Journal # 03.31.15

I am happy to see some of the houses in my neighborhood are derelict. They have not been razed. They are accepted. If a community has no neglected homes, you can only imagine what it does to its people. My load of laundry is large and soft. It breaks against my hip. The strap is tight against my shoulder. The birds are rather excited about the Spring. The mercury climbs and the heat is so unlike the winter weather I have been accustomed to. The wooden planks that make the stairwell to my home are cranky. Shifty. They throw off their paint and nails. I look around me for signs of someone I do not need to see. They are nowhere to be seen. Not for some hours. I do not like having satellites. I prefer to be a singular planet, sometimes. Maybe with a dissolving ring. Or a solid one of ice that slices through space. But it seems I have no choice. Some will gravitate toward me. Will they wanna hurt me? Break through my atmosphere? I must not let paranoia rule the day. I wanna believe I attract things that wanna be near to me, maybe dear to me. But not offensive or harmful. Fact: I do not control the universe.

VLOG - (something different)

I have been experimenting with VLOG (video blog)
because it's spontaneous and it's the real ME versus
the typical pre-composed works of fiction and poetry
which come your way. Although you can find all my
videos (music, spoken word, and vlog) on my youtube
channel, occasionally i like to post a video here where
I have a much larger following. If you like it and want
more, be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel.
Thanks and especially to those who have been so
encouraging to me in the different ways I try and express
myself! -K

Journal # 03.29.15

Do not give up! Do not even think about it! In this world this madness, fast changing, leaving us with only memories and sadness, aging like we are, wondering who will be there to care anymore or remember our struggle and our little miraculous survival? Wondering what the great god has for us next.

Do not give up! Please!
No matter how tore up you are. The world needs you. We need you.
Precisely because you have been up against those odds, we need you to get even.
Come back to us. Talk to us. Help us go on another day!

Love always
Vitamin K

Journal # 03.28.15

My desires do not much understand or care for what I need. I watch my desires float around and I keep them on a kite string. One of them wants me to find a partner. To get into relationship and sex. That one is way up there where the wind never dies. Tugs at me. Usually when I see the magic that happens between couples. I mean, the way they look after one another. It's not very often I see this, but when I do it makes me smile. It makes me happy. I don't need anything from it. Nothing. I don't need nothin' from it.  I'm gonna express how I feel. And no one can do nothin' about it. I don't live in Putin's Russia. Whose gonna forgive all the dictators of the world who ever silenced free expression? Not me. I cannot forgive them. Forgiveness... that's another one I flew out on a string. It's just nosedived into another tree. Yesterday it nosedived into someone's dachsund, and the bloody metal point came like a dagger back into the sky. The dog, unresponsive on the pavement. The urge to kill somebody. To kill a murderous genocidal dictator. Up on a string. A dagger in the air. My desires do not much understand or care for what I need. I let them out into the sky, up on many a string. There was once one that got away from me. That one was the desire to manufacture my mood. It came up and out of nowhere, and gave me the power to control how I felt. I never wanted to feel blue. So I didn't for a long time. This one we call addiction. It got away from me, and sucked all the blue out of the sky. The sky was surreal and white. And bright. So bright I could not see. I could not see my desire anymore, camouflaged as it was to the sun. All I knew was I held the paper tube with the string hanging torn to the ground, and knew something was wrong. Then the white kite came charging like an off-white knight and the blade cut me down right in the street. Lying dead like the dog on the pavement. Bleeding from my head. All my other desires got away from me for a while. Nobody came for a while. I was surprised. Nobody retrieved my kites. Nobody wanted anything to do with me. They walked past and pretended not to look. Or they stared from afar. The other ones whose desires got away from the before, came to pick me up and dust me off and bandage my head. But the bandage was no good. Because the sky turned the deepest blue. You could not tell it from the sea. And the sky and the sea became one. Under a heated, urban sun. And I walked blindly along, bumping into street signs and lamps, feeling my way along the mortar between bricks to the edge of any building. Praying to god I would make it on the inbetween. And the sea was there taking me underwater and I was drowning. Only once I learned to use my primordial gills, to breathe underwater, could I accentuate my pain and really grope my way back to the truth. My desires do not care much understand. Only I can care for myself in the end. Then people see that. They come back around, when you start asking for help. When you start forgiving, and start forgiving yourself, too.

Journal. mood manufacturing

Notes from the mood manufacturing plant...

