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

them.

It would also be nice if our arms stretched.

Then we wouldn't have to bend to tie our shoes.

Or get up from the table to get the butter we forgot.


I guess I'd like to know too much.

Or have too many questions that have no answers now


but you know they say a little knowledge...is a dangerous thing,

And I'd like to play it safe.


Smoking Dreams
When you smoke your dreams in a hamper
getting high in the dark,

there is only you to share them with,

as they burn to acrid ashes in your eyes.

You peer through the mesh to see

sun on the rim of the toilet seat,

rainbows on soapy mirrors,

the shining porcelain tub,
that promised but never delivered 99% pure
when you scrubbed skin raw.

You bow your head and scream into the drain,

pray no one hears your naked shame,

look up to see the hamper open, cringe at discovery,

but it's just a pair of smelly socks caught on the edge

to give you pause not to scream or whimper,

but stop breathing long enough to realize you can't.


You pound your temples, jump out of the hamper,

run to your bed, squeeze under it and sleep.

You dream an angel speaks to you

yet there never was an angel but that one time

you tore her wings off.

You couldn't bear for someone so Innocent to love you.

The scent of rose petals fill the dark

fading as last winters leaves,

telling the tale of unending loss.

Love left a while ago.


You weren't paying attention.


THE CAT'S BIRD TREE

was littered with delicate skeletons,
once the bird's, singing freedom songs.

Notes died in their throats, clawed into silence.

Over time, they left. Now My murdering cat

sits at my door, howls at their denial of her rights.

She seems to say in her particular queenly arrogance,

I must do something.

I clip her claws. The birds return.

They sing their songs again.

She watches, remembers, licks her chops,

paces around the tree, jumps, claws,

bewildered, falls, again and again,

until in defeat, she moans, meows mournfully,

and subsists on scraps from my table.

She struts across the yard, and as a leaf falls,

she crouches, watches. tail twitching,

leaps, swipes the leaf, batting it back and forth,

flipping, turning, jumping,

rolling in a primal dance.

She snatches another in mid air,

her prey, an icon, her skill, deadly,

as the afternoon wanes on her

battlefield of vanquished victims.


IF LOVING IS FIRST

who loves giving less

expecting more back

can never wholly love you.

wholly to be yours

while the world's a distraction,

stirs me.

To be with and share

is kinder than knowledge, girl.

I swear by all laughter don't frown

the most I ever mastered is less than you

laughing clapping your hands, calling me

to share what you've been gifted.

Love's not a secret to keep ...


and death I think, is no tattletale.


BLINK

When someone opens the lid

and light pours in

you blink a blink so long

when you open your eyes

you see black.


Out of the black

a single note chimes

once-

yet echoes in the dark

until you hear it in your heart

a thousand beats later

ears no longer able

to listen

to so delicately fine a tone.


Even a dog's ears cannot hear it

but your heart can

stirred

by the tonal strobe of your soul

so sensitive to the sound.


MORNING

Scissored, the compressed coffee's brick

sighs and melts as my fingers move inward,

as on you, your sweet breath on my mouth.

The smell of coffee sweating through the Coffee pot

hot as my hands on your body

whispering in your auburn hair

wanting you to feel loved.

Our closeness is as grains of coffee,

combining in the heat flowing through

the water to be richer with cream

sweeter in the mouth, on lips,

in goings and comings,

Words must work hard to express morning’s awe

in the kitchen, the bedroom,

within the soul’s deep cup.


SIGNS

If I seem unending in the pitch of a moment

it is a rolling still repeated over until I stop it.

I feel I am fragile as hollow bones of a sparrow

that pecks in the dust for a grain or two.

But I never make my body weight

and fall away in minuscule ways.

I hide from this world in my words

kinder than calamity, boredom and illusive pith.

Oh pith thou art a synonym of me

the heart bone of my words.

I am in a warren of signs to follow

and do not know where they lead

The terrible hardness of unknowing

does not callous, but hones to a raw

awareness of knowing how little

this humble man really does know.


