I.
A Visit
Home
The
train used to drop us
off at that very desolate
spot right across
from
Harlem-Valley Psychiatric
(where mother mocked
she gave
birth to us)
with big brooding bars
over pick-up-stick
portholes
barbed-wire to keep in the juveniles
who were deemed to be
“a threat
to themselves and others”
as every so often I’d
imagine
on some warm day in Winter
how they might just air
out
the electric-shock tables,
ping-pong tables,
paper back
novels,
paint-by-number murals,
ships in a bottle,
cigarette
stands,
hanging plants,
adirondacks,
fly-swatters,
firefly
jars,
the wild-bird feeders,
even spooky silhouettes spread
out
on drizzly benches like drunken spiders
dazed and disheveled in the
remote distance
(footprints and fingerprints
of coyotes and
con-artists)
boxcar diners where over-medicated
and sedated sons
would have explosions
on know-it-all fathers (who apparently didn’t
know
a thing about them) having treated them like possessions
now
out of control and dangerous, stealing anything
they could possibly get
their hands on
as everything would instantly
turn uncomfortable
and
awkward, deathly silent
(after all the defiance)
heavy heart
would drop
yet it
was kind of
ironic
as whenever they
picked
you up to go out to their
mansion
on the frozen lake in the mountains
things felt just as detached
and distant,
desperate and despondent, dysfunctional
and
indescribable; One might even
say unfamiliar, tense and
hostile
after we had finished
with our small-talk about
the ride
up, and the sports
and weather, then like ghosts
would blank out, as
we simply
did not have a thing to say to each
other, making our way
through
slow-death, well-to-do towns
of The Berkshires, passing
the
old ancient stone clocktower
where you felt like you
could
hear the clear muffled murmur
of its mysterious internal
organs,
its languid tick and tock, wasted,
wired, thinking a coo-coo
clock
might be more in tune...coo-cooing
on the hour; perfectly
manicured lawns
with no one ever on them,
higher-than-holy
spas
high up on the hill
to hope to heal
psychological
scars
of drama and trauma
of millionaire daughters
who had been
wronged
by boyfriends who were
supposed to be
father-figures
there to somehow save them; perfectly
piled-up piles
of wood which can only
be acquired by workaholic Wall
Streeters,
the wealthy New Yorkers and Bostonians,
old money who
appear like ghosts and phantoms
never home, just there for appearances,
to simply make
an impression with wives with no expression and plenty
of room(s) to make excuses, priceless pieces of precious
antiques
put out on display never moved an inch out of place to
provide
some self-absorbed, distorted (non)sense of time and
space,
control-freaks, curators, trying to keep it all perfectly
sane
and in the effort to overcompensate,
turn
even more mad and crazed, blessed barnhouses,
covered bridges covering snow-capped
rivers,
libraries and factories draped at the base of bare
birch mountains
with silent snow-white towns
stapled to the horizon and creeping-thyme
citizens missing-in-action
(Your old passive-aggressive pals
who loved to push buttons at formal
wine and cheesy get-together
wheeler-
and-dealer philanthropic fund-raisers
and sarcastically
pose the question–
“Prove that you exist” as the guests
instantly
got defensive, turning void
and vacant, even parasitic and
pissed)
returning back to the meticulous museum
and mausoleum where
they always had
purchased some brand-new contraption
rare and
exclusive one-of-a-kind tctchcka
with dozens of dead ladybugs passed
out
on their backs on wrap-around porches
in the pall of a sacred
and solemn sun
beginning to melt snow in the perennial garden
like a
bastard child landing butterfly kisses on the alabaster cheek
of his
mama, petrified pines hovering high, as though wind-swept
branches got
suspended in action from a last blast of Winter;
the creaking floors
and crackling fire, crows in branches
like the top hats of madmen, a
rippling rocking lake house
weighed down with weather-worn oars and
paddles
who’s aroma smelled like the lost lily pad lichen
of lagoons
passed down from generation
to generation, regenerating rotten
core
of civilization, as the hypnotic haunted echoes
of seaweed
skeletons shimmered through shattered
mountains; a shaker table who’s
fragile fissures got
bigger, expanding or contracting due to the
change
of seasons and triggered and started to feel all those
old
feelings begin to creep in again (dribbling siblings)
of a deep and
desperate sadness and anger, of which you
could never get control over,
some muted howl, eternal
existential sigh where you just wanted to
break down
and cry, and started to find if you tried you could
take
great comfort and pleasure regressing a little
to those bizarre and
peculiar images you had just recently
captured in your stopover at
Harlem-Valley Psychiatric.
II.
How To Decorate A
Psychiatrist’s
Office
I.
Consider
black & white pastoral prints
perhaps even cutouts or
etchings
of
some anonymous countryside
somewhere on some
hillside
maybe
in turn-of-the-century
Russia, England, or
Ireland
as
you ascend a back set
of stairs somewhere in
Autumn
then
leave without symptoms
some time around twilight
casually
drifting home
(dreaming of Whitman...)
some
place around The Long Island Sound
where nightmares end and dreams
begin.
