Joseph Reich
Joseph Reich is a social worker who works out in the state of Massachusetts; A displaced New Yorker, who sincerely does miss diss-place, most of all the Smoothies on Houston Street, the Thai food, and bagels and bialys from The Lower East Side; When they all get a little older, hopes to bring wife and child back to play in the parks and playgrounds of New York. He has had works which have appeared in such literary journals as, "Poesy," "Dispatch," "Falling Star," "Color Wheel," "Bareback," "And Then," "Graffiti Rag," "Main Street Rag," "Bouillabaisse," "Decanto," "Rogue's Scholar," "Poetry Motel," "The Beat," "The Potomac" "Poetry Super Highway" "Panic Brixton Poetry," "Istanbul Literature Review," "The Taj Mahal Review," "Stirring," "Cherry Bleeds," "Juked," "Glass: A Poetry Review," "CC & D," "Down In The Dirt," "Ascent Aspirations," "Right Hand Pointing," "Why Vandalism?" "The Cerebral Catalyst," "Problem Child," "Sein Und Werden" and "The American Drivel Review"
Harlem-Valley Psychiatric ~ 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, paperback 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 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 it's mysterious internal organs, its languid tick and tock, wasted, wired, thinking a coo-coo clock might be more appropriate, 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 father-figures who were supposed to have somehow saved them, perfectly piled-up piles of wood which can only be acquired by work-a-holic wall-streeters, the wealthy new yorkers and bostonians, old money who appear like ghosts and phantoms never home just there 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 partners who loved to push buttons at formal wine and cheesy get-togethers wheeler-and-dealer philanthropic fund-raisers and sarcastically pose the question-- "prove that you exist" as they would instantly turn 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 tchtctka 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 tophats of madmen, a rippling rocking lakehouse weighed down with weather-worn oars and paddles who's aroma smelled like the lost lilypad 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 would start to feel 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 stop- over at harlem-valley psychiatriac.
The Witch ~ A Clinical Case Study
The witch opens the door to escape folklore...
Flicks on her electric fire and sparks a cigar. Checks the clock on her coffee maker and recharges the vibrator. Takes chattering teeth out jaw and gently lets it fall to cocaine mirror. Screws off splintered stilt and sticks it in the hole in the floor leaning it up against the door to keep out the hookers and whores. Composes curses for the sleazy and soulless neighbors then goes on to pray for bad weather.
The witch opens the door to escape folklore...
Her man took off on her on a motorcycle to New Mexico and now stores sex symbols and super heroes in shoe boxes in her walk-in closet.
The witch opens the door to escape folklore...
All her daughters have left her who once were gorgeous... Tomboys of the neighborhood radiant and rambunctious who used to spit sunflower seeds into each other's hair at sunset now simply going through the motions going into the fortune-telling business with cheating husbands who have all left them (This tradition this rendition has been passed down from generation to generation, as they now shuffle through the Lower East Side suspicious on the sly with glowing cat eyes in powder-blue suits and tap shoes and dangling roses having fallen for much younger girls).
The witch opens the door to escape folklore...
Getting back to daughters they have all become parasitic and vindictive or what the abusive psychiatrists call it passive-aggressive having turned on each other competing on every other corner wasting away in windows, aloof and apathetic, catatonic on cellphones, picking at their beauty salon nails with pastel views of paradise, chewing pork rinds while all you hear are their bastard boys cry--"You don't don't know what you're talking of!" right below blaring globes which read-- "Fortunes To Go"
The witch opens the door to escape folklore...
All her sons have become dope addicts either in jail or underground having interestingly been found dead in alleys or having robbed a string of Friendly's upstate having become the punchline for all the inmates (Having once been seen screaming at sisters beneath rainy movie theaters in Brooklyn-- "I'm not proud I'm a junkie!")
