Legal Eagle

Upon reflection
Of my past profession
It’s tempting to wish
I’d been as quick witted
And glib
While a lawyer
As I find myself now
As a scrib

I might have won
My fortune
And fulfilled my
Finest fantasy
To retire to a
Beach house with a
Book and a cat

And on the way
lead legal
Eagles through alliterated
Litigation with a litany
Of misconstructions and half-lies

Would my clients
have been better served
if my tongue more
slickly curved
around vagaries
of my integrity

Would blind justice have
Run madly through
The courthouse
Granting motions which
my lips construed
complacently, inexorably
and half-cocked

Off on a whim
for the sake of the win
I would flap my lips
And jut my chin
Heedlessly, unthinkingly
Taking not the time to see
The hazards my
Spurious espousals
Might have wrought

The courtrooms which I graced
May have been a kinder place
To my clients and my ego

For heavens sake

But really, who is served
When slick and superficial words
Grease the path to fine
Judicial rulings off the cuff

Who looks through the
Smoke and mirrors
To the quintessence of the stuff
That’s slathered
throughout the courthouse walls
like slime

No

The court’s become a spot
Where integrity’s forgotten

Vocal artistry and trickery
And tactical maneuvering
Are armor for the cunning

Open honest pleas for justice
Are despised

Veracity is for sale

The slickest speaker
Is the highest bidder
In the end
all that matters is the
Spin
and the winner

The point of the
Matter is lost in the clatter

Finally the lawyers
Laugh like coxswains
While crafting fisherman’s yarns

figuring fees
By counting out minutes
Dollar by dollar
And inflating the hourly rate

How much was that loser’s
Pound of flesh worth?
I’d ask at the end of the day
As I toss back a shooter
At the local bar
Billing all the while

How much for this smooth utterance
That deception
and re-creation of facts
my client asks

I give him double talk to
Justify
a whopping bill
Three stories high

In retrospect I thank the stars
I did not unearth
While prowling bars
and courtrooms

my stellar stylus
and
my rapier wit

For words are magic

If at the end of the day
I can honestly say
I did no harm

Then I am better off than
Oh so many who
With words would sway

KMC 6/03