NOTHING IS WORSE
the first ones that came here starved
and ate rats and leather
and later their dead
so maybe that did it
a horror seared
into our collective memory
but the solution
of more
eventually results
in the problem
of too much
when the solution
to too much
is a prescription
of still more
you have insanity
we call it “America”
but would i dare complain?
i love our megachurches
and superstores
the comforting familiarity
of our corporate brands
arches and mermaids
dotting the landscape
like crucifixes
along the old roman road
and god bless
our gas guzzlers
big screen TVs
and McMansions
and the limitless ocean
of credit at our fingertips
tap and click
and millions of packages
keep moving
and everyone’s working now
our cities spread
like desert landfills
and even the seagulls
grow too fat to fly
so let us praise
our brazen leaders
and businessmen
with their selfless ways
for they are thinking
only of our best interests
when they shout “heretic!”
at anyone who dares
utter the word
“finite”
because nothing
nothing
is worse
than not enough
© Brian Rihlmann
THE COMMONS
Downtown, across the street
from The Sands,
the yellow claw of a backhoe
tears at the cinderblock wall
of an old flophouse motel,
called home until recently
by people who couldn’t afford
much else, now gone
somewhere.
The cold metal jaws
take bite after indiscriminate bite.
Clouds of grey dust fill the air
as chunks of concrete fall.
A half eaten room lies bare,
dissected,
its guts exposed:
a dresser, a TV,
cardboard boxes,
perhaps old photos,
love letters left behind.
Tough to fit all that
in a shopping cart,
or carry it on your back.
A gaggle of residents
from a nearby motel,
a motel just like this,
wanders over
for a closer look.
They stare in taut faced silence,
watching the demolition,
the inevitable cost
of progress.
A man places his arm
over his woman’s shoulder,
pulls her close,
whispers in her ear.
In a year or two,
new high rise apartments
will fill this space,
or perhaps a mini mall
called “The Commons”,
with five hundred dollar
shoes and purses
in the window,
looking exactly like
a green pasture
where the poor townsfolk
could graze their livestock
for free.
© Brian Rihlmann
THE PRICE OF SUNSHINE
they had set the price
for his hours
for days he would now spend
within a new set of walls
it hardly seemed fair
but he was in no position to bargain
with the unemployment nearly gone
and the rent coming due
and anyway
it was shameful
to be on the dole
(everyone said so)
to spend days in the sunshine
drinking beer by the river
playing his guitar
or staying in bed
with his girlfriend until noon
but here was dignity
a good steady job
forty hours plus overtime
half hour for lunch
to be belittled and shoved around
by the boss man and told
“we’re working twelves this week”
and if he didn’t like it
“there’s the door”
but every two weeks
came the big reward
he remembered as a boy
hearing a man talk about the future
and how machines would do all the work
and everyone would lead lives of leisure
he thought about that
as he worked the first
of many long days
moving cardboard boxes
from one place
to another
© Brian Rihlmann
