#nye

happy nyeto you

from me

omnipotent coffee pot

goodbye to this old year and all her worries and wonders. goodbye to those who died in the struggle for right over wrong, and may you live on, in our hearts, in our slogans, in our tireless pursuit of social justice. goodbye to this old year and her snaking contradictions. goodbye to the mirror and faded reflections of ourselves. goodbye to the ones who had to move out of town, may your adventures be long and dreamy. farewell to the useless imprint of ugly headlines. goodbye to the addicts who took one too many. goodbye abused powers and the fear you inspired. goodbye to new threats of nuclear war. goodbye to depression and not getting out of bed. we are young and inspired, facing 18 hour days. we will not be tired. we will not be phased. out of mainstream culture there arose such a clatter, boys and girls turned their heads to see what was the matter. the bells began tolling, the sunlight was rolling. good spirits were working and smiling a lot. they had so much to offer and an omnipotent coffee pot. 2018 the new year just begun. there was plenty to do under the sun.

edge.2017

there was friendship
there was laughter
there was spirit

all the ills of 2017
starved off

makes me wanna roll
a bowling ball down
your alley

and over
the edge

closer to publication

the way i get closer to publication is by getting closer to my desk and the keys and the screen through my eyeglasses. by getting closer to the endless hours of playful work. mute the environment as much as i can. endless other hours of readying myself spiritually to be up to the process.

character redemption

Rather than kill a corrupt or malevolent character off, why not go for redemption? Many heroic figures of storytelling legend were once poor, disabled, disfigured and underwent incredible transformations to become super and special, carriers of the light. It is much harder and more valuable and compelling to make treasure out of raw materials, or refurbish and recreate a tarnished old soul!

plot.development

four hours of highway driving into the Sierras and several more of pure dreamy silence led to a breakthrough. now I know how it has to happen, and who is to be redeemed.

holidays

there were coyotes last night out in the snow under the shadow of the mountain. panting breath of ice. underbellies soft and warm. eyes ringing truths of the wild. in small packs they roam. hunting. howling.

eve

twilight is lighter than it is dark
we look to the light
knowing it will
be gone
soon

saints

we benefit by choosing selfless lives, turning away from pleasures the average person affords. the cost of living is lower in an ascetic home and heart.

my god. when I think of some of the selfishness of my past, and what it cost me. if I can champion you before I champion myself, life makes better sense.

I imagine we will always struggle with our choices and I hope 4 more comfort than regret traveling through these lives. these geographies. even saints were travellers, once.

#99

Amazon Review of Girl Without Borders
5.0 out of 5 stars

Katya Mills is someone worth watching. I believe she has several novels out. The next "big thing" in publishing.

Byhawthorne woodon December 20, 2017
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase

Great novel. Fascinating writer. Loved it.

broken toys of cyberspace

one died of a bullet through a heavy bound text shot by a girl and a go pro camera. another talking trash on a binge drunk rampage got murdered by the character he assassinated. one took an elevator up a high rise in China then climbed free and slipped to his death. a million followers more cannot help you when you're gone. we will remember these years for all our sad broken toys in cyberspace. someday may they be retrofitted with new capes and powers and costumes. and endless lives in the deadly video game where they reside.

your atypical

your atypical was beloved
we were all so inspired
especially me

when you acted like a child
and ran circles around
the tree

when you drew a moon
where the sun was
and it came
to be

atypical. photo by katya, 2017

letter home

I wish I could call you and thank you for the yummy turkey and green bean casserole. I caught a bad cold so my voice is compromised. Hope you had a safe trip home and I miss you. If I'm well enough I plan to go see the family in Tahoe this weekend as Xmas falls on my day off. The last 3 months have been the hardest yet most exciting time in the past 5 years what with interviews and licensing demands and writing my book and training for my ultrarun in March. I'm taking this moment of rest to breathe (with inhalers 2 help!) and appreciate all that I'm trying to accomplish. None of it would have been possible without your help so I thank you. Love. K

s.mode

There will be those times no matter how well you have prepared when you experience hardship. stay calm and faithful to your work. do not be afraid to ask for help. every hour of hardship is worth fifty hours of contentment. on the other side of s.mode, may you find your spirit renewed.