It is Friday here at the mood manufacturing plant, and all whistles are singing your praises in an emotive appeal. The ventilators are venting all moods colored red. The transducers moving them straight from the head. Come see our blue room for a good cry. An assembly line of grief counselors reconstructing the tears. We fill up the clouds and send them up and away. To irrigate your dried out and rational demeanor. If we mix the reds and the blues, for a slightly larger sum, we can brew up a real nasty storm - and then some. Manufacture some drama, it  certainly won't be the norm. What would you like? Some celebrated success? A moulten euphoria? Your pride, undressed? A smoking hot aura? See here! We canned vulnerability in brine. The saline of premium salts off the vine. Wholesale we offer three episodic moments to the penny. All those memories could be refreshed, like old songs in your ears. It costs almost nothing, come now,  reduce yourself to tears.

Journal. Something about writing.

I think I am a mood perfectionist, when it comes to writing. Yes, I am learning to just sit down and write and not worry about setting the mood just so. I have to if I wanna be prolific, if I hope to publish many books. The process is in motion. It starts with noticing how I interact with my environment.

Now I have written in the blood-soaked rooms of a boarding house full of junkies, on a laptop so beat up I had to tie the screen back with zipties and twists, with a keyboard whose keys I had to superglue back on. With a boyfriend and junkie whose paranoia could turn on me in a second. With a habit of my own, boy and girl, serious enough it would undoubtedly kill me if it entered my bloodstream now. Clean as I finally am. Now I have written despite real and imagined voices on the other side of the walls. Now I have written under threat of being momentarily evicted. Now I have written with the sun in my face and heavy metal in my ears. Now I have written in a bar. In a car, in the cloud of someone's cigar. Now I have written for my life. Now I have written to death. I have written out the curses from under my goddamn breath.

But being sunshiney clean, I have to deal with myself and my moods. I can no longer control them, manipulate them, force them into submission. But the cool thing about living without all those old toxins pulsing through my blood, yes, the cool thing about it is there is no artifice. No manufactured moods.

The uncool thing is, I have to be a badass bitch with myself and keep myself doing something creative and not just talking about doing something. Use it or lose it. The mood perfectionism sometimes arrests me. I have my cup of coffee and my attitude to match. I have the light just write, coming through fabric cross the window. I have my Pandora One. Or silence. Ceiling fan on low. Doors locked. Phone muted. I sit down behind my desk, in a corner of my room. I open the chromebook and take a deep breath.

Then, well, it's a bit of a turkey shoot with my mind. I either get to writing, one word at a time. Or the tornado of my mood dislodges me from my setup, for any one of a million possible reasons, and I fight and fight and forget to write. I gotta let go, to go on.

Journal. 'Planted'

Yes. Something is stirring! What? Do I too bud and blossom like the spring? Can this be? I went to shake a man's hand and left him holding flower petals. I left my home and a vine traced my path all the way to the store. I was hoping to buy a quart of milk, stick of butter, and something I forgot? Heavens! I walked out of there with only a twenty pound sack of planting soil and plant food. My vine got chopped off by the electric doors, and it HURT! My fingernail beds were turning green. When I reached the train tracks, still two blocks from home, I stopped dead in my tracks. OH THE SUN! Suddenly filling me with such passion I cannot describe! I turned my head and heart up to face it, and I swear my spine arched like a bow, against the pull! I became lighter. My eyes went blind in the looking! My pores opened and my skin turned to oil. My feet became locked to the earth to keep me from floating away. I could no longer see or hear. I could no longer move! I did not care. I stood there and the sack of soil rolled off my back and broke open at my roots, I mean feet? The plant food I had already digested walking home, I could not wait. Something was rising up my esophagus now, I know not what? I can feel what feels like leaves and things scratching and bending up through the passage. I try to speak but no words come out! Oh my god! What is happening? My thoughts are upon the feeling, only the feeling of warmth of the sun and a wish for rain. Please rain. Please rain. Please rain. OH THE SUN! Oh my god! I am breathing out but it's like the deepest inhalation. How, how, how? I inhaled the toxic shock of your world. It grumbles in my tummy. I give you a purer stream, OH! Is it me? Is it really me? I see you walking by, my friend, but you cannot see me. I try and wave but only rustle in your breeze. PLEASE! See me? I love you. I will always love you. You kick on by, all careless like, and I just watch but not with eyes... and wait, is there? Is there really? The way I know you now, verily so, my love, the way you know me so, my sweet, is by the shade I cast upon to cool your skin... the fresh delightful taste unseen...you drink my blood in air... my heart in misty kelly green i share... inhale me, love, and stay a while... you need not go so soon! Come rest by me, your giving tree, on this the day so fair, breeze lifting through your lightest hair. How wondrous! Shall I never leave this resting place... my home.

