Featuring Brian Rihlmann

YOUNG MAN 

Remember—

when she smiles at you,

she’s showing her teeth.

Later on,

you’ll understand why.

You’ll have no excuse.

It was all right there—

telegraphed

from the get-go.

LIMITATIONS 

Years ago, I discovered 

the limits of photography,

after climbing my first fourteener.

There was a moment,

emerging through that notch

on the flank of Longs Peak 

known as “The Keyhole”;

a sweeping view,

a joyous vertigo 

as the world fell away,

and I soared,

feeling completely alone,

yet completely connected.

Later, I got the photos developed.

I stared into that flattened 

two-dimensional version

of my experience,

and sank. Ruined.

I don’t know what I expected,

but I’d captured nothing.

I think I’m beginning 

to see poetry like that.

It’s like saying, “I love you,”

for the first time.

Or later, when you say,

or don’t quite say, “It’s over.”

But there’s a lot missing,

outside the frame.

POINT....WINNER!

I committed what in your eyes

was a Facebook faux pas, 

which was followed by

a couple months of silent treatment, 

followed by deletion.

Having discovered my new

non-friend status,

I took it a step further—

and blocked you.

Then today,

I found your book,

and tore it to pieces.

Right across the back cover

and your smiling face.

Right across the pages

that dripped

with your glorious journey 

through madness.

Pages I loved.

Pages that I thought

understood me.

Pages that betrayed.

It felt pretty fucking good.

I’d say—

do the same to mine.

Maybe you already have.

Except my face 

isn’t on the cover

of my book.

So I win...

I think.

A CHRONIC MALCONTENT 

eventually...you get there

to that awful place

we all know—

you should leave...

should’ve already left

like a bad relationship 

but you hang on

you hang on, cause—

the devil you know, right?

the comfy, well furnished rut...

so you stay awhile

you build your hatreds 

nurture them 

love them

like precious children 

you find ways 

to waste time—

their time

the time they pay you for

the time that’s your life

the time you’ve whored yourself for

for a paycheck

just to survive in this mad system

you’ve never understood 

or accepted

you’ve been told

you should care

you should be grateful 

you’ve tried to swallow this

but you can’t 

you can’t get there from here

you’re not the god of yourself

so you sneak outside

and stand in the sunlight 

you write poems at your desk

you read articles online

or look at porn

and then jerk off 

in the employee bathroom

you train yourself

to move slowly

against what you’ve been taught

against the embedded urge

to race like a fucking lunatic

fuck the work

fuck the orders that MUST go out

or the world will end

just....fuck it!

then you begin

conversing aloud

with your demons

so they’ll know you’re batshit 

you don’t hide it anymore

and when they finally 

shitcan your ass

don’t worry—

you still get the pleasure

of hating their guts

forever

THANKS!

I wish I could write like you

he says

this is a compliment—

I think it is...

he’s a young man

I was young once, too—

I think I was...

do I tell him?

do I say

you might need

more time?  

you might have to go get drunk 

for ten or twenty years

and shatter your heart

a dozen

a hundred 

a thousand times

you might have to

give up writing 

and then go back to it

and then quit again

and start and stop

and start and stop

like breaking up

and going back to her 

over and over

even though

she drives you crazy

even though

she fucks other guys 

while you’re working 

12 hour shifts

graveyard shifts

and why do you think

they call them that?

you might have to

finally pry yourself 

away from her

and roam aimlessly 

around the country

blown by the wind 

like an empty shopping bag

searching 

for what you think is missing

and never find it

you can’t find 

the sky

or the earth

either

all of this is true

but none of it

would be consolation 

just like everything 

that was ever told to me

by older men

agonies already endured

tales told with a chuckle 

and a smile

tragedies ripened to comedy

on the tree of time

so instead

I say

thanks!

that’s a nice compliment!

See also Brian’s poems from 28 May 2019 here:

https://georgedanderson.blogspot.com/2019/05/featuring-brian-rihlmann.html

Featuring Brian Rihlmann

THE QUESTIONABLE MOTIVES OF A POET

One writes nothing
but drunken threats
of razor blade suicide,
and another, endlessly,
about heartbreak,
and picking up
the broken pieces.

He writes love poems
to a long gone
high school sweetheart,
and she pens sonnets
about nature’s majesty
and the glory of god.

And there are the fuck obsessed,
and unabashed lovers
of bondage ropes,
and the sting of the whip.

And purveyors of fantasy:
knights and maidens,
elves and sorcerers,
and fire breathing dragons,

or those who travel
acid trip realms of the surreal
and write things like:

“cricket shadows scream
red moonlight bleeds
lizard tails slither
across weeping skies
thorny vines grow
from fiery eyes”

it’s as though an artist
took a wet shit on canvas,
and smeared it around
like a toddler’s finger painting.

He knows what it means...
but I sure as hell don’t.

And then there’s the guy...

who plumbs the rotten underbelly
of every bright and beautiful thing,
who sees dark mischief
in every child’s smile,
and hears the death rattle
in a newborn’s cry,

who waves his dirty laundry
under your nose
seeking salvation,

and who somehow believes
that if he confesses everything
that makes him an asshole....

then he can go on
being one,
with impunity,

and maybe even
get laid because of it.

“The world’s last honest man” right?

I’m sick of that guy.
Smile,
you fuck.

THE OLD CRONE DOES HARD TIME

I generally cringe
when I hear glassy eyed, new age types
talking about transmigration of the soul
as though it were an absolute fact, like gravity.

But there’s something to this idea
of the “Old Soul.”

Because there’s an old woman
in here. A real old crone. Nasty as fuck.
She’s been around, ya know?
Been through some shit.
Jumped from one skin sack
to another, for who knows how long.

She knows all the tricks.
The mercenary ways
of brain and heart.
She’s heard every bullshit excuse,
and alternately cackles
or groans at most
of what people say and do.

She sits on the front porch
of my house human,
slowly rocking in her chair,
spittoon on one side,
shotgun on the other.
Loaded and cocked.

I can picture her standing
before a tribunal of the powers that be,
before being sent back here
from the underworld.

I see a half-circle of black hooded men,
their faces lost in shadow,
as she practically begs
“Please guys, not another body...”

But they laugh,
and off she goes,
flipping the bird on the fly,
and her “fuck you” translates
into my first ever scream,
as I am yanked out
into the cold.

The unsuspecting parents
wind up with a baby
who looks at grownups like idiots
when they babble at him
or play peekaboo.

People say he seems pissed off.
Resentful. (Well, no shit!)
He doesn’t smile much,
or pose for photos,
or play well with other children.

And doesn’t cry
when the goldfish,
or the dog,
or people,
die.

He knows better.
Or she does.

SUCCESS STORY

Once having seen
the kind of life
that awaited,
a bowl of oatmeal
bland and grey,
my ambition fizzled
like a pissed on flame.

Success became redefined 
as a futile struggle
to smash every 
faded yardstick 
to splinters,
to run down 
their roadside mileposts
leaving them mangled
in my wake,

and to break myself
against the secret
stone tablets
locked deep
in my vault.

See more work from Rihlmann here from a 19 July 2020 BM post: https://georgedanderson.blogspot.com/2020/07/featuring-brian-rihlmann.html

Brian Rihlmann was born in NJ and currently lives in Reno, NV. He writes mostly semi-autobiographical, confessional free verse. Folk poetry...for folks. He has been published in Constellate Magazine, Poppy Road Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, Cajun Mutt Press and has an upcoming piece in The American Journal of Poetry.