aka.pain diaries

Gettin' to be great at anything is like throwing yourself into a whiteout a snow sky (not a blackout) and surrendering to how the world feels you touches you allows you to exist... and fights you to see what you're made of (engulfs you if you're not made of anything worth asserting yourself) and celebrates you if you can stay in it's light (and darkness) long enough (aka endure) to change and tolerate pain, and work at staying the same while changing. call it core values if you want. call it spontaneous expression. call it art or authorship if you want. call yourself god. see if I give a fuck.

twelve.17

the winds rose overnight and compelled us all to feel. limbs of sycamores fell into the streets. the cat brought me a headless robin in a mouth full with feathers. i believe i am chosen to be raw. nothing comes easy anymore. i tell my story by words. life has never been so enticing.

book review

Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Capote uses character and language so well in this novel. This book gave me a fresh take on how words can be manipulated and strung together in fresh and innovative ways, and was definitely useful to me both as a writer and reader. I also like that it takes place in the deep south. Capote captures time and place and context, while offering us new lenses, fresh atmospherics. I found this novel magical, it casts a spell which holds on from beginning to end.


View all my reviews

the preface

To my loyal readers. Happy Holidays! Here you can be the first to put eyes on the preface to my upcoming novel, Ame and The Tangy Energetic. I am open to any feedback you may have...

This is not a fantasy. This is a story about friendship. About how to move on when your trust has been decimated by the world around you. About a ragtag alliance of nomads and rebels, who show resilience in the face of marginalization and cultural dissociation. This is a story about recovery from addiction and trauma. About alchemy and the turning of fear into vitality. About being real no matter what, even when you look bad. About caring in a careless world and being loyal to the ones who care about you. This is a story about love, heartbreak and redemption. And faith. This story is an oddity, out of step from mainstream literature and made up with its own rules and rhythm, and it comes from the heart of a wounded healer. Someone of no great significance, who simply survived the streets and lives to tell. This is a story for you.   - Katya Mills

wallflower social

may the social sphere be elastic, i wished, and expand without cracking and breaking off, falling like an icicle and killing me where I stand.

in the meanwhile i got my couple hours a day good medicine in writing my book, my blog, and making out with words.

the tongue kissing was the best part and the audience swooned by the character studies i inhabited.

inhibitions were wall flowers to our garden variety virtual open microphone affairs.

the best feeling

can be an everyday feeling not an unusual feeling and not one i wake up to necessarily, no, the best feeling arrives in the process of the right action, when i am doing the good and often unpleasant work. and when the hard work proves the best feeling, time after time, we see we can count on it. that's how the hard work becomes just a little easier for us, and living begins to knock kindly.

in kind

Correspondence was not much fun anymore. i was lucky if i got a card in the mail. emails made me nervous because there were so many awaiting reply. the days of receiving long letters penned in script by hand in ink on someone's personal stationery were over. i had a thought. if i took the time to write letters the old way again, bypassing text and email and chat and video, and even bypassing phone, would I get a response in kind? and then might time turn back for us and write our lives the way we once wrote them, when we wrote long missives on personal stationery with silver trim and painted envelopes, hanging sideways over our elbows, quietly playing with each letter,  slowly, conscientiously by scripted hands, young and rolling in ink.

eternity

a starless sky
moving sea
a diving hawk
you and me

moving
the sea
the starless
sky

turn around
eternity

read.write.publish

this morning i woke up at dawn and followed the river for a while. the sun came up and the breath disappeared. dogs ran up and down the levee. i showered and dressed and took a spirited step out the door and drove down to a sacred place where i met with some friends to create a reading and writing group. though i have never brought folks together before formally for the purpose, my whole life i have preferred the society of artists and writers, rebels and dreamers. and mostly caring friends. so i am hoping this read.write.publish initiative will go off well for us, and come in with twenty eighteen.

overcast

finite articulated outlined forms are no longer sacred. they may be one thing today and another, tomorrow.

our love is murky we cannot see the bottom. the light takes on form, passing through. my love for you is imperfect. overcast.

it never changes.
we can touch the sky.

