Did You Say Freud?

Only if you think Freud is a come-easy, blow-hard stranger... wait, what? How esoteric do you think I am??

It's a fraud that moves me
Hate in my mind is not the same
As Hate in my heart
Is not the same as smoke you seethe out
And the kind you inhale, happily deeply,
Because smoke's only as good as it feels.
But that's what I say about Hate too
And no one agrees with me.

It's a fraud inside me
Who loves to Love
As long as it doesn't hurt
And it doesn't want
More than its allotted:
A few hours a week, a space in the heart
No longer, no bigger, no better
Than the Love I have for imagined things
That I cannot touch, but will not touch me either.

It's a fraud, I'll say only once,
Because it's come-easy and blow-hard.
It's "zealously" "esoteric,"
When it feels like being "voracious,"
But ask it to run a mile
And it has to go home and finish Dante,
Because it just can't get past that Fifth Circle.

It's a fraud that's not a friend,
But not an enemy either.
It's a stranger and a good one,
Because it doesn't ask for more.
This stranger and I don't tell people
How well we know each other,
How we laugh and cry and snicker
As we wonder who else has got
A little fraud inside them too.