Richard M. Berlin, MD

I pictured him at his waiting room door . . . clutching a chart, catching eyes, . . . calling out a name, bewildered

I place a stethoscope in my ears and listen to the heart when I’ve run out of things to say.

I'm reviewing a left ventriculography from a man with chest pain, MI ruled out, his wife dead for a post-crash hour...

"A hundred people dancing so hard they’ve thrown off their shoes . . ."

Einstein's happiest moment revealed.

-for SusanneWe kneeled on the bookstore floortwo students scanning the bodiesof new books, checking outeach other's Principlesof Internal Medicine.Scores of textbooks laterwe're a pair of pagers and missed dinners,companions in sleep-deprived nights.We suffered the long delaybefore our only child while we ranto slashed wrists and ODs,sprinted from half-read journalto school play to board meeting.In conversation long as summer lightwe talked patients and drugs,recited the simple prayers of dying,learned how we both took medicineas a life-long lover.One hushed June evening in mid-lifescented rose and thick with fire-flies,the phone steals her.I sit with my half-filled glass

Within recent medical times psychologic investigations have reawakened interest in the psychological settings in which illness develops. Reports in the literature have singled out loss as a precipitating factor in a variety of disorders . . . including ulcerative colitis.    –Arthur H. Schmale Jr, MDIt was a time when men wore fedorasbanded on the crown, each band with a feathertucked into a bow, and inside,sweat bands carved from calf skins

Needle sticks and night call, Hep B burrowing skin, bad smells, deep wounds, death, dying, dead wood...

A poetry reading by psychiatrist Richard Berlin, MD.

One of the special aspects of practicing in a small community is seeing patients living their lives outside the office.

Two yellow feathers and a skull. . . drop from the sky and fall on the brown . . . scar of trail, a sharp-shinned hawk

Each wound speaks its own language.

A poetry reading by psychiatrist Richard Berlin, MD.

As a consultation liaison psychiatrist, one of his assignments was to work on a renal dialysis unit to determine whether or not a patient was competent to opt out of treatment.

His pager calls. Code Blue. And for no reason at all, he lifts the window and blows a little life back into the world.

We lower a plastic tray on his ribs, as if food can stop the dying: cold potato scooped like a snowball, canned spinach. More in this reading by Richard Berlin, MD.

And when they see what I hide . . . up my white coat sleeve, . . . they understand that magic

Our identity as physicians is the foundation for our careers as psychiatrists and the first step in our transition from layperson to doctor takes place in the anatomy lab.

Listen to Richard Berlin, MD, recite one of his poems.

Wild Night, after the cops came to shut the music down, after friends and family were headlights pointed toward home...

And while the spotlight admires . . . the soloist’s passion, I love . . . the page turner even more,

I’m sprawled in the back, . . . riding out swells and storm tides . . . that toss this ship like a marriage.

Another day-glow orange morning . . . of jack-hammering men in the street, . . .their steam-shovel coughing black fumes

with enough juice to jump-start a heart . . . back to the Bo Diddley beat . . . We don’t amp ourselves up to sing the body electric . . .

While she curses and cries . . . I imagine I am the pilot . . . who ditched his Airbus

The scar on her sternum is a zipper . . . opened once to reveal her heart,. . . . the smooth arc of her breasts

But I still have bottles of pretty pills . . . I throw like life rafts to keep them afloat . . .in choppy seas, me passing my doctor-days

“If you were a ship, where would you sail?” . . . “What is your favorite hockey team?” and “What will you do if you don’t get into medical school?”

I don’t like to use the worn out word . . . “bruise” in my poems, but this morning . . . one appears on my inner thigh