Rob Plath: New Poems & Photography

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New Poems by Rob Plath

 

the day my mother died 

i remember clearing out 
yr nursing home room 
the afternoon you died 
some tulips in a vase 
a little radio 
several greeting cards
a virgin mary statue 
two stuffed animals 
a few photos in frames 
rosary beads 
a cross 
all thrown into a black sack 
in the doorway i looked back 
at the stripped bed 
ready for the next 
gazed at the tree swaying 
outside the window 
then i carried the bag to the elevator 
walked out the double doors 
standing there in blasting june sun 
that refused to give me 
even a few goddamn minutes

————

postcards 

as a kid i remember 
looking at old photographs 
& believing the world 
to be simpler & happier 
seeing my slim father 
wearing a wide grin 
behind an artillery gun 
or my grandparents 
both in aprons 
w/ cigarettes dangling 
from their mouths 
dancing in the kitchen 
or my aunt & uncle 
picnicking on a grassy hill 
in new hampshire 
or my nana smiling 
w/ a hunting dog 
in a winding valley in maine 
everything safe 
& sealed off from pain 
no hint of orphanage beatings 
in my father’s beaming eyes 
no sign of mastectomy 
in my nana’s serene smile 
no clue of suicide 
in my grandmother’s 
playful pose 
no intimation of a demon 
in a bottle upon that 
checkered tablecloth 
jesus, none of this or that 
in those little postcards

————
back in the mid 1980s 
“the mall monster” 
looked like rubeus hagrid 
from harry potter 
only he had soot on his face all the time 
& white stuff in his matted hair 
it also looked like padding was stuffed 
under his flannel shirt 
the buttons almost popping 
from their stitches 
arms bulging at the seams 
& his blue work pants looked 
like two more pairs were beneath
& you could smell his terrible odor 
from 10 feet away 
he always wore the same clothes 
he never said a word 
just walked around the mall 
it always seemed as if he appeared 
out of nowhere 
children screamed 
people walked faster 
we would be drunk on a mason jar 
of one our parents’ liquors we stole 
on a friday night walking around 
trying to meet girls 
& he’d appear & we’d laugh 
& duck into a random store 
rumor was that he worked below 
the mall as a furnace cleaner 
others said he was a patient 
from a mental asylum 
years later i heard the real story 
that his wife & daughter 
were killed in a fire 
& he had tried to save them 
but was badly burned 
so distraught by the loss 
he wandered the halls of the mall 
like an inconsolable soul traversing 
the ancient valley of grief 
a sweet tearful giant’s heart beating 
beneath the ash & thick layers & scars

Read more  poems by Rob Plath here: https://georgedanderson.blogspot.com/search/label/Rob%20Plath

 

New Poems: Rob Plath

 

(Click on work to enlarge)

bio: 

 

rob plath is not yet under the jurisdiction of the worms. see more of his work at ‪robplath.com‪. 

Featuring the Words & Photography of Rob Plath

on repeat 

you finally get home 

in the dark 

52nd birthday 

alone

after yr car madly shook 

b/c of ice stuck in the tires 

from the blizzard 

yr 3 lbs of grey mush 

rattling in yr skull 

as you ran errands 

you pass beneath icicles 

hanging from 

the lopsided awning 

like long fangs 

outside the door 

to yr little place 

but yr not worried 

about teeth 

yr made out 

of bite wounds 

standing in the kitchen 

you see a litter of bugs 

in the globe 

of the light above 

a bright crystal ball 

of burnt corpses 

the future isn’t propaganda 

the future is a litter of insects 

feasting on what’s left of you 

bite marks & all 

the sky tonight 

is fangs & corpses 

yr not hungry 

yr not thirsty 

yr not anything 

you just sit quietly 

cold elbows upon 

the rickety 

secondhand table 

in a questionable 

wooden chair 

on the verge 

of collapse 

listening to death 

over there 

in the blue corner 

scraping its blade 

over a dark stone 

the song nobody 

wants to hear

the tune that’s 

on repeat in yr head 

24/7

boy mummy 

in 4th grade i was obsessed w/ egyptian mummies 

i’d get books on them when the teacher gave me a pass to the school library 

i loved reading about them & stared at the photographs for hours 

they seemed so untouchable, preserved for thousands of years 

i kept renewing the small stack of books 

studying about mummies took my mind off bullies of the school halls too 

sometimes i imagined the boy mummies from the books opening their eyes & being my friends 

i often daydreamed about the mysterious tales 

& how if you disturbed a mummy there was a terrible curse cast on the intruder 

that year, i pretended i was a boy mummy 

alive & moving thru halls, skinny & stiff & petrified as usual

my shape wrapped in layers of protective bandages

just my eyes visible 

& even tho occasionally the red from a fat lip or a nose bleed seeped thru my gauze 