Journal. Midvernal

I waited for her and had been waiting for her all along
screaming PLEASE
when the afternoon she ascended the stairs
and knocked on my door
with a peachy red flower
and a peachy keen smile
for little me and time stopped
in my bedraggled bedhead woken midvernal night dream

I will always wait for her though nothing is needed anymore between us
All is sunshine and bonus from here
You can only do someone wrong for so long, and they you

 If you still yearn for one another silently...
        if you still contrast with one another violently...
                   if you still discern one another sensationally...

maybe there's a chance
   maybe if we believe
 maybe if we leave tomorrow -4- tomorrow

for the moon rolls over the sun
and the sun rolls over the earth
and the earth rolls over the sky

maybe there's a chance for us
to light up the night
let the memories die

spoken word is back - 'punk'

Or, as the band House of Pain used to sing...

'back from the dead, with a shaved head'

Here's the latest!  'punk.another treatment'
(ps i do not always post my spoken words on the site, so if you really like them and want to see them, best to subscribe to my Youtube channel)

love you guys 
thanks for supporting me   -K

Journal .000696 rpms

Everything is lined up perfectly for our success. Yours. Mine. 
The horse is in the barn. The squirrels are in the trees. The mendicants on their knees. 

The world is rotating at .000696 rpms. 
The perfect exposure to the sun, for consciousness to bloom.
Warning to self. Do not let this day slip away! 
As the world turns, let the fat burn. 
Sizzle! 

Give it all away again. 

When the mind's exhaust casts its mist over you, obscuring the perception in pings of many deadly thoughts, be sure to stop where you are and challenge those thoughts. 

Who are you to be envious of another? 
Who are you to be full of anger?
Who are you to wish harm?
Who are you?

Those instincts which once kept us alive, will always haunt us. 
They were burned into our grooves. 

Journal #03.22.15

I am not even close. I must be still healing. Please forgive me. The static waves of radio fill my head. Tonight I work in silence. I wonder about this fleeting sense of power, the delusion of self. I do not mind it anymore. Worry and anger and fear get us nowhere. Pain and the effort to feel and transform it. These are my tasks. Forgive my always anti-social media. I would that we were closer. I see you in my mind. Smiles. Meaningful connection. The ones who ignore me tell me as much about myself as those who meet my gaze. Purple frosty haze and lemon peel. To feel those feelings I would not feel. I searched the swirling seas for you. Through volumes and volumes thrashing. The truth would not lie still. I wanted to believe in what you said. In your words, in those books I read. I began to move and be moved. The mountains entertained the sun, one slope at a time. We raced our minds and won. Solitaire was King. Derrieres did swing. The hydraulics in the bus felt good under us, and the windshield wipers washed away everything. The nose was born to bleed. The harvest came of seed. The dogs and cats at best were friends, the mice we did not need. Times were rough of an industrial age. We raced the clock and lost. Turn the page. Come now to middle age. Cellular floors kept clean by the slaving macrophage. My work begins today, in middle earth. Accompanied by an orchestrated abandonment of fear, worry, and anger. I am getting closer now. I must be still healing. Please forgive me. The static waves of radio fill my head. I will always be grateful for you. Endless life.

Journal # 03.21.15

 What is left for us is a chance. A chance to wake up again. A chance to rest from the maddening pace of the modern world. I am gonna crack the window now and let some atmosphere in. Maybe some particularly meaningful memory will drift along, so I may forget how strange and hard it can be to be alone. There. There now. You are with me. We are holding one another and it feels amazing. They might call us names but we won't care. Lesbians. Bitches. Whatever you want us to be. Because you may as well be on another planet, pressing your old aching fingers up against the glass, trying to get in. I will feel for you later. Not now. All the arrowheads soften in the glacial tug. I remember how you made me feel. Sure, I had loves before you. And you before me. But nothing was two thousand ten like you and me. Pushing over laptops to get to you. We both lived on the floor. We both lived with guys who worshipped us. We both were running out of money. We both had vices become habits.

looking at you. K by K 4 K. 2015

The pain seemed so endless, typing away at keyboards. Losing weight. Listening to Sneaker Pimps. Deeper into darkness past anything I ever knew. We both had a marginal place in our families. We both lived on the outskirts of the world of a city. We both loved wasabi peas and scratchers and arizonas. Somehow I pushed past all that and got back to you and you held me. Together we weighed under three hundred pounds. Pushovers. You with your martial arts. Sticking acupuncture needles right where they belonged. You got under my skin. I got under yours. The fleeting moments we pushed past the cats and the cardboard boxes, and fell softly into walmart pillows... and cried out the damage like bleeding? This is what lights my way to resurgence. I only wish it worked out differently. Like we could find us in the bodies of our paragraphs, again. Lord only knows... the margins of our lives.

