Rob Plath
SITTING DRUNK BANGING ON THE BROKEN PIANO

When I was young
I dreamed of a life at
higher temperatures
I wanted a tiger
to eat my parents
I wanted a giant phantom
to swallow my house
I pretended to be a
wild orphan dancing
in an imaginary
ring of fire
but now
as the tiger gnaws
on my father’s shinbone
as the crow perches
with my mother’s
teeth in its beak
as the phantom
wraps itself around
the old wooden beams
I sit drunk banging
on the broken piano
while pissing streams
of whiskey
at the tightening
belt of flames
& blowing cigar smoke
at the new real heat

 

Rob Plath is a poet and author of Ashtrays and Bulls, published by Liquid Paper Press, and first prize winner in Nerve Cowboy's 2003 Chapbook Contest. He's been described as 'the Bukowski of the next millennium."

 

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