SATIETY
there used to be
a much longer delay
between hope
and disappointment
now, I pluck the fruit
and it withers
in my hand
I know it’s bitter
before my tongue does
soon I’ll leave the fruit
and nourish myself
on emptiness
I’ll chew the blue of the sky
I’ll taste the black of the night
and be filled
**
REBORN
and when the pain finally goes
as inexplicably as it came
we grab its arm
to drag it back
through the door
like a spurned lover
saying “please stay...
I didn’t mean it”
we believe if we let it go
then it has no more meaning
than a passing cloud
a brief summer storm
a dead leaf
blowing down the street
in the wake of a truck
it must mean something
more than that
we think—
we think so
and thus it is reborn
to scream at us
through all our days
and nights
**
QUIT WEARING OTHER PEOPLE’S GLASSES!
she read a poem I’d written
and asked “How?”
at one time
I might’ve faked an answer
but now
I can only say
that after staring
for some 40 odd years
through the peculiarities
of this lens
its bulges and divots
my eyes have finally adjusted
to how the light is bent
yet for so long
I thought I’d been given
the wrong prescription
***
![Satiety](https://www.fictionalcafe.com/storage/2019/10/IMG_1388-768x1024.jpg)
Brian Rihlmann was born in New Jersey and currently resides in Reno, Nevada. He writes free verse poetry, much of it confessional. Folk poetry, for folks. He has been published in The Blue Nib, The American Journal of Poetry, Cajun Mutt Press, The Rye Whiskey Review, Alien Buddha Zine and others. This is his first feature on the Fictional Café.
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Understandable; great to read. Enjoyed the bleak accuracies.
Very nice!