Journal # 03.20.15

I confess I hate T.S. Eliot for 'the Wasteland' . Now maybe the authorities will arrest me and throw me in jail with my stale jaundiced copy of Catcher In The Rye and my fuck you attitude toward the literary intelligentsia from the owner of city lights on down. I will not have my voice dismissed by a small faction of ivy-wrapped literature class tenure-burdened, ass pale from kisses, Madames and Misses. No way. Yes, Amazon is a jungle and a corporate monster with baby robots shuffling fulfillment orders through warehouses the size of Leichtenstein . But it was also founded as an online bookstore out of the garage of a man named Bezos in Bellevue, Washington. In 1996, a time when corporate bookstores had already begun mercilessly destroying the unique landscape of mom and pops in cities all across America. Now those corporate bookstores are getting their karma by Amazon putting them out of business. You can buy a book for a lot less money on Amazon. Of course, no one will ever come to consensus agreement on anything. Authors complain the price points on their books have been obliterated. Well, so what. I am an author and have gotten used to not making a living, writing. Still, I know I have a chance, just continuing to place quality product out there in the jungle. Because there are lots of kids with e-readers looking for something worth reading. I was in Chicago in 1996 when Amazon was still called 'cadabra.com' in its infancy. I lived in an apartment on top of a tiny bookstore owned and run by a holdout and alcoholic. He had inherited the business from his father, and was still pushing hardcovers out on the sidewalk every morning and talking to anyone and me about literature. Those days are mostly gone, though any good American city still has its holdouts and used booksellers. They might be a little worn for wear and even hard to talk to, what with the bitterness comes of draining an abscess. Still, I find it a joy to go in there and tell them I hate the fucking Wasteland and watch their eyes turn red on me. We can always come back in the end to smiles, in our mutual admiration society of  our beloved Catchers In the Rye.

Journal # 03.19.15

If I open my veins for you to see my checkered past, will you honour or hate me? Trust is a difficult thing, but easy by the eyes of a stranger. So long as we love ourselves, no one's opinion of us can set us back for long. Stay true to the melody of your song. My checkered past gives way to a game of chess. The Queen is a powerful one, what with her ability to move in any direction, as far as the board permits. The situation of her disciples, the pawns, determines the outcome of the game. The whole board from above looking down is a galaxy. A mathematical conundrum. A triumph of man by the mind. In life, what you need may you find. I wish you protection along your way. But know that your game is not simply the world. Children at play enact circumstances from the inside out. We are all children at play in our lives. We can come to a separate peace just by trying. Then the surface is swept clean, and we create purpose as we go. Such is human nature. Joyfulness comes off the back of the wind whirring through. Off the back of the drought. Of the storm. The calm comes after a great rage. The war. Stay there in the center of your calm, and you are home. You are the Queen. You may look after the King. Without him you are nothing. Without you, there's no life. The pawns in the pattern form a remarkable boundary. Some may pass through and others cannot. There is not always a way around. You can storm the castle through. The knight has its due. The bishops all turned black under a sky; it was blue. The world is ours until we die. This is true.

Journal # 03.18.15

We got drowned in social media after feeling all alone. Lost then found in social media. Drowned in social media, could not find our way home. We found some new friends but were they really who they were? Drowned in social media, under waters all a blur. They popped some images on a screen, there were some soft some jagged edge. Drowned in social media, we fell right off that ledge. Sometimes it was all creamy, like a milkshake made of bits. Drowned in social media, we could not keep our wits. Someone caused an uproar, demanding this or that. Drowned in social media, who when why and what. Emoticons and pros, inhaled up the nose. Drowned in social media, bundled in our clothes. Shivering through nights with smouldering lightbox eyes. Drowned in social media, try on a new disguise. POETS in communion, headlong through the day. Drowned in social media. Captain Kirk, warp speed away. And yet the memory lingers, of inspiration city. Drowned in social media, what a shame and what a pity. So when you're tired and cold, with a buzzing in your head? Close up shop and shut it down, try something real how about, instead? Find someone you love,  an old beach by way of forest. Hold them by the hand. Feel the real with courage.