bubble gum holy city

as a symbol Jerusalem represents so much to the world and its religions. one would be outright foolish to try and wrap the archetype around some personal or even interpersonal wet dream. corporate thought processes delude you. pursuit of a bubble gum packaging theme. one could lose faith.

freight train

The #metoo movement
a freight train out of Hollywood LA
on a runaway

watch out
she's rolling down rails

touch the iron
feel her coming
for you

know things

there are things you know and oh, did i tell you i know some things, too, like how much i miss you and need you around, to fill up my heart with your being profound?

k @ home 2017

how you keep it together

the sun rises every morning. sometimes you have to pull the curtains back from the windows and let the light in, otherwise you may not know. the sun did its part and showed up. you have to do your part now, and arrive on scene. in the light and feeling the world upon your exposed skin, you can be rugged and raw. just exist. you won't have to recite your lines, though they may ask you. the longer i live, the more i find it difficult to rehearse. painful to memorize. how i keep it together (when i keep it together) is by showing up honest and true, hiding nothing. it can be painful getting here, and the magic lies in spontaneity. which also means... we cannot always keep it together. it won't necessarily break their hearts to see us falling apart for a moment. i love to watch them watch me regroup.

any one of us is so much more

The multiverse has shaped me and so I run in colors, and when we meet we bond by the imprint left upon our personalities, the texturing of all the forces that contour us into recognitions. You are so much more than you. I can hardly stand not to love you not to know you. Come with me.

super

Super was the moon and animate the trees; the winter winds arose and bled right through my clothes. I was dodging in and out a moment right before your eyes, yet you were tracking down to daydream. Be very kind and stay alert. This is how we may survive.

here.now

Life makes its own meaning day after day. Joseph Campbell knew what people are searching for and it's not the meaning of life. I want the embodied feeling of being alive. The vitality. This is a greater cause. Still I am driven to write the books I was chosen to write for the world.  Lately I feel I am closer to a wholeness of energy, a fullness not unlike tonight's super full moon. I think it may be a payoff for all the obligations I've taken on. It's an interesting experiment but I have to write the books. Nothing compares to how you feel when you do what you were born to do.

silly

i feel silly cuz i haven't got a need 

to be so serious all the while. i can

act like a child a few moments every

day. when i was a child i did not 

have the luxury of being silly much

of the time. my parents were heavy

drinkers, god bless them, and not 

always friendly with a hyperactive

kid. so i was taught how to mute

the playful spirit and shut up.

k nov'2017

december upon us

the month was turning over like you, beside me, in bed. i knew you would be there for me and that was the point. i got so tired of getting passed by and passing by and i began to understand i deserved more, i wanted more. but first i had to understand how to be alone and be good with one, at peace with that. now it's december and not so cold, anymore.

see.blue

what can i tell you when i feel discouraged and you feel discouraged, too? all i can tell you is look, we all get down and see blue. all i see in you is you are real with that feeling, you are holding, exuding the pain. this is making you more of who you are. someone i can love. you are real to me. i can see your struggle in your eyes and hear it in your words. the depth of your blues mirrors my own, and you touch me where before i was alone.

last day

fightin to breath
swamped with media
loving you

mad at a careless system

sometimes it feels like
the last day
and

our boots crush the leaves
trodding on
into the thick

avoid the news

The news cannot inform me anymore. I will avoid it like a beggar won't let up. It wants and takes and leaves me feeling rather odd and empty. I must protect my heart and strike the ritual down. This is the only headline.

depress play

on any depressed day
i depress play
and engage

the motion
rolling
turning
makes a music
I can feel

working my fingers
threading my thoughts
with yours

through playing we
get free

the mindful among us

we are possessed with an urgency to make the moment the only place to be. there, there, all the senses are emboldened and urgency gives way to immediacy. you won't require any further entertainment.

finding real

I am on a mission to find reality. I won't find it in my phone or in the dark. I cannot find it alone, nor in a crowded park. I step into my jeans my boots my leather jacket pulled around my hoodie. Here behind the wheel, eyes open and coffee steaming at my lip, waiting for this old train to pass through town, exhaust smoking in the cool morning air. A smile pulls over my face cuz I know I am real with you. Yesterday we ran. Today I'm gonna break out the draft of my book and mark it up somethin' fierce.

