THE THING. by Jay Passer

I feel it through the wraiths

dispelled by my propensity

for violence,

the rough terrain of redwood columns

and the ferns, the fluorescent

moss scrambling best as it can,

in slow motion.

You know the drill,

in maximum contrast,

some film project spasm of life, anything

relevant other than actual

murder.

There it was

about to escape, the gist of it,

the Hymn, the

bent guitar string, the fascination

of plugging tactical devices into

pudenda,

wiggling or soaring.

I had it, on the tip of my tongue.

The hypothesis, satirical: spat out,

crawling away,

a drone honeybee outed from the maw of chaos.

To be sure, it melted quickly

Jay Passer's work has appeared in print and online since 1988. He is the author of several chapbooks and has appeared in a bunch of anthologies. His latest collection, they lied to me when they said everything would be alright, from Pski's Porch, is available at Amazon. Passer lives and works in San Francisco, the city of his birth.