Journal # 03.17.15

Danger never apologizes for itself. Comes into my life and gets on my nerves. Makes me think, when I would rather enjoy my single origin coffee all quiet about the mind. Keeps me on my toes. Manifests in scared bodies throwing the weight of fear around. Meet danger in a dark and lifeless place. Watch your back. I can only hope to protect my body from harm. Keep your head. What is more certain yet less palpable? Defense of the spirit. Keep moving. Wear a protective amulet. Wear out your welcome in the true and loving communities.

'blue & yellow' by KatYa

 Not everyone gets to know me, anymore. It is that simple. I used to give myself to anyone. Spiritually. I was all tingly about the aura. My boundaries... what boundaries? Experience came to stay. Killed me a few times, only to refashion me as I am today. A warrior. A survivor. Not to be trifled with. I am still the sweet and generous soul you once knew. Yes. I am still soft and kind. I still laugh and I still cry. I still show a child to the trusted few. And you? Who are you? 

REVIEWS

All 5 Star Reviews so far for my novella, Daughter of Darkness!
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't wait for Volume 2... March 1, 2015

By Heraclitus

Format:Paperback

In part a roman-a-clef that deals with social issues, Ame is a

protagonist with strange abilities who finds herself among a

group of human-like creatures who live among the population

of Oakland, California. There are some wonderfully poetic 

passages that discuss economics and the environment,

others that contend with the storyline. An oft-cited failing of

literary fiction is that "not a lot happens". With Ame's preternatural

background and the world-building going on, the author has

done well to pack so much into the first novel of a series.

It's an urban fantasy where you're as likely to find an ogre

beneath a toll bridge as you are a toll booth operator on it.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic start of a new series March 3, 2015

By Arthur W. Turfa

Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

This well-written novella is a promising start in a series. Mills

blends reality with an extra-wordly theme. Ame gradually learns

that she is in this world but not of it, and amidst the dystopia of 

contemporary Oakland, California, finds that there are others like

her. Slowly she learns how to navigate through the setting which

is far different form what she is used to in the far-off Green Mountains.

There are lyrical passages in here, and a gripping story. The

writing is the best Mills has ever done, and this reviewer cannot 

wait to read more!

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5.0 out of 5 stars Looking forward to Book 2. March 15, 2015

By Francine Hirst

Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

A refreshing and unique style of writing. The story draws you into a 

dark place to acknowledge a world we all know exists, yet often turn

a blind eye to. The protagonist grows and becomes enlightened with

each turn of the page. This endears you to her as she strives to be

accepted into society. A delightful shift takes place two thirds of the

way through and a light can be seen peeking out between the blinds. 

I look forward to following Ame on her journey.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Entrancing March 12, 2015

By Patty

Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

A compelling read. The descriptive writing is tangible. Daughter of

 Darkness is an imaginative yet eerily nonfictional work, and author 

Katya Mills does not disappoint in her new novella. Her ability to transport

the reader to the dark underbelly of society is captivating.

Journal # 03.15.15

Aquamarine is the color for today. I found it in a meeting room in Sacramento just this morning. You can call it forgiveness. Don't let these resentments burn you up inside, please! You can do something about it. Sometimes it starts with remembering a time when you did something and felt unforgiven. You wished desperately for some way to forgive yourself, and even when you found a way, you still felt unforgiven -  the one you had harmed never spoke to you again. This has happened to everyone, somewhere along the line. From this memory of your own undoing, you have a chance! The chance is aquamarine. I think it is. Something warm and cool at the same time. I talked to someone I had been scared of for a long time now. Then I talked to someone who I had felt resentment toward, for a short time. In both cases, I made myself stay in the other person's presence just long enough to relax a little. Talk to them. Respect them this way. The feeling was aquamarine. The moment was forgiveness.

Journal # 03.14.15

When I go to the ocean in an emotional state, she levels me. Hyperventilating after the nightmares. The water and salt in the breeze. Inhale. The day begins in an unusual way. Deeper. Look into the fog. The many gradations of white light, rising. Soon to see the horizon. The crow's feet soften and dissipate around the eyes. Calm. My thoughts fall into the sound of the waves curling into the shore. I can walk away. Sustained. I can meet someone. Excited. I can see you again. The way you were to me once. You notice the change over coffee, and are surprised. You get up and motion for me to arise. I hold you in my heart. Anything else was all lies.You hold me in your arms and in your eyes.

