Blind at first to his self-destructive drive,
The first world war would terrify and thrill him.
Likewise Freud chain-smoked cigars, although
His worried doctors told him they would kill him.

He heard the Nazi Wolf banging down doors
But closed his eyes with smoke to keep alive
Mentally, though he elegantly described
The gravity of the Black Hole — The Death drive.

Like Christ, Oedipus, Dionysus,
Freud played the role Fate cast him in.
Biology, not intellect or art
Can counteract destructiveness within.

Otto Rank who is now anonymous
Called it The Birth Trauma, where we put to sleep
Unconscious meanings in the rhyme tomb/womb.
So, the pull toward Mommy brings us six feet deep.

The mystic quest for light inside the dark
Witch's wood always is doomed to fail.
Heroic in our search for mother's milk,
We find poison in the Holy Grail.

So we must cherish every nanosecond
And not turn Paradise into a hell—
Public in war, private in neurosis -
But live in every nonmalignant cell.