Richard M. Berlin, MD

"Because I’m a quiet man I listen before I speak, tune into my patient’s voice..."

"While studying the CAT scan, I picture Groucho Marx as Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush..."

"While studying the CAT scan, I picture Groucho Marx..."

"I want to read poems at the white house. I want to read poems at the white house with all the pomp available."

"I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke."

"Today I am the oldest I have been..."

"A 'Prior Auth' parasite dumps me on hold, sucks another hour from my life, one more chance to practice my 'Close-Your-Eyes- And-Imagine-a-Blank-Screen' coping skill..."

"If items of horror can make a man laugh then laugh at this: one hour later, the growth still undiscovered, ticking its own wild time..."

"A “Prior Auth” parasite dumps me on hold, sucks another hour from my life..."

"Thanks for considering waiting in line at the Met for Michelangelo’s drawings. It was raining that day..."

"...the healing of a spirit, the vision of healing, the heat of vision, the power of heat, the pleasure of power."

"They should have known better than to shovel snow at their age..."

"All species have a notion of emptiness, and yet the flowers don't quit opening..."

"What we did to the trees, what we did to the earth, we did to our sons, to our daughters..."

"They bicker gently, lovingly. A car outside gives a long honk. The leaves are on the cusp of changing..."

"...February sky a grey body bag, the Berkshires’ stark catalog of snow-covered maples and oaks standing solemn and silent and cold..."

"I’m idling on the parking garage roof..."

"the immigration raid when the rumor of a raid was passed around like bread & the women made plans, si dios quiere..."

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..."

"I go down to the edge of the sea. How everything shines in the morning light!"

"I remember the first time my fingers burrowed the swamp where belly joins leg to feel an artery throb..."

"The end of the world was mistaken for just another midday massacre in America. Brain matter and broken glass, blurred boot prints in pools of blood..."

"But when I finally learned to feel everything, I became a psychiatrist who touches nothing but a patient’s hand at the first meeting and the final good bye..."

"Sometimes as an antidote To fear of death, I eat the stars..."

"When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down..."

"Give us this day our dividends in cash and fixed stock options as we outperform all coders against us..."

"I read your poetry like a hiker on a treacherous trail who finally stops to rest and drink and admire the view of snow-capped peaks..."

"Without a father to guide me north, your poems were a compass pointing toward a world where doctors can be poets..."

"...we are saying thank you faster and faster, with nobody listening we are saying thank you..."

"I listened as he taught me to relax the hand just enough."