Rob Plath

the smallest feline is a masterpiece— da vinci/i hear my cat crying

by Rob Plath

i hear my cat crying

in the little room

where they’re taking her blood

but i’m not allowed in

& she doesn’t understand

why they’re doing this

holding her down

sticking needles in her hind leg

stealing her blood

but still she doesn’t scratch or bite

doctor or tech

she just cries

& i think about how i used

to violently vomit

every morning

for a year

when she was a kitten

& how she’d push

the bathroom door open

tiptoe in

& stand there checking on me

& i want to run in there

pull the needles out

& pick her up & hug her

& run to the car

& never return

i once read that centuries ago

it was thought that tears

were made from broken parts

of the heart

& i remember as my mother lay dying

the blood that often trickled

from her right eye

like some myth about a statue of a saint

in some tiny village somewhere

& now as my cat cries

& days later when on the phone w/ the vet

as she explains about bone marrow biopsies

& oncologists

i don’t believe in lacrimal glands at all

as wet threads of my heart

rise up

& collect in my eyes

no typewriter or ABCs necessary

by Rob Plath

often my poems are

falling from the mouth

of my old wooden

schoolhouse desk

that’s stuffed w/ them

& if i’m not looking

my cat will sink

her fangs into pages

she’s my best critic

& knows goddamn well

that all this scribbling

is such bullshit

even the poems about her

milk-white whiskers

fanned out in moonbeams

or her diamond yellow eyes

calmly blinking at me

during a thunderstorm

she’d much rather i just sit w/ her

my hands instead brailling

the buttons of her backbone

or rubbing her belly

b/c she is it—poetry incarnate

my cat sleeps

by Rob Plath

w/ head turned

upside-down

curve of her

closed eye

a smile

it’s enough

by Rob Plath

the cat’s napping

in an empty

brown grocery sack

& i’m half

in the goddam bag

so to speak

sitting in my chair

my amber glass beside

the busted buddha statue

on the crooked little

thrift store table

& it’s enough to just look

at the pub lights

shining on rainy pavement

across the way

& listen to car tires

turning on wet streets

slow peeling sounds

like peace hatching

out of its shell

crowbars & middle fingers

by Rob Plath

the morning after

the poetry reading

i walked out

hungover

in the august sun

stumbling thru the crowd

at an intersection

i accidentally kicked

over a homeless woman’s

change cup

i had nothing on me to give

i said sorry

it’s okay she said

then she told me that

my zipper was down

i looked down & she was right

so i zipped up & kept walking

down the noisy avenue

then two guys sitting against

a brick wall

said, fuck you, motherfucker

& i glared at them

then one said, it’s on yr shirt

& i looked down

& it did say that

w/a big middle finger

in the center

& i laughed

& they laughed

& i kept walking

the sun growing hotter

its long arms

like bright crowbars

against my skull

& what was left of my soul

a necessary poem

by Rob Plath

he wrote me a letter

about how he tried

to hang himself

on a bridge in winter

but the rope broke

& he fell in the icy river

& during his stay

on the psych ward

he read my poems

one of them being

“playing simon says

w/ death“

& he thought about

how you’ll be forced

to play the game

w/ death one day

w/ out yr own hands

tying knots

or feeding bullets

into chambers, etc.

& how it helped him

to decide to just

keep on keeping

the fuck on

until that bastard death

arrives some day

to play the game

that everybody loses

& this poem is

for all those now

& over the decades

who say i write

too much about death

& who don’t understand

that i’m writing to others

as well as to myself

to just motherfucking live