The witch opens the door to escape folklore...
and pulls out a batch of fresh-baked road-kill straight from the oven, lights a candle, and while half-blind, and now numb all over from what life has wrought her, stands dazed in a haze watching the radioactive sun squinting through pine needles with window cleaners high up above cleaning the panes of the sanctuary and slaughterhouse and factory with thieves stealing the cable of next door neighbors, then starts to go through her obsessive-compulsive rituals of kissing every souvenir and tctchka in her rent-controlled hole-in-the-wall, as this is the only thing which makes her feel safe and secure and hasn't betrayed or deserted or taken off... then proceeds to turn on the game shows with those road kill sandwiches and mugs of carnation instant breakfast.
The witch opens the door to escape folklore...
and sees a sudden gaggle of crows stalking a coyote in her backyard thinking to herself--"No one ever seems to leave anyone alone..." now feeling at home, contented, demented, even convinced she's lived a pretty charmed existence or about as well as can be expected.
How To Decorate A Psychiatrist's Office ~ in 5 steps
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 any pathology some time around twilight
casually drifting home (dreaming of whitman)
some place around the long island sound where nightmare ends and dreams begin.
II.
the only shingle you'll hang will simply say "eggs"
for when the orange blossom sun comes and the cranes fly away.
III.
[psychiatric notes...dx: highly-intelligent yet might present as simply good con-artist
his answer when i put forth the question-- "how do you feel about family and friends?"
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 hole 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 into being
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, seperating
very cultured, historical and significant countries.
claimed to be controlled and manipulated his whole 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 know it to be munchausen syndrome
and narcissistic personality
and claims to have acted-out, to have tested the limits
just to keep 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 figure of authority just to make a name...
short term and long term goal for treatment: ...to restore client's self-respect and dignity]
IV.
you'll peek through cactus of your half-bathroom
and close your eyes and imbibe the pure
smoky breeze of cedar burning
V.
secretly collapse in your study
like a sun falling like some stray pile of leaves
while your wife discovers you and simply brings in 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 seagulls squawking above me.
The Bones of Buddha (back stages of growth & development...)
Aphorism #1
jeeze louise, as a kid you were so much more rugged & resilient.
Aphorism #2
we learn most about the species about the supposed human being about mankind (although ironically they rarely appear like men nor kind) when we are at our most down-and-out, down-in-the-dumps, forced to go it alone, beat-down and blue, and there are really very few people of who we can trust or turn to (who keep their word or follow through, as they play roles, but that's about as far as they ever go, and get far more out of nature, such as the brilliant cycle of seasons, a good thaw, visions like crows sitting way above the snow) as all we may conclude is that this very advanced and complex race are simply transparent and see-through.
Aphorism #3
existence eventually becomes who can cope and adapt the best with the emptiness
the psychologists like to refer to this as growth and development
i'm not so sure about this...
most people fail greatly at this endeavor and try to one up their neighbor.
Aphorism #4
it is only when we are constantly surrounded, overwhelmed by these vampires and vultures, that we are forced to question the overall meaning, point and purpose of our existence, our place and time on earth, feel excruiatingly lonely, and start to naturally conceptualize from all these lies and crimes our mortality.
Aphorism #5
how brilliant would that expression be-- "what are you talking about?" if only it was not always addressed within the context of anger and applied to the philosophical quest for knowledge.
Aphorism #6
you know it is in the way people act which makes them ugly.
i have known some really good actors
and some really ugly people...
the alchy-florist who's personality changes with the weather as beat-red as geraniums.
Aphorism #7
they say in the case of the classic comedian he loves humanity
yet loathes the citizen god bless abbott & costello lenny bruce and the three stooges
no wonder... a bunch of jewish cousins from brooklyn.
Aphorism #8
i once casually blurted on the subway to coney island quoting the late-great joe buck--
"i may not be a cowboy but i'm one hell of a stud!"
which totally caught my friend off guard who casually started to guffaw
asking me to repeat that once more he was from oklahoma...
Aphorism #9
don't know...
it seems like i'd really like people if not for their personalities.
that always seems to be the stumbling...
slowly i turn step by step inch by inch...
Aphorism #10
beware of how they try to make you feel about you
you're not depressed just a mood they put you into
the chinese boy who always asks about you arrives with the rice and dumplings.
