Twelve.

There is much to be said

for the dead red hearts

starting back up pups

lick my back face spray painted

panting in blackface

Oops I meant blackspace pace,

myself before I fall fawn-like

dawn might make a Bambi out of me

dear here cotton tailed brown fur

crowned her infinite but found her finite,

friday night lights, come faster

glimpses short and they past ya

by, short sighted knee-time getting knighted

by the queen I- cant't think but to think I-

maybe might've with my baby might caused this disaster-

even after the rapture captured none of the rafters

and there's no damage done. plunge.

Plungin toilets boy let's get out of

the coke-stained tile floor porcelain skin

fitted bathroom body, find some new hobbies,

go to L.A. and hang out in lobbies

hangin heads like Holly, would, like Hollywood would,

should I ever open my eyes

and see past this disguise this guy hides behind

and I found out why.

Cause in the last twelve seconds left

I learned that this death, is twisted started feeling

lifted from that blunts and those kisses but you said

that you hid, poison on your lips

ellipses

eclipse it vision blurry I hurry to stop the flurry

of feelin my body sifted twitched in dreams shifted to

stitch it squeam to the blood cut runs from lip's tips

red foamy vomit slips it and slips out

in fountain spouts to the sink mouth then

my head hits white and then

lights out.

Attention.

Apparently, if you've been hollerin'

in my ear for 5 minutes it's

insufficient for my snap n pop

attention. Crack. There, I'm

looking at your gray eyes,

hearing your sinewy yellowed

whines and nodding my

coconut furred face in recognition.

Crack, I'm gone to the dew silhouettes,

black dropped on the brown brick semicircle

structure along the lichen hued statues. Crack

my ears pull back to my harried back head

sideburns standing at attention to

crisp salutes of winter's wind:

prickled with your words' firework

bursts in the black exhaust pop

of the streets salutations; vibrant

all the while.

Crack I'm back to standing straight

from sofa slouched embroided back

pain to your eyes, to be tingled from

your cigarettes wafting with lavender

and lilac pedals out of your black hair

and silk shoulder blades

up the dark olifactor tunnels to taste. Crack.

I sheepishly grin as your softly stained

coffee teeth guffaw at my slack hung

beige jaw closing. Your words have flittered

into my oak room mind and are sitting cross-legged

waiting for tea, your eyes shine content,

and we walk back inside.

The wares.

The wares wear no grins

but smooth leather gloves

on their hands, their skins

worked and tanned to the

finest grade of italian wallets,

their pride is etched into

the black lines that sweep

across their palms.

The industry of the north

took careful aim at the heart

of these wares, it's arrows pierced

their judgement and made them

hollow to nothing but dignity,

never will they sultry a tear

down their dust stained

cheeks.

Where has there been

replaced a place in chest

for dilligence in thought?

A place where mind waltz's with

other consituents of emotion

and yeilds the real feelings?

In the middle of nowhere.

Clockfaces

Hours thick as mollasses

drip from their black

long hand on the white face

ticking away slowly, cyclically

Typically they run like steady

legs on the lamb newly born,

or, they flume like blue rivers

never staying similar.

As sweat beads mature

they paint clear lines on my face,

the clockfaces though, bear

no worry, they turn their

eyes and nose downwards

crossing their

arms

very

slowly.

Clementine

Red paint sprayed stains

stain my knuckle skin

sin slipped in in my half smile

half while i wasn't looking

booking yellow paint sprayed stains

stain spotted along this, my hand

my plan never was nor will be to

leap keep these streets in thoughts

body's bought will leave

evening our the remaining evenings without

even needing to knead the bread I'm eating.

Speckled spots wrought my hand.

But there is no shame named

different than fresh faced flesh

It never seemed sane

The skin oppressed so wildly light

whitely pulled tight when I

might just clench this

fist so it can kiss your lips,

not a fighter though so i might

just catch your slip.

But where do the paint spray stains stay?

in the the wintertime: intertwined in

mind and my clementine to find

within if you'll lend me back

my slipped sin which slipped in

my half smile half while

I wasn't looking.

Grasshopper

Giant jaundiced wings

collapsed back into each other

still, for a quiet rest

as the grasshopper sets

itself green sitting on green twigs.

