like a good lil pup

Sometimes, 8 minutes before 

your client call starts

you see your picture. 

The one where your hat is backward

and you're licking your best friend’s forehead

like a good lil pup.

And you cry

because your best friend 

is dead,

and your 

whole world is different,

from that pale yellow joy of that day-

where your hat was backward

and you licked your best friend’s forehead

like a good lil pup.

Hard as bone

Hard as bone

Sometimes. I can feel like the bones of my skeleton 
Are this close
to pushing right through my skin
Erupting outward, a firework of red spray and 
pink spaghetti noodle sinew hiding 
just a glimpse of white I guess, 
i’m not really sure what living bone looks like

But it doesn’t matter
its not my bones 
its not my skin 
And the fireworks arent blood 
or tendons snapping to burst
Just thoughts
yellowed, worn, weatherd, 
nasty thoughts as hard as bone.

12/4/15

6:45 PM, she was already breathing it in
Not yet late, not yet early.
The families laughed when they saw us.
my grin so dumb it never passed the third grade.

We rode the paint chipped boar and sheepish tiger
around and around in faded brass, player piano, antiquity-
reminiscent of the nature in which we had come.

There, a million tiny lights played auras in her eyes
and shone opaque on her curls:
      softly glowing greens and reds,
      dancing on the sun beams peaking through
      the window's shade

The white copy paper shield I brought
had profanity protecting, scrawled in permanent ink;
finitely guarding my sternum from
     cracking too soon.
But she folded it and slipped it laughing into
her brown leather purse.
     crack

2:00AM, she exhaled
not quite late, soon too early
A lit cigarette dangled from those sheepish
smiling split lips so dumb they never passed
third grade.
    each step a funeral procession
    each step a parade
"Goodnight, thank you for all of it."

Listening to Graceland

Each change leaves the vinyl siding
of heart pockmarked.
Varnish gone, tiny holes show
the woodwork and pink insulation beneath.

The hail reigns from the dark clouded hippocampus
- a nickelodeon film (complete with cigarette burns) of
sepia toned images swell and join the high and low
pressure systems. They're careless in their storm's birth.
Freezing but not quite frozen. Solid little white balls descend
into the house I built. The house she helped design with
her little hands.

Those little hands they haven't stopped holding
onto my big beige, knuckle cracked paws.
Not yet.
But death or shattered shadowed window panes loom.
Autumnal hymns sway singing dirges through the
brown leafed breeze. Her words are left without shelter-
Her worth forever beheld behind the pockmarked vinyl.

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.

Cat

I shant have thought to be a cat

who's curiosity is true

to think but what would mean of that

ignorance but bliss too?

To see the world lust as a place

to explore and play and roam and live!

Abandon left in perfect pace

To give their life a place to live

Wherever whatever it were i'd spy

Would be mine as real as mine own eye.

Miss Blue Eyes

Miss Blue Eyes,

why can't you be free

from the torments of this

world: the weight of molecules

colliding to make you have to

react.

It can be so nice,

my arms I hear. Can hold

three people and them weightless.

If only for that fleeting second

the hummingbird taught me, I could

make you weightless too.

Wait less is what I

want to do. But more than that

I want you to be well, and good,

and confident that the constituents

of your anatomy will elect you

their favorite leader.

I can try to campaign for you

if you let me in your screen door and

through the window white. If

you let me cook you hamburgers,

or spaghetti with a fine marinara

meat sauce, like I did once before.

That was nice, Miss Blue Eyes,

for me, at least.

And though I've given part of

my heart to you as I do to all,

it weighs nothing and I'll never

ask for it back either. I just

ask that you know how hard

it is to sit idly by. A car mechanic

with no car and no hands.

I just ask you to let me

know when I can be with

you and if I make you

feel nice.

I think if you do then that

piece of my cardiovascular

whole will grow and grow. If

it gets to big and you get scared,

just set it in my mailbox. But pull

off a piece first, it's for you'd

like it.

As hard as it is to say:

Don't worry about me,

I'll be fine Charlie Brown.

Machine

Perched high on my

silver mountain

the blood lined linens

are spun with the

plumes of purple peacock

feathers they weather the

whethers or not in their

maytag container. Soaked

spun washed warm with

the ungaudy bleach they

come out pearls. Shiny,

spherical, white wonder

worn out.

The Grapeskins

I.

Squeak.

As we brush together in cheeks

Squeaks to match

the matchstick's white blaze

of indecent exaltation.

Squeaks like the macaws yellow

cries for the clawed confusion

of impermanence.

Squeaks.

II.

We merely squeak, already

torn in half by teeth like thor

hammers, cast from dark crimson

clouds, silt walter vapor, and dust.

We spill our water guts blindly

in the molar embrace. Now,

nothing more than purple and green

flecks floating in the dark.

The match merely chauffeurs

combustions. As the destination

is reached: white, orange, and blue

vibrant burnt bursts of heat

and light illuminate. It's purpose

is achieved in it's seared charcoal

skeleton, bent the only way

fire bends.

From it's perch the macaw merely

squawks. As it sees brief instances

of it's green given world

changing. It's jungle camoflouge

is unfit for the brooklyn pavement.

What with it's centrifugal salt and pepper

plume. And it's rust speckeled azure tipped

wings. It's flight prevents, groundedness,

It squawks.

