I had a home, a mortgage and a warm bed

Now owned I suppose by the bank

Who can attend to bills and trivial chores

While chasing an infinite singularity, the very essence of pleasure?

She was a malpractice risk, this physician 

A nearly uninsurable headshrinker

She scoffed at the FDA, the DEA and the AMA

But she built this thing that makes us remember 

I’m the insurance man, skeptical and cautious

I had to be convinced, cajoled, finally seduced

By this compact, elegant mad scientist 

Graceful in her chignon, eyeglasses and Chanel suit

As a matter of research, or so I told myself 

I tried the machine under the influence of a mild barbiturate 

An electrode adhered to each temple

Attached to an inscrutable device hidden in the skin of an old PC

She escorted me backwards through my time

Reliving memories first recent then remote

Middle aged disappointments, youthful excesses 

The confusion, delights and privations of childhood 

A consignment store suit at a garden wedding…

My lips on hers, my hand on her breast

A broken balsa wood airplane 

Bicycle accidents, cicadas and golf balls 

But remembering was no mere revery

Nothing like those pillow-talk confessions 

Clearly, distinctly, vividly, I repeated my life in fast rewind 

I became un-graduated, re-virginzed, detumescent, un-sober

Aromas, sensations, grief and joy relived 

With immediate and unalloyed verisimilitude 

This was no petite madeleine 

This was time-travel into perfectly preserved memories 

Human entities have a beginning 

And I found mine, the bliss of mother’s womb 

The first and only experience of perfect safety

A proto-orgasmic opioid state of perfection 

The terror, the light, the cold

The shock of becoming out of nothing 

The heartbeat, the warmth, the liquid darkness 

The heartbeat the blameless void

Then came oblivion and wakefulness 

In the afterglow she secured certain contracts and promises

I was her spaniel; suffused in oxytocin  I agreed to it all

Having made these decisions in a state of impairment,

of course I was fired

Coming down, it was like coming apart 

Remembering the remembering I ached for another taste

I paced the floors, stopped eating stopped sleeping 

Stopped opening the mail, ignored the bills

Unencumbered by marriage or employment 

I sought her out and begged for another trip

Conveniently finding her ethics she refused

Refused to “enable my addiction”

Doctor too suffered deserved reversals

Hospital privileges, medical licenses revoked

She became an itinerant Svengali 

Moving from state to state as the authorities pursued her

I followed her and spent my way to ruin

She refused me

In Kentucky, Texas, Utah, and Alaska

Finally making my home in this, the doorway of her clinic

Cruelly I’m denied the edenic womb

But the shivering has subsided 

I am warm again, slightly elated, strangely optimistic 

Shedding my boots, my flannel, and my parka, 

Naked as a newborn