When I wait and see
what words come to me
they always have significance—

just like the 4 days a week I spent
free associating on a couch
at the New York Psychoanalytic
Institute as an analysand for 3 years.

I was madly in love with a married woman
at the time who was afraid her divorce
might provoke her father’s final heart attack.

My analyst was a colorless gent
who reminded me of my older brother
who tried to smother me with a pillow
when we were very young kids.

I preferred to keep my knees up
while lying on the couch due
to a herniated disc in my lower back.
My analyst’s only interpretation suggested
I was afraid of a homosexual attack from the rear.

During the years on the couch
I kept singing to myself: I don’t know why
I love you like I do, I don’t know why, but I do.
Fortunately, since I was a poor postdoctoral student
I only had to pay the minimum fee of 25 cents.

Needless to say, I became a humanistic, existential
psychologist instead of a traditional Freudian analyst.