It's exoskeleton shudders in

the black breeze, a cool 45 out

his legs rub quick like sticks

for fire's yellow, yet for it they

create peppered speckled sounds

sprinkling blue and orange, ochre

drops into the dull roar of nothing else.

No, it is not for my distaste

to hear their leg burst wind pricks.

Their stipened whistles whittle

no worry into this, my mind.

Rather, I gather my children

together at the right wall of

our little living room with the

chair still broken.

They crouch on their hands and

knees with their little eardrums

pressed inside their little ears

pressed close to the window slit

I've split to open my world

to the nothing else outside.

Graces grace us with

sweet symphonies of the

grasshopper's chrips. It becomes

silly hearing the thoughts

my children think:

How do they all congregate? The insects

to sing just for our ears that father

made and made to fit this crack

to hear?

I know not how to say

to them that the green sitting

grasshopper will never know them;

ne'er will their green-gray eyes

ever set themselves upon those

of it's own.

The creekbed.

Bulbous on a branch

it rested. A white balloon

inflated still, with it's silk

ribbon dangling in

the brown water.

Above it, a mere three

feet away sits the great

Jeffery Raccoon on it's

deathbed panting it's

snarled snout heaves

obscenities in growls

and it's one good eye

hovers in sadness as it

slows.

One had no life and

still it sat while the other's

dying breath it gasped and

my hazel eyes fell solemn

to the creek bed moving

still.

The balloon, had it had a face

would be withered and crows

feet marks would trace the

corners of it's eyes staring

at mine.

Old Jeffery coon though,

would not meet mine.

His eyes were dark for final

times his body twisted and broken

unmoving he finally sat.

My quiet time will be not

like the rodent nor the balloon,

except accepting that it has,

come to be my last of lasts I'll

remain too, in the creekbed

moving still.

Little Wildflower

Little wildflower little wild

rose, mild how you stand

silver stamen, silver pastell

petals, ubiquitous like the

eyes of your planter.

Her half moon face transitions

seamlessly like you little

wildflower, little wild rose.

Rising and falling crimson

in the dawn hours, violet in the

dusk, she blushes when I catch her

As she slips tending to your

fertile soil. Her smile looks

nervous like a newborn mockingbirds

first song. I say hello

my name is Nathan.

Your tender planter steadies

her soles etching miniature 8's

into the dirt around you. She

meekly nods and says thank you.

You know though, little

wildflower little wild

rose, that the pleasure

always has been mine.

Meaning.

Like nothing at all.

That's how you and I

are supposed to be.

I suppose.

For any derived "meanings"

are our own blood, only

visible in the trickles red from

flesh-toned pricks on

transparent syringes.

They live on fringes of

the realities we create.

Like the bad aesthetic sunrise:

clouded and drizzled a somber

shower of silent gray-hued

soft lights but no yellow.

There is beauty though,

we choose to label it "drearyness."

It's in the puddles and brown running

rivlets flowing in sloped green

pulled brown backyards-

and towards the asphalt steam

rusted drainpipes.

It's seen in the only child's eye,

as the siblinged neighbors share

their community in imagination.

It lives in the youthful innocence

of the only man who still

picks dandelions naming them

in their opaque tangerine vase.

He's mis-guided by

calling these weeds his

friends, no? Cherishing them

as faces of humans should

celebrate the creation of

face.

The meanings we create are

neat, little settled organized

letters in words defining

never ending spectrums of the

soil we've staked.

"Nostalgia" seldom seems long

enough to encompass the lonely

looks of Peggy Dandelion as

she sits cramped with the

pink shrimp tails the only man's

stoic wife threw her in with.

"Distressed" does not justly

depict the down-turned

pinks on the only child's face

when the for sale sign

in it's block red finality is

raised in the neighbor's yard.

"Infinite" though is the

only meaning agreed upon

worth it's salt. And it is worth

salt in wounds to see how

it's meaning means meaning

is nothing.

For in the total infinite even

the infants are nothing.

Their wails may change

bouncing off the walls to

never falter their trust,

but they grow just to be like

nothing at all. That's how

we're supposed to be

I suppose.