II.
The
only shingle you’ll hang
will simply say–“Eggs”
for
when orange-blossom sun
comes and cranes fly
away.
III.
Consider
something between
a flesh-tone and bone
A
gray or ghost
earth or wind-blown
Shadow and
stone
dusk and dawn.
Somewhere
between reality and fantasy lies the season
of your penetrating,
palpitating, solitary soul, home...
IV.
When
the black crow
turns purple
and
seagull
a shade of blue
disappears
to
the setting sun.
V.
[Psychiatric
Notes...dx: Highly-intelligent
yet might present as simply good
con-artist
His answer when put forth the
question–
“How do you feel about family and friends?”
That
they always appeared
hostile and jealous,
threatened
as
evidenced by their body
language and expressions
Could
con or charm anyone.
Ma always said my tongue
would
one day get me into
a whole hell of a lot of
trouble
yet
in fact got me in and out of
a lot of doors, seeing the
world
and
wouldn’t trade that
for all the tea in China.
Claims to sincerely be
intrigued
by how accents came to be
hypothesizing
topographies, lay of the land,
patterns of weather, structures of
cities...
By
borders, straits of water,
when signs at train
stations
naturally,
gradually started changing
their language and letters,
separating
very cultured,
historical
and
significant countries.
Claimed
to be controlled and
manipulated much of his life
by
an ungodly saint with a very
weak and fragile ego and
identity
who
tried to brainwash me through
tactics of guilt and
pseudo-morality
(Now knows it to
be
Munchausen Syndrome
and
Narcissistic
Personality
and
claims to have acted-out,
to have tested the
limits
just
to maintain
his sanity
and
to try and avoid fulfilling
the self-fulfilling
prophecy
constantly
quoting the rock & roll band,
The Who–“Keep away old man, you
won’t
fool
me/You and your
history won’t rule me”)
feeling his whole life,
cheated,
filthy and empty, challenging
every
(go) figure of authority
just to make a name...
Short-term
and long-term goals for treatment:
To
restore client’s self-respect, self-esteem, dignity]
VI.
Peek
through cactus
of half-bathroom
and
close eyes
and imbibe
pure
smoky breeze
of cedar-burning chimneys
VII.
As
one day you’ll look to suddenly
secretly collapse in your
study
of
blush
or coral
like
the sun falling
like some stray pile of leaves
while
your wife discovers you
and simply goes for the
rake
raking
you up
dumping bones
final
expressions
and all
in
the wheelbarrow
carting you off to the cemetery
(Hey!
where are
you
putting those stickies?)
where
you may finally rest in peace
eternally smelling biscuits &
gravy
with
a whole mess of wild stray
seagulls squawking above
me.
III.
Power Of The Poppy
I
would have loved to have been
one of Freud’s persnickety
patients
simply
lying there stretched out
somewhere on the outskirts
deeply
immersed
in a hypnotic trance
under
the influence
of the cadence
of
the rhythm of one of those big
beautiful Black Forest coo-coo
clocks
with
maybe the window
cracked open just enough
to
hear the blast of blue birds
and smell the sweet
fragrance
of
a pungent perennial garden
with symptoms of
persistent
persecutorial
and conspiratorial
delusions not so much
psychotic
but
more so reality-based acquired
from all the overwhelming horrible
patterns
of the gossip and rumors of
vultures of culture, of human
nature
(You’ll even offer
hypotheses
of
‘Survival of the Sleaziest’)
A little high with a
buzz
on off one of his famous
Cocaina-Dope-Manishewitz
solutions
to help ease some of the tension
and
pain and suffering of existence
hoping to shed some light into
the
addict
of a heartbroken brainwashed
manic-neurotic-romantic to try and
recapture
that one single-glimpse-moment, surreal-dream-
fantasy from
blissful-innocent-ephemeral elusive childhood
and
make sense of all that passive-aggressive
flirtation, innuendos &
interludes (exhibitionism)
from
seductive school teachers
oversexed grammar school
kids
pleasantly
confused either by hoofbeats of horses
or practical pumps of
prostitutes in the far off distance
departing
at dusk overtaken by cicadas and crickets...
A symphony of tree frogs
and Magritte’s illusory sunsets
sensing
the cruel violence in the not too distant future
neither by chance nor
coincidence but more so intuition
Man’s
rotten core based on self-interest
and his ‘will to power’...to be
malicious
swinging
my feet off his love seat feeling a mild
sense of liberation from all
pressures and happen
to
mention how you might want to just move to Baltimore
as you’ve heard so
many lovely things about its shores
more
specifically, Casey Stengel and The Baltimore Gold
and passionately
stroll home in hand-me down coat through storm.
You’ll turn on talk radio when you get
home...