Journal # 03.13.15

My friend asked me who I fell in love with. I think my first sustained love was within a friendship, towards a boy who lived down the street from me. We went to school together. His name was Nick. He looked like Elvis might have looked as a kid. Shock of hair. Vitality. Built natural in the chest. Roughneck youth. Rebel. Undisputed non-chalance. We used to spend lots of time playing video games and wrestling and outdoors in the snow in the winter, just playing until we were exhausted. I loved everything about him. And his family, too. They cared for me like I was their own. Very down to earth. Lots of laughter in the house. Lots of silliness. Dad was a crazy professor type. English teacher. When Nick transferred schools (he was getting into trouble academically speaking), we lost track of one another. Forever. I looked him up recently. I finally found him after many attempts of search by name. He is an artisan in Portland, Oregon and has won awards for his ceramics. He has a wife and i don't know but maybe kids. I did not contact him. I thought about it. The past is so angelic with us. Why not let it be? Just nice to know where he is, and that he is living a good life up north of here, about a ten hour drive. See? Part of me wants to make that journey back home. Part of us all the time, the urge to reconnect the dots. The moments of our lives. Find out if it all really happened, or was it a dream? And still... life as recounted by memory, is more and more a dream for me. I love life! I do! How it dissolves slowly on a really cold winter day, like a snowflake. Passes into the crux of the Four Winds. Dissolves into the Great Truth. The Divine Ground of Being.

Journal # 03.12.15

I wanna stop all the nonsense and get back to the real. It is not for you to question me about what is real. It is not for me to decide what is real to you. This is what I like about it. Reality is personal. No one's got a lock on it. I used to smile watching people try to force their brand of reality down the collective throat. What an hopeless endeavor! The smile has gone away. I don't like to see how it hurts them trying. What a desperation about it. That's cold. Maybe I can talk to them. Maybe someone tried to shut them down, and told them what they think is real, is not. So now they are on a mission to show everyone just how real their real is? Maybe they just need to be seen and heard, and appreciated for a moment. Reassured that no one's gonna take their real away from them. Maybe that would help? There's a lot of wounded little children out there, in big adult bodies. Who am I to hate a wounded child? I wanna help a wounded child. I wanna help! Well, that's my real, anyway. I guess I just got back.

Journal # 03.11.15

There was a devil in my dream. She was crying blood tears. She had missed the time change, apparently, and came late for the nightmare. And someone who had the key to my heart. I didn't wanna but I hadda ask for it back. He took it off the ring and pressed it politely into the palm of my hand. Right beside my lifeline. Which was cut short in the prime of my youth. I guess ima overachiever. Of life. With a case of noisey spelling bees.

What a dream. Someone liberated a big box store of its big screen tvs, and stored them in my home. I took back the key to my house. Placed it alongside the key to my heart. I cried a hundred tears, and not a one more. I watched the news today, oh boy. On a hundred tvs from China. They filled all the holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. Now people can bicycle around. A comedian in the States had done something wasn't funny. I just had to laugh.

A closed caption video transmit via Best Buy satellite. A hundred tvs had been displaced. I was watching the satellite feed on them. Feed on them. And though the news was rather sad, well, I just had to laugh. I snapped a photograph. A selfie. Of me watching the abduction of a hundred tv's, on a hundred tv's been abducted. I re-allocated myself to the bedroom. I unlocked my heart, before going to bed. Like usual. The doors to the house were all bolted, dead. The televisions all turned off. I slept without dreaming. And woke to love, in my heart, and stevia in my tea.

Journal # 03.10.15

Wanna try something? Try leaving your cell phone at home. Try making a difference by listening to someone without interruption. Try not letting the world cut in on you. Try not reading anything but their eyes. Try writing down nothing but the memory on your mind. Try not researching but searching your immediate environment for what you need. Try asking a different question. Try on a different salutation. Try smiling and being friendly, even when you are not feeling so hot. Try forgetting you are in a rush to get somewhere. Try not mentioning the weather or your athritis. Try to forget politics and sports for a day. Try taking a different, slower, less direct route. Try walking around lost, without any answers. Welcome back to (human) being. Can we love you now?

on poets

RADIO - a poem by KatYa

Journal # 03.09.15

The sights and sounds have left me with feeling and vision. I broadcast from a dark place. The dream of you and me has crumbled into memory. And life goes on. Today could be a real day, if I stay out of my way. Out of the past, with no certain future. The way I meet the world with open eyes, if not a smile. If the world is not so harsh and terrible, I will bloom. If not, I will go on broadcasting from this dark place. Somewhere beneath the bubbling grounds of coffee. Scorched by tap water. Come off a boil. Which is not so bad at all. For what I broadcast, to anyone who watches closely, is warmth.