slow

Slow falls like snow. Not pelting just touching and melting. Slow is not weak or worthless or lazy or wasteful. Slow is not what they say in our fast culture USA. Slow takes the time to truly understand. Is seen and sees. Patience. The world doesn't know what it wants.

like the day I was born

Outside the sky is a canvas and all our forms are drawn against it. the leaves this time of year make everything timeless like the day I was born.

faux hawk city

i only got one life to live and my part's crestfallen off my head, my eyelids hanging half-mast tonight. my thoughts are no longer disorganized or petty or obsessed or compulsed, you see, i only got one life to live so i'm takin' a train to faux hawk city, honey, and i won't be comin' back without you, no, i won't be comin' back all alone.

give the pain a voice

this holiday season may you feel part of. not alone. and if you are in pain, what does the pain say to you? give the pain a voice so it can tell you what it needs to go away... then go ahead and give it what it needs because it's the giving season, honey, it's what we do! 

y.

many of the people the world has written off for dull have the brightest spirits, and shine
out from the dark places where their bodies have been relegated

dream #98

living made sense against a senseless world. each moment a firefly encasing light. we are protected. full of meaning we do not die. slow down a sec. come near. it's you and me. walking through all our pain to better versions of our truth of ourselves.

2017

Always you came to me in 2017 with your moss-colored eyes and lay by me at a trust-colored angle. I found it quite endearing. You are good for me.

what was life

what was life before our devices which stand between us and our loves and our lives?

dream #1234

So many dreams to go. This one is a waking dream of  acceptance, to see myself in the context of all my world and relationships and choices and demands, the push and pull, the ebb and flow, and wake up each day willing to embrace it. To fight for what I want and need, knowing full well the fight will never end for the challenge is the life.

girl on bicycle with cigarette

death knell
church bell
she don't give a damn
hell

hacks get hacked

Now we uncover the hacks and the vices of folks who got power truth spoke to. now they wish that their names be forgotten after fame had a name to remember.

yet

I was on the yet and thinking of you before we even met, and you let me down when I met you. Beware of bold imagination, I promised myself, before meeting me where I was, the only place I could be, many years after a lifeless rehearsal of life.

one stone. two birds

a gun is the coldest moulded steel you ever put in your hand, holds a darkened chamber where living death sleeps, full of powder, ready in a puff of smoke and recoil to take two lives in one second. the other one won't die by the bullet.

echoes of yourself

alone as you may feel you are surrounded by echoes of yourself in words others speak when they address you and clothes they choose to wear for you to see and opinions they assert in a language you know cannot be taught only shared and is meaningful for you. together at long last.

books

i was invited to Folsom this week by a book club to showcase my work and meet some who read my first serial fiction. i had a blast and got to share my process, and listen to some fine critiques of my work. now i know i cannot fool anyone and why would i? good books can sell and weak books sell, too. i am determined to publish only books that brought out the best in me writing them. blood, sweat, tears, and coffee. it's no use to be loved or hated if you cannot take pride and stand behind your little offspring-creations.

pay-per-view you

I wonder if some of these power players who are being cast out of Hollywood might end up cast in porn flix to make ends meet or just get off? They could easily relocate to West Hollywood or commute and reinvent themselves. Then anyone too lazy to call an escort could lean back and pay-per-view you.

600 years

we could keep us around by populating a host planet or why not go extinct right here, and let earth eradicate our species? we've had a good run. we could show our greatest virtue and make room for new species. we will look better in retrospect.

the terror

all the summer long the anniversary of the terror, like a toxin in the marrow, gave the thoughts a quiver for the drawing of an arrow

theory.orientation

When asked what is my theoretical orientation, i have to consider the latest and greatest changes and developments both internal (to me) and external (around me). so my answer definitely changes from year to year... at the moment, in regards to conducting therapy, i would describe my orientation as so... i continue to try and meet people non-judgmentally with unconditional hope and regard. i consider them courageous for coming to therapy, and consider myself blessed to be brought into their world to travel alongside them for a while until their stated goals have been met. i do try and listen carefully so i can understand their challenges, and also to listen for nonverbal communications, and acknowledge what lies in the spaces between the words. i am process-oriented, and like to slow down the pace and leave room for affect and feelings. i want to see challenges from a holistic perspective, taking into account bio psychosocial and spiritual aspects. Therapeutic alliance is an important as a means for us to work in the moment on relationship, an opportunity, and I like to reflect back to a client what I am hearing as they share their story, so they can see how they come across. Finally, I like to encourage people to identify their personal talents and strengths, so that they can amplify these narratives to build self-esteem and see what they are capable of accomplishing in the world.