Aphorism #11
*
*
*
Aphorism #12
a prayer is to reach out for something or someone who appears to care, to reject and cast away, to no longer fulfill the self-fulfilling prophecy of how they try to make you feel about "me" (their out-of-touch absurd, narcissistic perceptions and expectations) obsessively caught between the desire to fight and need to flee then you are on the clear path to reach your fate and destiny.
Aphorism #13
i used to
have this philosophy professor back in college
"i couldn't seem to locate my sneakers this morning" then proceeded to make this half-crazed declarative statement something like--"almost everything we think we think of is wrong" and if in fact that is true then should we not
then put far more creedence and meaning on natural instincts, attraction, intuition, premonitions, feelings, beliefs, physicality, hunches, spirit, smells, sounds, images, memories, moods, and
most important of all, our dreamworld? he was a pretty decent guy and said--"i'll try to find my shoes for next time"
Aphorism #14
i was thinking i want to start posting a picture of myself all over town with a caption that simply says-- "support your local sheriff" right over the portrait of the black cat they put up every year which reads "missing..."
Aphorism #15
what does the man in the lighthouse the man in the windmill dream of?
who do the twins fantasize about?
the people of the factories & cathedrals?
the wilderness
back at nightfall.
Aphorism #16
sun sets in the garage... you're still alive!
Aphorism #17
it's the troubled thoughts that count...
always talk about that famous staircase/stairway to heaven made famous by the british rock band led zeppelin
why not a secret rear set of stairs that simply come down from there
somewhere around the factory which lays flush against the mountains?
trap door where they store all the beautiful creatures of folklore
criminals and comedians delivering pianos
the fish & kids to their final destinations
in a village where a runaway child has one hand on the handlebars and one hand on his basketball
nymphomaniac angels ditching haunted colonials
the weather will be over... under old theater
hugging that river always flooding pachysandra
seeping right into the abandoned basement of a broken
boy's deserted garden nourishing
a neglected soul
Aphorism #18
all that resistance & rebellion in childhood is what made you good (don't let them try to fool you) a kind & compassionate & complete individual.
Aphorism #19
at a certain point in my formative years can't put my finger on it i started pinning up posters of cheryl tiegs, cheryl ladd, whatever charlie's angel i could get my hands on, swear i saw every raindrop fall, felt every thaw, and had jerking off down to a science, an art, lost and found, knew every girl's body part by heart, this is how's a boy's imagination, his identity and personality grow and grow and grow and grow... tony orlando got thin; there were station wagons called things like "country squire" with garage doors kept open to immaculate bat caves ready to zoom away to pick up seductive daughters who would eventually crush hearts at color guard
crows lay low way up above.
Aphorism #20
today in playing with my kid i had noticed marbles loosely scattered all over our bedroom floor and really did not get all the old folklore of "losing one's marbles." to me just staring at these different variations and colors and textures and styles, i felt instantly calm, cool and collected even contemplative... i discovered my wife's sandals and afghan neatly tucked under our bed and kid started tugging at my ears, as sunlight came streaming through the weary window in the dim grim light of winter and thought what a pleasure it was to lose one's marbles.
Aphorism #21
it is my contention that one actually needs some vices in order to survive (to not just worry and obsess all the time about always having to get it right) a vice like otis spunkymeyer blueberry muffins like nursing cups of leftover coffee and red wine which also provide a nice pot-pourri and pleasant aroma like always leaving the classical radio station on for when you return home alone to keep from feeling lonesome.
Aphorism #22
this morning i watched the sun rise from my bedroom window and thought
how long has it been since i've seen the sunrise ecstatically blinded my eyes feeling brilliantly alive stroking everything in sight (this simple moment meant more to me than anything i had experienced in god knows how long and
wondered why for so long i had taken for granted of dreaming where you intuitively and insightfully go into hiding and no longer need to question or go through the motions of contemplation to ask or wonder why; how it simply hung there suspended in dilapitated pine trees then made its way over the high seas while the rumble of school buses whisked the
kids away to their destiny. east blazing over my bare body everything came flooding back to me all meanings (& non-meanings) states of being & memories of new orleans' & californias & caribbeans & mediteranneans and i was ready for anything for something although it seemed i needn't be ready for a thing.