GRAND THEFT LIFE

GRAND THEFT LIFE is a novella and literary fiction. It is the first book in my Daughter of Darkness series. The most accurate subgenre designation is low fantasy, which is defined on wikipedia: "low fantasy places relatively less emphasis on typical elements associated with fantasy, setting a narrative in real-world environments with elements of the fantastical. Sometimes there are just enough fantastical elements to make ambiguous the boundary between what is real and what is purely psychological or supernatural. The word 'low' refers to the prominence of traditional fantasy elements within the work, and is not any sort of remark on the work's quality." The story is about a kidnapping which turns into a strange and shocking homecoming for the protagonist. It is told from the point of view of our young heroine, Ame. I tend to write from the inside out (internal thoughts and feelings), so the story is character-driven with a coming-of-age theme. Though the setting is contemporary and real, the plot has fantasy elements. Some of the characters possess preternatural abilities, divergent from humankind. Including our heroine. This is not my first foray into fantasy. But it is my first published longform in this arena. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to share this world with you! Book Two is coming soon.

Journal # 03.07.15

Someone will take me apart for sure. In me they will find a small treasure, not long for this earth. A heart which beats unexpectedly strong through all its scar tissue. The scars are dark and long, and tell of relationships all gone wrong. The beat is made in America, though it could be made in your beautiful country as well. It beats for silent mornings of fresh snow. It beats for nights long ago, drunk and high in magnificent clubs warehousing the dancing exuberance. Youth of Chicago. It beats for kittens come and gone, taken by dogs and cars and God. The scars hold the blood in. The blood is blue for me and you. The blood is purple mountains majesty. The blood has thinned in California, steeped in wine and sun and golden gate rouge. My system is a centrifuge. My dreams circulate. Making rounds of institutions. Geometry like a web. The architectural brilliance of our cities. I am but a little chaos in a lined and static blueprint. I am lost and found all over again. Take me apart. I'm yours.

Journal # 03.06.15

We suffer the same as they suffered before us.  As we suffered before us. We are of the same. What I see in the eyes of the century preceding, I see in the eyes walking the streets tonight. Under another full moon. My eyes see the same they saw in the night. The way we relate, they relate. Arthritis in the joints. Dancing just the same. Minds plagued by worry and fear. Delighted by children at play. Fascinated by technology. Frightened by industry. Dreaming just the same. Lighting a taper. Lighting a stove. Samovar for tea with you. And me. Knowing no more and no less of a God.

the author at home. madness. 2015

 If time folded back on itself, and I found myself there, I would look into your eyes and you mine, and sashay on up to the guillotine we would,  the Place de la Concorde, where we pop popcorn and toast almonds and smoke our fags in the clear, together over wooden shoes, fin de siecle, talk of the American Revolution n'est-ce pas? Just the same. And then a collective pause and a gasp and a shout.  I turn my head into your shirt, when off with the head of Louis XVI. We will not sleep tonight! None of us. Everything has changed, just the same. Life. An amazement.

Journal # 03.05.15

If I found you now, so many years later, would we get along? What would time have done to us? So many years and you expect time will heal. Well, what if time insisted something terrible into consciousness. Dragged its corpse out from under a house for us to see? Then could we meet and have a grand old fight been waiting for years. Or have walked through the fire by ourselves, to a pointed forgiveness. We might even sit somewhere nice and quiet and talk it over. And what if one of us has sharks swimming in their eyes, and the other has backlight of a thousand halos? Then we shall roll up our sleeves and sharpen our nails and show our teeth. Maybe, if we are lucky, we will meet again, you and me. And after all is said or done, we can hold hands.

