One Upmanship in Suburbia
I hear teenagers
in the schoolyard
next to my apartment
their stolen beer bottles
clinking, the boys cursing, punching
one another, trying to impress
giggling razor-thin girls,
who are secretly deciding
who they'll blow
behind the dumpsters
while the August crickets
rub their legs together
in a frenzy
trying to outdo the others
for a mate.
I turn up Tom Waits
to drown them all out
and pound out another
fucking poem.
_
my words are war whoops against the womb
my
every
word
is
a
war
whoop
my
every
poem
a
campaign
waged
against
the
dumb
womb
the
most
destructive
bomb
of
them
all
exploding
life
into
the
world
_
I hear teenagers
in the schoolyard
next to my apartment
their stolen beer bottles
clinking, the boys cursing, punching
one another, trying to impress
giggling razor-thin girls,
who are secretly deciding
who they'll blow
behind the dumpsters
while the August crickets
rub their legs together
in a frenzy
trying to outdo the others
for a mate.
I turn up Tom Waits
to drown them all out
and pound out another
fucking poem.
_
my words are war whoops against the womb
my
every
word
is
a
war
whoop
my
every
poem
a
campaign
waged
against
the
dumb
womb
the
most
destructive
bomb
of
them
all
exploding
life
into
the
world
_
Rob Plath is 39 years. He has published about 150 poems in 50 magazines and journals in print and online. He has one book of poetry called “Ashtrays and Bulls” (liquid paper press--home of the nerve cowboy) and two forthcoming, one from Cat Scan Press in the UK called “Sour Milk” for the soulless and another from Pooka Press in Canada which is not yet titled. He once studied with Allen Ginsberg at Brooklyn College from '95-97 and performed on a spoken word CD “Northport celebrates jack” --a tribute to Jack Kerouac. Since he has just become poetry editor of Whirligigzine - JD Finch's fiction and poetry magazine, which is in print and online. Rob lives in New York.