Aphorism #23
standing in your dim grim kitchen at dusk transfixed with the time on the clock of the coffee maker listening to sports radio--"alright miriam... from forest hills, what'ya got for us?"
Aphorism #24
on your special-k diet shoveling handfuls and handfuls of cereal down your throat crumbling down your face all over your car onto your clothes as the heat blasts listening to sports radio from new york in the town of new bedford massachusetts a social worker in the parking lot of a methadone clinic looking out over the polluted river where melville got his start and shoved off for a little r and r.
Aphorism #25
in the present i feel cheated and jipped (all seems so vague & ambiguous) from what they promised (lost some- where in no- man's land) stuck some- where between the ideal of "past simple" and "future perfect" (if you kind of get my drift) if you kind of get where i'm coming from once you do fill me in...
it all turns empty & vacant & you sigh like some stray wild wind wailing winding through the holy & haunted seaside.
Aphorism #26
last night while changing dylan he simply looked at the clock and couldn't stop giggling entranced and transfixed with the minute hand moving watching time slowly passing and thought o to be a brilliant and beautiful innocent baby kind of like when you're feeling awfully lonely and just put a conch shell up against your ear to vicariously live through its echoes and stirrings the rhythms and motions of a distant faraway calming and soothing ocean. you take your ear off it then put it right back on again to desperately try to recapture its essence...
Aphorism #27
upon not answering the door, she yells-- "don't do that i got worried! just so you know i know the heimlech and c.p.r. so i can totally hook you up, cause you're old" and my beautiful girl from the bronx makes monkey faces and starts pressing on my chest, going-- iggy! iggy! iggy!
Aphorism #28
in driving your kid home from a snow- day you hear his music playing and think back to your childhood--"he floats through the air with the greatest of ease, a daring young man on a flying trapeze..."
they labeled you at-risk most likely to secede.
Aphorism #29
childhood was david schwartz (pronounced swartz and not shwartz) soaring in mid-air somewhere in his back- yard in the land of long- island up-ended somer- saulting after i had performed a game-saving shoestring tackle on him and while he was up there simultaenously also hysterical in so suddenly spontaneously being sent head-over-heels to new and greater heights of a very strange and unknown obscurity.
Aphorism #30
my nightmares have become fantasies about baby sitters we had to let go who stay with me for the rest of the morning.
Aphorism #31
the wild laughing boys guide me to once more look through my window
even up above to sun-filled radiant clouds passing through damp pine.
from my deep dark prison i hear the remains of cowboys and indians.
Aphorism #32
"my fiddle
has shattered!" day rituals
and routines. and you get
all excited like to help piece together pieces of your shattered soul as though you're the big winner at bingo...
Aphorism #33
today upon walking through the five & dime i came upon an item which read "all-purpose clothesline" and thought a little deeper and further about what this might imply.
Aphorism #34
the heart seems to close a little when we get older but it is also important to note even with blinds down we do our fair share of dreaming
(see how the belfry in the steeple of the cathedral beams over the town
the throng of church bells that shimmer and sound
sea- gulls looking around
then taking off to the clouds).
Aphorism #35
don't know, in all these quaint little lovely towns who's diverse populations include alcoholics & adulterers awnry old judges & wicked widows wouldn't it seem more appropriate that there be a coo-coo who pops out on the hour from the clocktower?
Aphorism #36
you have always felt so much more a stranger in the suburbs, and ironically, paradoxically in the city, a citizen.
where is that commuter train which will deliver you straight to the soul purpose of culture of
civilization of existence?
Aphorism #37
when you were out on the road and all alone and knew there was absolutely no way home the only image you recall was the faint porch light the lantern the lamplight with sun coming down over the hills glistening through windows and knew and still know that was the only thing that was true.
Aphorism #38
you stand in your door with your eyes closed after all the
rain & snow & sun finally streaming through
solitude...
the heart the soul what more can you do?
Aphorism #39
o the wild ways of trees of the wilderness of the leaves
cat gives birth blackberries as everything
eventually will return and recede back to briny bones of the sea.
Aphorism #40
somewhere between dementia and lost expectations is the sweet bliss of ignorant imagination. |