Journal # 03.04.15

Wednesday. Subtle forms passing through. The migration of shadow figures towards the darker side of the earth. They cannot stand the light. Some were resting in my closet. You might call it hiding, but it was after dark and nothing to hide from. I tend to keep my apartment light enough to see, dark enough to hold a mystery. I was blending some wild blueberries in the kitchen, and accidentally caught some stray entity in my smoothie. This misfortune was allayed by the wonderful taste and texture of subtle form.
 GOODREADS GIVEAWAY! 
I drank the blue potion and watched the shadow play in the closet. I sat down on my couch, took a deep breath and waited for the sound of the water boiling. My hands ran across my denim knees. The steam began to whistle through the spout. My tongue, blueberry blue. A sudden remarkable insight arrived, at the bottom of my wild blueberry potion. I can call on my family for encouragement. For help. I can literally pick up the phone and call my mom or my dad or my brother or my aunt or my cousin, not for anything other than to feel the connection. The blood rights. The raison d'etre. A lucky one, am I...

5-STAR BOOK REVIEW

My Novella:    GRAND THEFT LIFE (Daughter of Darkness, #1)
just got its first review, five of five stars


" In part a roman-a-clef that deals with social issues, Ame is a protagonist with strange abilities who finds herself among a group of human-like creatures who live among the population of Oakland, California. There are some wonderfully poetic passages that discuss economics and the environment, others that contend with the storyline. An oft-cited failing of literary fiction is that "not a lot happens". With Ame's preternatural background and the world-building going on, the author has done well to pack so much into the first novel of a series. It's an urban fantasy where you're as likely to find an ogre beneath a toll bridge as you are a toll booth operator on it."

Journal # 03.03.15

Life tends to surprise with its falling apart. The clothes I was dressed in, down the lengths of my arms to the cuffs, down my legs to the ankles, holding tight to my heart now  fall off me. I am exposed again. A wise man once told me the 'oil' of life is relationship. My oil got heated and then burned, turned black again. + + +  I wouldn't have believed you if you told me how difficult it is to make and keep true friends. I think I will never stop trying. But I cannot hold our friendship over your head. There is no leverage. Only family has any leverage, in the end. Only blood. I am gonna do whatever I want, and you will do the same. + + + The cost of the freedom looks like the many paths of gunpowder shot out of a canister, touched to the flame for a great detonation. Lifestyle is explosive. When you realize you have a chance and you go for it, you're a bat out of hell. Relocations. Rearrangements. Rebirths. Repatterning. By the end of your course across the sky, you may find your oil is burned. + + + I still have my freedom and I am happy this way. But to drift the way I have, East to West over time, across the States, has had a great cost. I have suffered losses of fragments of myself burned and fallen off, a real moulting of snakeskin or plumage or traits of personality. + + + Those bygone lovers and friends, every one of them so critical in my becoming who I am, are mostly memories, and the loss of them, with or without a proper adieu, hurt so bad as the oil, gone black, and paper trails of self like colored confetti tumbling in the wake of us, flipping over and over and spreading out with the sun rays across the infinite sea, logged by water at the surface... then falling, falling deep down into the dark and maybe never to be retrieved. 

Journal # 03.02.15

I wish I will live in self-forgotten. For now I look into the fog. Then turn on the space heater. My kittens all curled up in different rooms. They need the heat more than I do. One is topping a wicker basket of clothes. Another is curled upon the bed. The third, the lone wolf, on the belly of the armchair in my kitchen. I sit at my desk and wonder how life got its limits, so endless the moment it seems. I dare not look into the future. When all my kittens are gone. When perhaps I am here, at this same desk, with new kittens. Traitor! With new poems on my tongue. New paperbacks to my name. Ebooks on kindle. Traitor! I have forgiven myself already. For life trudging on. Forgive myself, towards self-forgotten. And once I forget myself complete? It will be left for someone else to remember who I was.

Journal # 03.01.15

Sunday. The girl scouts are out! With their buttons and badges and bake sale tables. Cute, cute, cute. I had to buy some cookies. I asked the girls which ones were the best? All except one was pushing 'the lemonades! the lemonades!' Well, lemonade isn't just a drink anymore. It's a godawful shortbread cookie with a high fructose lemon-flavored frosting. I guess little kids have different taste buds. I almost spit mine out, but I didn't want them to see. I had to jay walk to get to the other side of Broadway so I could get that crap out of my mouth. I almost got struck by a car. Not very girl-scoutlike behavior.

Sunday. Church comes in other forms. I like show up to gatherings of friends. We congregate. We sit in a circle and talk about what matters. We talk and listen to one another. Sometimes this is enough. Religion is not necessary in the presence of faith. Faith is a personal matter. I lost it for twenty years, but my faith has been restored. How lucky, to dwell in the sunlight of the spirit. Yes, I have my forays into the darkness. But not by choice anymore. Not by choice.