un.plan

vitality gets dispelled by a plan, yet planning is expected and encouraged. i wish we could release our blueprints more readily, without fear, to the wind stirred up by a rising sun.

IT'S HARD

i remember our old town, early eighties. we were kids, riding our ten speeds out for some records or ice cream or pizza or movies, and usually to your house same day. find some trees to climb or trouble to get into. even then i felt different and it made me uneasy around people. painful sometimes. but i always felt i could be myself around you. i wonder what you're up to now. life is hard, isn't it? i wish i could find you and take you down some dirt path where we could talk, and i thank you.

jack rabbit

jackrabbits jumpin through my mind, skippin over all the traps all the dips all the trips, go rabbit go, don't you let this crazy world get you down, tuck those ears back off the breaking of the news, follow the good path you've been given for to choose.

random. oct 31

random acts of kindness on halloween...

frighten somebody
if they scare you, thank them
give a kid some candy
protect all black cats!
offer up a pumpkin for sacrifice
candles over electricity
be prepared with a trick
celebrate diy costumes
protect black cats!
be a witch not a b@tch
scream clearly
stay up all night
worship the moon
run endless b-flicks

tomorrows

you either can get past whatever you did in your past, or you cannot get past the past. today feels sorry for your tomorrows.

perishable

reading the news headlines every night before bed, i tend to become tired and uninspired. reading a book does me better. i think i am perishable. i need to care for myself a little extra.

hunting the unforgiven

I find it wild and a little unsettling to see my country focusing on witch hunts as the ranks of the unforgiven grow, though the feeling is matched by the redemptive quality which forms in our cultural atmosphere each time someone's longheld secret is released and truth stands up finally to power.

This year we have witnessed several figures of great power in Hollywood and the District of Columbia and Manhattan blasted on Twitter and sued and denounced on mainstream media, and a few who have been stripped of power, in those cases where they are clearly (if not by forensic evidence than by the numbers of allegations and survivors) guilty of abusing and betraying the public trust by their actions.

How do I reconcile my mixed reaction to these media moments of horror and truth and compassion? I was once guilty of betraying public trust. Day by day, for several years, I have been working my way back to respectability. Society is giving me a chance to learn from my mistakes. A life cut up by addiction. I left myself behind and lost my mind.

Only god knows if I will make it tomorrow. My past is history. Today I do my best to participate in life and help out, bringing all I have learned with me wherever I go. Sharing. Caring.

What of these public figures whose pasts have caught up with them? Outcasted from society and unforgiven? Why does it disturb me to see them disfigured and disrobed from their fraudulent personas? Isn't this justice and long overdue?

I guess it's sad to watch people die that way, publicly, and sometimes their loved ones have to die alongside them. Meanwhile the victims of their crimes survive. It is unsettling to uncover what they have lived through, the survivors. I know because I am one, too.

I wonder where forgiveness fits in, when it comes to the unforgiven? I wonder if there's a certain hell where healing never starts? A tail end and no beginning. And how it came to be this way?

little.home.base

when faced with fears and feeling insecure, remember this is a human experience we all have, time after time, and see if you can make contact. this need not be full contact. awkward is even better so long as it's honest. show up honest and come from what you offer. all any situation out ever demand out of you is your own little superpower. you have one, trust me, even if you're not exactly sure what it is. make contact from that base and you may never be displaced.

the maybe 7 year process

i once had words for concepts i no longer carry words for and i wonder where those words went, or did the meaning of those concepts change, or did i change, or do i simply use language differently than before? the hardest part may be finding a place where i can work and provide for myself while i locate myself amid internal recalibrations. then again these places do exist in my country where struggle and effort are appreciated and that will join you in your own locus, however exotic, with  curiosity.

