Freud

deviant art by nightrhino


Freud


I think I know what he would say
about the dream I had last night
in which my nose was lopped off
in a sword fight,
leaving me to wander the streets
of 18th-century Paris
with a kind of hideous blowhole
in the middle of my face.

But what would be his thoughts
about the small brown leather cone
attached to my face with goose grease
which I purchased from a gnome-like
sales clerk
at a little shop called
House of a Thousand Noses?

And how would he interpret
my stopping before every gilded mirror
to admire the fine grain
and the tiny brass studs,
always turning to show my best profile,
my clean-shaven chin slightly raised?

Surely, narcissism fails to capture
my love of posing in those many rooms,
sometimes with an open window behind me
showing the blue sky
which would be eclipsed
by the Eiffel Tower
in roughly a hundred years.

Billy Collins

Posted over on Poetry Daily