UP JUMPS THE NIGHT by John Andrew Durler (the beach read txt) 📖

FROG

I chop and split the frog

bloody fingers place a rock on the biology book

wiping hands on my overalls.

I take to the task with a zeal
of a scientist, unconcerned.

The frog still lives. Such is science.

Such is an eight year old boy.

My father assumes its place on the board
pinned with carpet tacks.

There are no eggs in the frog.

I reflect, I had been an egg.

Not much different, and a pollywog
about the same at my beginning

composed mostly of ancient sea water.

The frog stops moving. I prod it

with tongs hooked up to a battery

I borrowed from the model T Ford

in the machine shed yesterday.

It jumps, eyes popping. I turn

throw up as I do when I see my father

beating my mother, sister screaming.

Again I wipe my overalls

mixing bile and frog blood

hot and cold to my fingers

feeling like a ghoul

I worked further diagrams done, notes recorded

as the day climbs over the barn

I took my homework from the abandoned chicken coop

light too dim to see my writing.


SUNDAYS

we went to the Angel Guardian home

To see my sisters; my father and I.

My mother wasn't there;

signed into a straight jacket to the mental

ward at Bellvue hospital

By my father screwing the

mailman's wife downstairs.


Mom got infected by his cruelty

over the nasty drunk years

he snapped and snarled,

until her sick fear foamed to rage.


Today, a Prozac would do.

Then--they strapped you down,

nuked your brain, insulin overdoses

Thorazine d her into a vegetable state for fifteen years.


What she ever wanted I never knew.


All she ever did was worry about us kids.


I couldn't figure why. No one gave a

shit about anyone.


The three musketeers,

the old man called my sisters then.

I called them better off.

We walked the grounds, they

pointing out the names of statues

of saints, gobbling candy bars

the old man brought.


He was the only one who cried;

Piels beer tears, Brooklyn bottled.

I wanted to grab his face

poke his eyes out.

We kissed awkward cheeks, and left.


Once we got there late, and a Nun

told us we blew it. Next week be

on time she said through the crack in the door.

I saw my sisters dressed up and ready, fidgeting.


The old man said, Those nuns are tough.

Nah I said. “What she needs is a good fuck

To put a smile on that sour puss, three minutes late, my ass..


“Don't talk like that!” , he shouted.


Or what! I said, too old to throw against a wall.

He was buried in Calvert on Cemetery.


Living I a veteran's home for disabled soldiers.


A military funeral with gunshots and ceremony


A corporal handed mom the flag draped over


his coffin folded into a fat V


“I don't want anything of his, John.”


I took it, still have it.

The girls are OK. A little fucked up,

but, hey, they went through a lot.

Mom didn't have to worry about


jailbird brother Billy either,

he’s out and hot-walks horses at Belmont.


THE SWAMP BIRD

Skunk cabbage odoriferous

in sweet morning mist

I pluck next to rhubarb.

Ripe smells

of swamp water recede

and my mouth

fills with tastes

of ancient life;


I feel its call

from distanced pools

touching me,

a million years

spun in

perpetual rotations

to find me here

mystified...


UP JUMPS THE NIGHT

The scared is back.

Whispers slither on

the window panes.
Branches creak.
Is someone climbing up?

Up the shingles?

Is the windows locked?


Witches come at night.

They takes the innocents.

They turns them into things,

then rides them in the night.

Then they takes them back.

I'se not going sleep no more.
Stays awake I is and am.
Not closing these eyes tonight

with witches stayin close.

I feels them in my bones.
(soft and low:) "Mommy?"

Better not. Get em mad.

Might be pokey pokey.

He'll snake me with his belt.


Smilin, closen the door

over his shoulder sayin

"I'll put em ta sleep sweety, be right back."

I sees the limp wee wee
rubber hangin like a wet
noodle stikin his thigh.

I points and laughs and

snake, snake it hisses, his belt
"Ohooo!" Punch Punch.

"You fuck with me motherfucker,
I'll cut your balls off."

Tobaccowhiskeyrottedteeth.
Mommymommymommymommymommy.


UNTITLED

In response to Jean, who said she could critique

any untitled poem in ten minutes on her computer

and title it for a fee. I said I’d give her the moon.


