1
the lawyer and doctor
meet at a social function
"I just hate it, "
says the doctor to the lawyer
"At social gatherings
I always get people asking
me for advice
and information,
when they know I'm a doctor…
I bet they do that to you too…
How do you deal with these people? "

"O yeah, " says the lawyer
"They do; and I do give them advice
when they ask
and the next day
I send them the bill"


2
The doctor thinks it's a good idea
and goes to his office the next day
to practise what the lawyer had taught him
And he sits at his table, ready to begin
and there right before him is the bill from the lawyer

often the solution
is easy, simple


1
I went to the local psychiatrist -
the first consultation was free
and I said:
'I got a problem -
every night
I fear there's someone
below my bed
And when I look underneath
I fear someone's on my bed'

The psychiatrist nodded
at the end of the hour
and said:
'Easy, now just come and see me
2 hours each, twice a week;
will cost you $100 each hour
and within 2 months
I'll have you fixed'

It didn't sound so
simple
or easy on my wallet
so I didn't go back to my shrink



2
Three weeks later
the shrink saw me
at the shops
and she said:
'Why didn't you come back
to see me
about the phantom below your bed? '

'Oh, '* I said, *'it was all fixed
easy and simple
The waiter at my local bar
he just told me
to saw off the legs of my bed
and that fixed the problem
quick, plain and easy
and he gave his advice for free'

When the night takes you
into it's dark and mysterious embrace,
and you travel ever downward
through chambers that have never seen
the sun's glowing face,
and faceless archangels carry you
bedeviled place to place,
and you tango, allegretto
with Dante in his chamber space,
and you wake breathless
with an ashen face,
It's my desire to be pillow side
kiss your forehead,
hold you close, reassure you,
that once again you're now safe.

Languid lapping waves,
Here a mud stuck pier,
The distant hills have failed again
To halt a falling flare.

The surface level of a liquid,
In a tube or water glass,
Has an illusory crescent zone
Known as the meniscus,
Where light is scattered
In such a way
That it throws the eye off
Just a little,
The way a good poem
Can throw off the coherent mind,
While revealing a deeper truth.

The gnat upon my letterpress
Truly cannot sense
How far apart the world it knows
Is from gods and men.
It sits upon my novel
Walks across the page
The words of Charlotte Bronte
Have become its stage.
And yet it knows of nothing
More than eat and sleep
But it crept across her knowledge
And now is in her keep.

I have no faith in these hills.
They are too green, the colors to deep.
At night when the fireflies dance under
almost-ripe grape vines tangled in earth,
I wait for them to disappear.

I can feel myself forgetting the smell
of the sun-dried roses and half-cleaned out fire places
the smoke of wood and ash,
the strange bugs I find on my damp towels.  

I can taste the blue of those far away hills
smell the red of the ancient brick of
faraway conclaves of ancient cities.
But I already forget their names.

I watch the rain tumble down the hills covered with cobblestones.
it's midas's touch deepening the colors of the stones, the fossils of labor.
I listen to the sounds a mountain makes when it cries, nursing it's million year wounds.
The green river never stops pouring through it.
But I can't remember the cause of its sorrow.

But I know the cause of mine.
I will leave these hills.
And paint them into a postcard.
or a poem.