III.

What if it were, we were the last,

The three of us and none?

Torn up grapeskins, a bird, a match

Would our importance ever come?

Would our mind's macaw fly away?

Leaving my matchstick and just me

or would it in it's sadness stay

In attempts at wingless free.

Or would it occur that we'd just cease

As the humans all are gone?

Would existence matter if it did not please

The ones no more, who defined the dawn.

We are but grapeskins we cannot laugh

So we squeak in cheek at what man can't grasp.

White Mississippi Lynching of the Freedom Summer: 1964-2010

White Mississippi Lynching of the Freedom Summer:
1964-2010

“You sir, are a racist!”
They said.
When they looked me in
the eye and were
afraid.

“You are the one
with a problem.”
They said.
As they told me that they
were the ones with the money
and the guns
and the words
and the knifes
and the handcuffs
and the tanks
and the nukes
and the whips
and the chains
and the skin.

They said I am the one with the problem
as they locked my
handcuffs in place;
speckling red drips
on white forearms
like red crosses
on white hoods.

Their eyes are all
I can see through my puffy
swollen face, laying
on the side of the road,
being dragged into the
woods, while my
tongue is cut
out and while my own
likeness ceases to search for me.

While my own likeness
continues to torture my
body, my flesh:
c / u /t, my entrails springing

out like the
alarm clock
I tried to be:
broken.

There are few like
me in this world
and fewer still
like me in its history.

The whistle blower
holds the same letters as
my alleged skin color,
but if I point
it out, I can be martyr for no one
but I can be killed.

Historically speaking,
I will actually be silenced.

Historically speaking.
I will actually be silenced
by the very category of people
I see in the mirror.
The very category of people
who say, “You sir, are a racist.”

Well then, I must walk this
chalk-drawn-line
on tiptoes.
For the white dust that marks
the world’s walk
is dotted with drops of blood!

The same as the ones on my forearms
and the same that
have stained my shoes.
And the same that have stained
their white hoods.

I sir, am a racist.
I must let them know
that they are right.
For I am not white.

I am pink.
I am the blood of oppression
that has been worn in my coat jacket
past down from my father and his father before.
I am that blood stained red that
is all that’s left of it’s white leather beginning,
that my father can barely see and that his
father can’t see at all.

I am the permeation of that stain through that jacket
into my skin, and into my own blood.
It courses through my blue veins of empathy
into my purple heart of love and becomes my own red blood.

I am forever changed of color,
“white” skin stained pink.
The same red blood runs in me now that
has always been spilled.
Perhaps if the red of human blood
was the only,
the only color everyone cared about
then maybe it wouldn’t matter that I’m pink.

Maybe it wouldn’t matter what color anyone was.

Knuckles

Knuckles.

I.

I guess I laid my backhand
down on the sunspot burner;
boiling- red – communist:

Giving and taking equally,
as its warmth to bone-shank soup
allows growth—its warmth to
flesh though, chars and scalps,
my knuckles raw: cracked cobblestone,
black and peeling top layers.

II.
Prayers for third degree
burns need not fly to the other
side of my palms. They should drip into
the rivers run with pollution, brackish and
swimming with silt. Like my lungs, post pack consumption.

There the water prayers, liquid humanity,
will be filtered and cleaned and will leap
from little home taps, faucets, and sinks:
rustic brown-red metals, shiny silvers, cold
and gray pipette giraffes, children’s toys
largely ignored until: burn.

III.
The flesh singed, epidermal ruptures occur:
blisterous mountain tops popped with the
abandon of boredom and dissatisfaction.
Infection holed up under finger nails are
Toe jam hermits, vagrants, bumming smokes
under freeways, not speaking- for the cars on
the overpass speak for them--
they say nothing.
They stay there until there is no
room left for them.
They get reckless, and pull apart that ground
leaving pink tender craters outlined in translucent
vulnerable flaps of flesh, infected unless:

IV.
Those prayers made it into the water.
Cool, soothing H two prayers.

I can leave the scarred arms and singed bricks the
vagrants pulled up from my cobblestone
walk. I simply need to turn on the water.
Other humans will run over my hot red skin,
little circles of shame, they will
soothe
my

Burn.

The L Train

The L Train

Your slanted azure (sk)eyes;
with their brown splinters-
that cloud the black pupil, they
caught mine on that ride.

They held memories in
place; like that blue house
with the magenta ivy side,
which sat on the corner plot,
next to your house on our street.

The simple street we
ran when we were foot-racing,
when the wind felt like paint
brushes, bristling dry red
blush left in lines marking our
bodies:

Warriors of innocence.
Warriors of a grace conflicted.
Like bleeding red cuts for the sake of
never bleeding at all.

We would touch the brown
wood door, who still bore the
image of the oak tree it came from
within our own minds, then we
would sprint head-first

Back! To your lawn panting,
gasping for breath. Our lungs
clawed for consensus with
our brick-hued heart.

We looked to circulate
the blood they pump, the
same blood that courses now
on these tracks. Though, it
travels now in larger veins.

Of course, those weren’t your
(sk)eyes. Of course, they’ve never
seen the course we ran those days.
Of course though, only you and I
had ever seen the azure skies
and brown splinter clouds that
marked the course boundaries of our
racetrack all along.