FOR JEAN

There is no vampire in the ashes

only the terror...and death.

The trigger. The trigger. A sense of naked. A bullet.

Quarter the pig and quietly freeze the affectionate wind.
Crush the symphony of leaves with a scream. Huddle and shake.

Become the tree in the storm, roots in mountain rock.

Nowhere to hide love. Nowhere to go.

It's silliness catches us unaware

crisps our cookies, lets us keep the vagabond dog in

put the house cat out, and go to sleep.

2:00 A.M. the cat's howling on the fence, the dog's

pissing on the floor, chewed the couch

and you're in the middle of a wet dream

while a vampire is looking at your jugular.

Work this out on your computer, Jean.
I'll have the moon delivered, U.P.S.

MABEL HAD FIVE

one at a time

over a period of weeks

in the bed of straw she rearranged

into a suitable nest

three times this year.

One egg didn’t hatch

one fledgling smothered

dumped into the bottom of the cage

with the unhatched egg.

One thing about Mabel, she’s consistent.
She lays five, keeps three.

Maybe she knows she can’t feed four or five

or doesn’t want to.

Her mate stuffs himself with millet
regurgitates into her mouth

and she into theirs

Forcing it open if its not wide enough

her beak’s terrible shuddering jack hammering

shaking tiny boneless bodies

like rag dolls until she’s done.

She’ll draw blood if you’re not quick enough

lifting the nesting box cover to peek in.


PEACH FACE LOVE BIRDS

Heads capped in red,

Faces peach colored

Vibrant green and blue tail feathers

Chatter and shriek

--sounds like a tropical forest.

They pace back and forth,

complain about the cage,

want to fly, not just stretch

and flutter wings--

really fly, in an open space.

I tell them they’ll get caught

by a cat and be eaten.

They don’t want to hear it,

ignore me, and screech.

They never saw a cat

can’t imagine it,

even if I growl and hiss,

pounce and claw at them,

show them pictures of cats

birds in mouth.

They continue to complain

until I want to eat them,

feathers and all

and pick my teeth with their tiny claws.


PACK IT UP

Pack it up and deliver it to.

I have too many of them hanging


If I manage to fix my space problem

Without getting rid of especially

Or all of them being lost forever


Move to another place with more

And the take all my

In fact the substance of the space problem

is imaginative or intuitive because my issues of

Along with the ability to focus on a specific

Or even Generalized ability to perform a

In a reasonable amount of

Even if a closet queen can garnish

The question of space and

Of course I could move to a

But moving is expensive and also very very

Nonetheless it is another decision

And what about this

Rent or sell always is a.....


I HAVE SEEN


I have seen Walt Whitman floating on a raft

built of young boy's bones

bound by sterile bandages

tightly tied in knots by a gentle hand.

He waved to me.

I yelled out, “Walt Whitman, what the hell are you doing over there.“

He replied: “I am seeing this part of America

and I shall see it all until it is done with me.“

His shoulders shrugged and waved his hat

as the yellow morning mist blew in from upriver

and he disappeared as quick as a humming bird's wings in flight.


I have seen funerals of family and friends

The smell of death pervading all the flowers

seeping into the carpet, the cloth of chairs.

I have been a lion in my youth

but courage left when reason prevailed.

Weighing of risk against failure

A simple cold, a headache, a stab in the side,

And death comes  crawling out of the night.  


Death, some say, should be greeted as joy.


I see no joy in dying, returning to earth.

I want to stay right here, in all the seasons of my life.

asking nothing of the world, or God, or authority.


I have seen old men looking out at streets

from open windows, eyes hungry for youth.

Oh! To be young again, to eat with healthy teeth,

not dentures that click against each other

and to walk again without a shuffling gait

to run, head against the wind in appreciation

of all that lies ahead, fine memories still in sight.

I have seen the boredom of evenings

felt the burden of age creep up from my feet

to my balding head, curve around the fractured night

as a worm crawls around itself in fright.


When you and I are alone with the dog and the birds.

Will you love me as in the passion of our youth?

If you agree, please tell me now, so hard it is to