Bill Roberts, Poet

On Being Sigmund Freud’s Last Patient

Author: Bill Roberts

My parents paid a huge sum of money (at that time)

to transport Dr. Sigmund Freud from Vienna

to our home on the Potomac, his last — and quite

surreptitious — analytical endeavor on this earth.

My snooping parents found me each day manipulating

the machinery in my undertogs, my crystal-ball-

gazing mother predicting I’d be blind before I was

twenty, a mere eight years from seeing Sigmund.

Sigmund noticed my trembling hands, said it was Long-

fellow’s Palsy, tell-tale sign of the masturbator, and, as

Mumsie predicted, I’d probably be blind before too long.

I admitted, to his delight, that I also play with others.

Which sex, he wanted to know, and I further admitted

both, my sight was failing and choices were quite

independent of rational thought, just free thought, as he

nodded in agreement, my ego grew to superego.

He did me no harm, Sigmund, and little good as well,

for blindness did ensue, my rational thinking slowly

advancing to irrational, my choices of sexual

partners irresponsible at the Sightless Children’s Clinic.

To my credit, though Sigmund might have disagreed,

I was the first to marry a person of the same sex,

though by then I was in my twenties, no longer

given to foreplay, simply content with companionship.

(Published online in the 6/14/11 issue of Thick With Conviction; nominated for Best of the Net 2011 on 9/16/11)

NOTE:  This poem is pure, not so simple, whimsy.  A spoof about sexual mores, an attempt to make fun of most of the old taboos — masturbation, going blind because of it,  playing with others (both sexes), and finally marrying a person of the same sex.  I would hope that Sigmund Freud would get a snicker out of it.  And, many thanks to the three brave young female editors at Thick With Conviction for recognizing an old codger enjoying horseplay involving the creative process.  Longfellow’s Palsy is pure invention, taking great liberties in my case, where Shortfellow’s Palsy may be more fitting….though not giving buoyancy to the poem.  And apologies to Dr. Freud for pretending to understand the intricacies of his theories — rational/irrational thought, ego and superego.  I am a student of the human condition but, alas, not the human brain.

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