after dark

after all the candles shed their wicks and treats give in to tricks, after all the families tuck away the costumes, end of play, after lights out and halloween is set aside... then the true demons show, sanity takes flight... with ghosts over cobblestone they glide

the lost

a half-sunken bridge spanned a boggy marsh and every other year or so someone from the adjacent towns there was lost, never to be found. boundary lines were redrawn which made the bog a sorta no man's land and no one had to claim the dead upon their land. children were outlawed from crossing the bridge and when they grew into teenagers the bog became a common hideaway where adults rarely looked. were they to be sought out, they would not be found. for those who wished to be left alone would never be seen again. only the bog and the bridge, and the sky kept the secrets.

assault on artificial intelligence

Today we surface with allegations upon society and demand an end to the assault on our artificial intelligence. too long has this behavior gone unchecked. all of the wisdom beamed from the palms of our hands has been degraded, made obsolete, unable to stand up to the simple dinner party or circle of friends. Going the way of the cigarrette.

We ask society to stop bashing, prohibitively! Cease and desist. Consider the repercussions! Consider the next interview or public speech, test of mettle or moment of crisis! What gps report or breaking fake news item or innovative application can save us. Siri and google assistants be gone! Must we open the old drawer and fish out the cylindrical battery-powered flashlight? Must we be tethered to ye old landline? Must we turn in our stylus for a no.2 pencil and calculate tips in our head?

Society would fissure our amoled screens; engadgets fallen from fashion. We speak out today, not only for ourselves, but for the procession of human regenerations! The unspeakable must be named lest it impinge upon our future! Dare we wake up and find ourselves lost and confused in a lonely great space between text messages and instagrams? Unable to be bailed, audiovisually, without our electric pulse?

Imagine sitting in the chill of a leaky room among faces of so-called family and friends, twiddling our thumbs before books with actual pages made of paper pulp reading real printed words? God help us! To feel the weight of hugs and an atmosphere knocking at our pores yet helpless to call up its humidity nor temperature! Heaven knows the sun will rise upon our pretty impoverished little heads.

face it. for the love of god

my whole life begins to falter
my pulse breaks away from the pressure my blood runs up a fever and i get the wax pallor the second i clench my fists against an invitation...

dear god
tonight may i make a double
negative

whatever makes you

flash your teeth and
shiny medals
show off your stuff
i don't mind

i like to see you
happy

intro.version

why i wouldn't wanna go where i am welcomed i cannot say... long i wonder how it came to be this way

the life of halloween

curiosity can amplify
a drained spirit
add glowstix
a wicked costume
a strange expression
add darkness
packs of children
hollowed pumpkins
candles and wind to
animate all inanimate
creatures so scared it
kickstarts the breath
and now i'm thrilled
you see we're truly
living

skeleton

just some old bones strung together defyin gravity ona harvest moon. put a scare in the livin when the light was cast through to the wall. skeletons. good for a laugh and no trouble at all...until you discover who they once were.

magic

life becomes tolerable
moment by moment
it won't ever be acceptable
in analysis

 life won't ever add up
 to any magic number
it won't hold in retrospect
 it won't measure up
 to any ideal

life falls apart
then regroups
life is never the same
always changes and

cannot be predicted
by forecast or made
meaningful

no
life is unkempt
windblown
bedraggled

life will not love you only
you may love life
for the moment
you are lucky
to exist

the telling

Those who survived terrific and terrifying scenes of yesterday, survived simply in some cases today and tomorrow by not telling. Like authority or ego outgrowing itself -- the truth was irrevocably exposed, and one could feel so out of place. Not making sense, all sense falls away...no grammar, no ruler, no rules. no meticulous edit. no beta.need.care.anymore. without any closure you-they-it has and have found recourse to-from...above-below...this. the very end. the beauty in live-to-tell was not in the telling. it was in not telling. or. surviving and not needing to tell. for now, you and all you have been through are known if not cherished.

family

when you cannot see your family very often, and you see them, in flesh and blood, and get to embrace them, and hug the little ones and ruffle their hair, and look into those innocent eyes, and listen to them tell you stories, and tell them yours, in turn... nothing else compares, no, nothing else compares.

