my Freudian couch

lack of substance

took me nowhere else but here

to this place to reflect, among other things

softened over the years

I built this castle on the sand

voice box for all things

I couldn’t communicate

cowered away

from an inconvenient display –

an array in vain

that only Freud would understand

these days are strange

filled with pain

it evaporates

through my lungs

in cornices, window sills and rusty radiators

leading to places I used to go

never fully

deprived of this decency to a sufficient degree

by everyone involved

and being now surely suitable subject

to my psychanalysis on the couch

one on one, with bare, weathered, whitewashed walls

they won’t answer me at all

and this is their greatest strength

on which my recovery rests firmly

while putting this puzzle together

from positive words and scraps

of other ordinary objects

words heard once but forgotten

photographs that survive without colour

on this blank canvas

I am painting my new reality

to relieve the life

and relive it through

without remorse