it helped to imagine the unlucky bullies of the school halls being hellishly hexed

cold mashed potatoes 

standing in the kitchen 

eating cold mashed potatoes 

out of the pot 

1:26 pm 

tuesday 

of 

the longest month 

you laugh as the worms 

calling yr name 

outnumber the people 

calling yr name 

& the future isn’t so much 

as bright 

as it is glistening 

in segments 

wiggling yr way 

& as you spoon another heap 

of cold mashed potatoes 

into yr skull 

you grin 

standing alone 

on the stage 

in the theatre 

of laughable terror

unclean 

i turn off the valve 

& stand before the veil 

i’ll never get clean 

trapped in this suit of skin 

i gaze thru dozens of beads 

dotting the torn shower curtain 

strange beast w/ many eyes 

not created for the world

i daydream about standing here 

until my flesh falls to my feet 

& my organs liquify 

disappearing down the drain 

& how only then i’d be ready 

to enter the world again 

an untrembling skeleton

bio: 

rob plath punches the keys of the poetry machine like a velociraptor is behind his back. he lives alone w/ his cat & stays out of trouble. 

Rob Plath (words) Janne Karlsson (ink) IN ROT WE TRUST Vol.1: Body Bag Nation. (Lummox Press, 2017) 40 pages

In this slim volume of graphic poetry, American writer Rob Plath joins forces with Swedish artist Janne Karlsson to launch an unrelentingly morose and macabre take on life & death. Through a series of 33 startling poems, the duo explore all-things-death: the ephemeral, ugly nature of every day life, how many of us lead a complacent, death-in-life existence, the inevitability of our quickly approaching doom and Plath’s & Karlsson’s urgent need to record all these thoughts & feelings through their art.

The front cover is a parody of a typical family photo. Instead of glistening teeth and wide smiles, Karlsson inks us a caricature of a father corpse posing with his two kids- all are fetid green & blood splattered, with their mouths grimly stitched shut.

The title ‘In Rot We Trust’ is an obvious pun on the American motto ‘In God We Trust’ but you will find the poetry in this collection apolitical. Instead, Plath is more concerned with examining the nature of his personal suffering and spews bile at the cosmos for allowing his birth.

In two poems entitled ‘Dear Universe’, he crudely and cynically addresses the cosmos in an accusatory tone: “Yr silver-linings/ are all shit-stained” and “cheers for all/ the fucking holes// there’s not/ much left/ for you to stab.”

This idea of a malevolent, personified supreme being causing suffering and emptiness & death is a central motif in this chapbook.  In ‘Cigarettes Sizzling in Yr Wounds’ Karlsson’s illustration shows a big hand reaching down from the sky clutching a cigarette. Below, a sprawled naked man grimaces in pain from several bleeding cigarette burns to his body.

(all poems/ illustrations in this review have been republished with the permission of the poet/artist)

Plath tersely sums up the existential human condition through an illuminating metaphor:

now & again the universe

kindly removes a bullet

ah, but that twisted fuck

just wants a bloody ashtray

Another important perspective that Plath presents his readers with is the idea that many of us, although still breathing, are already dead & a waste of fucking space. In the powerful title poem, ‘BODY BAG NATION’ Plath & Karlsson represent the average person as deluded & self-obsessed:

Rob Plath’s response to this personal & metaphysical crisis is to deeply reflect on his experiences and to “launch another motherfucking poem” (‘at 45’). In ‘a good poem’ he succinctly sums up his work: “is a cross/ between brass/ knuckles// & a toe tag.” Further, in ‘Guts & graffiti’ he metaphorically posits:

a poem begins

w/a fucking

hand grenade

in the throat

Karlsson’s accompanying illustration shows a body exploding into many parts as the speaker of the poem attempts to extend his middle finger to the heavens.

IN ROT WE TRUST is an irreverent, deeply dark portrait which rails against the tombstones of conventional thinking & the writing of poetry. As in the poem ‘Look’, Plath takes a box-cutter to our superficial notions of appearances & hope. In the end, there is no escape.

Interestingly, in one of the last poems, Plath states: i’m so slow lately… maybe / i’m dead.”

Resources

Buy the book here from Lummox Press: https://www.lummoxpress.com/lc/in-rot-we-trust/

Check out Rob Plath’s site which provides info- especially on how to buy his books, photographs and artwork: http://www.robplath.com

The madness that is all things Janne Karlsson: http://www.svenskapache.se

For a limited time find a generous sample from IN ROT WE TRUST: https://issuu.com/poetraindog/docs/_inrot_1_sampler__1_

In my copy of the book, I received from Plath a ‘toe tag poem’- an original poem manually typed on the back of a tag intended to be attached to the toe of a deceased person. How cool!