was new to the city

I parked my Buick station wagon

In a handicapped zone

It got towed away

But that’s another story

Luckless with cars I am

For instance

I totaled the ’71 Duster

I bought off a pal’s ex-wife

For 3 bennies

To ‘keep it in the family’

I blew a .2 something

I was arrested immediately

And then

A shitty lawyer

Shot my case along with a load of insulin

In the confines of a District Court broom closet

Failing the treatment program

I ducked the law for weeks

With furtive over-the-shoulder-like glances

Till the cops finally

Double fisting the warrant

Rousted me

One fine morning

Out of my apartment

‘No funny business, Passer!

We know you’re in there!’

I spent 55 days in County

Yet by some
Miraculous combination of

Charm steeped in stupidity

I didn’t lose my job

And once released

To find that my

Hungarian squeeze

Had cheated on me

With who else but another good pal

A sycophantic painter of abstracts

‘We only kissed, it was nothing!

We just had a little too much to

Drink’, she swore

Okay

So I fell into a hedge

Wait a sec

Rephrase

I leapt into the hedge headfirst

And was stuck there

Prolonged

Suspended in space

Then

Believe it or not

I lost not only my keys

But also my ID

Blame it on lack of wisdom

Or a propensity for falling

It wasn’t long till

I fell out of a helicopter

I fell out of the space shuttle

I fell off Uranus

Those were the days alright

I’d fall in love

Twice a week

I threw my typewriter

Through a window

I smoked amphetamines

Out of a light socket

I fell asleep in a shopping cart

Parked on the train tracks

In Tacoma Washington

I thought I was prepared

I thought I was in love

I wore out shoes at an astonishing

Rate

I took the wrong bus

I ended up at the airport

I passed out under a chair

Negligent

Of the view of

Endless legs

Hustling to destinations

Unknowable

I woke up in a dim trance

I found myself rooted in iniquity

I put my fist through a

Plate glass window

Not in some gangsta B&E attempt

I was simply too drunk

To recognize which building I lived in

I broke the key in the lock

Every structure looks the same

When you’re wasted

And blue

All the trumpets twisted

The timpani blown out

The string section quarantined

It’s all about the fall

I fell out of a tree

Into the lake 

With my damn pants down

You see

I was trying to take a leak

I held my hat up above the water line

As the sky abraded my thoughts

With steel wool

In wintertime Lake Union is pretty chilly

Frivolous at best

Seems to be

The best I can do

So what if I don’t make films about

People making films

At the same time

I would rather feed dog meat to my

Closest relative

Than engage in light banter with

Socialites

Okay

Let’s get this straight

Here and now

I know that the world is a shit pile

Everybody putting on some facade of

Righteousness

While ultimately

Out to rip you off for

All you got

Without realizing you never had a damn thing

To begin with

And to top it off

Nothing at all to clutch at the moment of

Death 

What could be called

Narcissism in reverse

And yet still

Like some stunned or retarded beast

I never caught on

I wasn't trained to adapt

To protocol

I worshipped the song

And the sun

The shouting incandescence of simply

Being

Boy was I ever mistaken

I just never had it quite figured out

My grasp despite heroic intentions

For some notion was fleeting

Nowadays

I foresee flab and tomfoolery

Consuming all the smug smiles

I fall in line

It’s perfectly sensible

Bell rung with a shotgun

Shattering the nappy of the

Newborn tot

‘Here thee!’

I can see the future

But it’s not seeing and it’s not the future

I’m good that way

Damn good

Like a virus

Like an earth-borne asteroid

Like a bitty drop of cyanide dribbled on the dictator’s lip

At world war’s finale

I see it

Like a lucid dream

Really

At the final curtain

It’s all about

Cats

Because when all’s told it’s cats 

That have it down

The feral instinct finely tuned

Domesticated

Ask the Egyptians

Cats got it made

They don’t give a good goddamn 

They don’t care if there’s dolphin

Mixed in with the tunafish