UP JUMPS THE NIGHT - John Andrew Durler (best novels to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: John Andrew Durler
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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
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