the radar was awash with hot reds and blues

　

Had a collage of ideas brainstorming inside of me.

 

There was a high-pressure system moving up my spinal column.

 

The heat index in my genital area was a hundred plus, and the winds were blowing north/northeasterly and gusting up to 70 miles an hour in the canals of my ears.

 

I had to take an anti-depressant to calm the seas. Otherwise, the waves would have crashed over me and sent me plummeting to the depths of the abyss where oxygen is scarce, and the sharks and the piranhas would have detected my lifeblood and bleeding ulcer.

 

Then somebody threw me a life preserver (it was my analyst), but it was made of cement.

 

The old man in the sea hooked me on his sword fishing pole (using booze as bait), but when he pulled me onto his boat, he told me I was below the legal limit, removed the bottle from my mouth, and returned me to my watery limbo.

 

Then the ancient mariner sailed past me, shook his elderly head, and pointed to the albatross around his neck. “I’m already way in over my head,” he said.

 

I trod water for months.

 

I caught the swimmer’s ear, listening to a seashell.

 

I happened upon a double-amputee mermaid.

 

She said, “I’m looking for my fatal charm; I have lost it. Can you help me find it?”

 

“I hear they’re doing wonderful things with prosthetics these days,” I said.

 

Disappointed, her torso swam away. (I never did have much of a rap with the ladies).

 

My lousy luck with women began in the womb. I’d kick my mother like a kickboxer. She’d fight back by punching her stomach. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!” she’d scream. The match lasted nine months. The judges scored it a draw. There was not a rematch.

 

Ironically, a parochial school of fish came to my aid. I told them I was Jewish. They mused, “That’s alright. We have very catholic tastes.”

 

“It doesn’t bother you that I don’t believe in the holy trinity or Immaculate Conception?”

 

“Down here, there’s only one school of thought,” the parish leader said. “Sink or swim.”