It refreshes my nature in an effervescence

that flows in and out as the wind in the wings

of a bird, a sail, a pinwheel.


What else is there for me but signs

that take me where I should go?

What else worthwhile, fulfilling?

Nothing...nothing......


SHE FELT HER FEELINGS

Men were not enough,

betraying her more than once.

She loved men, and sex,

but they put her down

in their deceit and domination,

or business was the mistress

they loved more than her.


Still, they said no woman

loved them as she did.

Fourteen men

still no Champion.

She moved in and out with them

of houses and apartments,

packed and unpacked fourteen times.

Wanting something stable,

an anchor in the chaos,

She bought a house,

a tank, some fish,

got a cat and litter box,

fed them every day.

went to therapy,

went on drugs.


She loved her house, fish and cat,

and evened out her life.

She dated lots of men,

four five at a time, always

knocking on her door.

Everybody envied her independence

and the way men sought after her.

She was secure and stable at last,

except when with a man, when she

lost her marbles her breath, and

bewitched by his charm would love

until exhausted in his arms, sleep,

awake in the morning and think about

how she could find one who would be enough.


INSPIRATION AND THE MUSE

Inspiration is not coming to me.

Which means my muse betrayed

Me for another poet, so who cares

Not me. I will write without the bait

Of her smell or sense or being

Prove to her and her poets befriended


So I shall begin this poem and end it

Without my muse and illusive inspiration

And I hope and pray it will be an obsession

Of all poets who find themselves in this situation.


THE AFFAIR

The wives that didn't understand the sleight

Of hand the cheating man that left them,

Alone in bed reading a book or magazine.

Without the warmth or touch of another body.

Not relegating to sex vibrators or rubbing

Herself where he licked or rubbed his thing

On her before he entered her with his thing

Hard yet soft and smooth on the entering

Within time she found another man to play


The game better and more accomplished than he.


Her husband turned on again to her flushed face

And gleaming eyes with an independent attitude

He had never seen in her. He took her on a date


Worshiped her again and dumped the cheating.

She bore him a lot of children and he found his place

In life and never looked at another woman in envy.

Of course she still had her lover on the side

Some of the children looked like him and he

The husband never noticed the difference in their faces.

Never had seen the lover kept in wraps on the side.


There is a morale for this rhymed story

But it doesn't matter here for they are both very happy.


THE MADDING BOYS OF SUMMER
I see the summer madness in their eyes,
the rock and rolling Bad Boys of the night.

I see the summer rotting in their rolling eyes.

I see the summer burning in their skies,
the rock and rolling Bad Boys in their flight.

I see the summer madness in their eyes,

their crotches hard and heavy on their thighs,
the rock and rolling Bad Boys spread their blight.
I see the summer rotting in their rolling eyes,

when they mount to brawny vixens lusty sighs;
night mares riding through their fired flight.

I see the summer madness in their eyes,

the look of wicked whetstones on their knives;

the rock and rolling Bad Boys of the night.

I See the summer rotting in their rolling eyes.

I see the growing madness in their women thighs.
rock and rolling on their mares in heady flight.

I see the summer madness in their eyes.

I see summer rotting in their rolling eyes.


Bell port Unitarian Church Sunday Poetry Workshop

November has so far been kind
easing the island into winter
yellowing grass
still green by the fence
under scrimpy dressed trees

whose brown and yellow leaves
desperately cling to lower branches
in afternoon sun

Wind presses saucy buttercups
to bow and scrape the ground
bobbing yellow heads
cup leeward
toward the rolling bay
erect, browning stems anchor
frail petals, waving mischievously,
as wildflowers
white-pale-blue
shorter

dance erotically in place

three and four to the bunch
an orgy of color
in a final dance.
Suddenly a leaf's torn off by a gust
of wind whirling in a short
burst of freedom
rolls, tumbles, swerves right, left
to snag on a blade

of a stiff brown weed.