Basically a Psychologist

Again I had the dream
where I was naked, erect,
baking store-bought chocolate
chip cookies, the rusty gas
oven plugged merrily in to nothing.

If you want to chop it up,
says Jill the Social Worker,
I can lend an ear or two—
don’t use them, don’t need them.

But first I must disgorge
the raw air I ingurgitated
on the pilgrimage to her office.
It prickles my tongue, cheeks:
its freshness is volatile,

corrosive like bleach and ammonia,
or nitroglycerin. But this, and
the fact that her office lies
just beyond one remotely

locked door and down a hall
about twelve yards is out
of my control. If I were mindful,
I’d let it go,
but I am mindless—

it resides in the distant past,
shrouded like a reaper
in a dense fog, rose-colored nostalgia.
I am hindered gravely
by hindsight, I’m afraid.

She suggests yoga, guided
meditation. To live presently
in the present. I raise
my arms, show her:

rigid, inflexible. Instead,
I suggest a teardrop
tattoo. To remember the life
I mourn nightly on my knees.
There I go again!

Put that thing on a leash,
she says, and I hallucinate it,
not pink, but bleeding gray, dripping red
trying and failing to escape

her office, but that’s wistful
thinking. I’d do better to roll
up my dusty psych degree,
set fire to one end, and prescribe myself
exercise and excessive masturbation.