Hemingway’s Shotgun

forget serenely reading books
& jotting in the margins

forget writing in
cursive on neatly lined
pages of journals

forget the day, the month
the year
forget your name

drop the pencil
from your fingers

& braille
the dateless
eye sockets
of a skull

then take a blade
to the abc’s

chop them up
ontop
of a
tombstone

roll a page
of the bible
up into a tube

& snort the black
dust of the alphabet

then pound the laptop
like you should
like a coked-up
corpse-to-be

(Rob Plath, no relation to Sylvia, is a former student of Allen Ginsberg. He has five books of published poetry under his belt. His latest release, “Tapping Ashes in the Dark”, is available through Lummox Press. You can find Rob pounding out new poems at My Soul Is A Broken-Down Valise.)