BRIAN RIHLMANN - POEMS

Brian Rihlmann was born in New Jersey and currently resides in Reno, Nevada.  He writes free verse poetry, much of it on the confessional side.  He has been published in Blognostics, Red Eft Review, Spillwords, Synchronized Chaos, Cajun Mutt Press, The Rye Whiskey Review, and others.    

​A DOG’S LIFE AND OURS

​spend your days fenced in
tied to one leash or another

sit! speak! fetch!
beg for a treat
get a pat on the head once in awhile

quit barking!
stop whining!

when you're alone
pace the same spot
until the ground turns to stone

scratch futile holes
in the packed earth
half burying old bones

howl at the moon
chew sticks to splinters
and rubber balls to shreds

peer through cracks in the fence
wonder what's out there
go crazy
wondering

then die
get the needle 
before springtime
without its sweetness
in your lungs

except we don't get the needle
only murderers do

we die in sterile white rooms
inhaling bleach at midnight 
not surrounded by our families
like in the movies

shivering even under
a mountain of blankets

a dog outside
in the cold

THROUGH WINDOWS ​

​Even winter storms are loved,
through windows,
from inside a warm house,

as are frozen faces
in photographs
and people on TV,

or homeless refugees
from another country
read about
on a smartphone screen

by a man who rises from his seat
and takes his six dollar latte
to the other side
of the coffee shop

to avoid the rattling cup
and the stink
of a bum
who just wandered in
from the cold.

​A LITTLE LONGER

​Often as I walk the headland paths

I will happen upon a lonely beach somewhere
in a little cove 
with a stream trickling down
beneath piles of bleached driftwood logs
like scattered dinosaur bones
resting on a bed of pebbles
broken shells 
and other shattered 
and unrecognizable things
coughed up by the ocean
and left there for us to ponder

I like to sit amid all that brokenness 
that tangled mass of life and death
to walk around and feel at home in it
to pick through piles of seashells
with edges sharp as broken beer bottles
sifting the chaos 
searching just to search
a little longer

​GENTLY CRACKING

​she seemed broken
a web of fractures
in her almond eyes
hair dyed pupil black

her flesh 
a thousand punctures
a camouflage of ink
i could hide in
swim with her dolphins 
lie among her flowers
tangle myself in her vines

she blew puffs
of her life before me
into my face 
like smoke from a joint
of the greenest 

i nodded 
inhaling wisps of her story
in a daze

listening to the ice cubes
gently cracking
as i poured her
another drink

​MISTAKEN FOR DEAD

​we are indeed
crucified with him
nailed to crosses of belief

engraved 
with sun bleached words
flaking to the ground 

yet worn like armor
on our lips
against foes
we’ve never met

fields of us writhe
like windblown grass
shaking fists in the air

and i wonder...

will the wood rot 
and the fervent nails
squeak free

before the vultures come 
for our eyes?