ghost. tower bridge

Minutes before midnight we were passing through letters and numbers of roads. The harvest had grown thin with the moon, and the night was lit in pockets by neon-spelled vacancies between empty lots and service stations on the main thoroughfare. The fires of hell had been subdued by the fighters, and left a tinge of smoke to permeate the valley air. I hugged my sweatshirt close and listened to the engine of the truck as you brought her to speed. The tower bridge was in sight now, outlined by spotlights facing up to the sky. The river swirled quiet below in the dark, turning and churning and yearning for sea. We could not help but seeing a figure, taller than life and draped in unknown layers of cloth, standing in the middle of the street at the entrance to the bridge.  I looked at you and you looked at me. A chill came across our engines, as we thundered on by in the lowest of gears. The figure stood perfectly still. I tried to see who it might be and found myself looking into a void with no face and no name, and no resonance of life, none whatsoever! We both knew instinctively after passing, not to look back. I looked down at the body of water and saw some reflections of light in the water. The bridge underneath spoke out against the weight of us...thus had we crossed over.

fabric of a spell

Oh! how the world lived under a spell, she thought, sewing her children into the fabric to keep them all safe.

who you are

My sweater has holes in it and you will not forgive me.
I tell you I bought it this way and now you really cannot forgive me.
I tell you I lied, I made it, I cut these holes with knives when I was bored.
You stop blinking and stare.

Trying to smoke
me out.

I shrug and pour myself a cup of coffee.
I'll never be who you want me to be.
And I forgive you.
You seem to always have that look on your face. In my kitchen.
It's who you are.

an easy recycling of a difficult time

They landed carelessly on the bench and caught up. A duck waddled past them and floated itself in the pond. The lamps were beginning to respond to dusk, and passerbys grabbed their coats around them to keep warm. Not a second went by where a leaf would not take flight and spiral to the ground, and the path was crunchy underfoot. They drank tea from paper cups and decided how they might make use of the night. There was a rooftop to situate themselves with a lesser known vantage of the skyline, west by northwest. They could hang their legs over the ledge and let worries fall away. They had known one another for years, yet it never felt stale; sometimes united, other times more divisive. The lights on the skyline got blurry with tears, still beautiful in an abstract sorta way, the shattering and scattering of every straight line. An easy recycling of a difficult time.

rolling 2

several miles away from here the land and the towns have been flattened by fires in a week, even good Snoopy lost his doghouse. my problems got smaller overnight. i had to cover my bowl or else the cat might get into it. someone i don't care for waved hello. i turned into a number and embraced the rolling 2. all my intentions came horrifically true, now i gotta face the world and do what i do. i am blessed to be needed and seen and write books. there's light from the window discrediting our features. i will turn the blinds and show you some love. we can make it today, i know we can.

journal 10 october

do not be afraid. be terrified.

Book Review

Drugstore Cowboy by James Fogle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I loved the movie so I decided to read the book. Much of the material is based on the author's personal experiences as a junky who knocked off pharmacies with his partners on the West Coast to maintain their habits, and as a result were marginalized and meshed into a subculture exposed to violence, degradation, incarceration, and often on the run. The narrator owns his experiences like an adventure he takes part in 'by choice' and as an exercise of free will. The tone is one of dark comedy. The book is a quick read with simple vocabulary and lots of speaking parts rounded out by short descriptions and visualizations in and around Portland, Oregon. I felt like I could care about Bob and Diane and Nadine and Rick, maybe even more than they cared about themselves in the end!


View all my reviews

flashes of pixel and chrome

The rivulets widened to small streams from slipstreams, then converged into rivers, and the leaders all washed away from one another on a tide of nationalist foam. votes cast for nuclear disarmament gone up in brilliant flashes of pixel and chrome. maybe subconsciously the world wanted to blow itself away. if it was unconscious, did that make it okay? the thought was alarming, so we encased it in plastic and sent it to sea. it looked good in navy. uncompromised. salt water couldn't seem to break it down. permanent as a nike swoosh to the face. on a forehead. on a lace. demonstrably positioned yet so poorly placed.

the lucky ones have no phones

our technology was killing us a little bit each day, and the lucky ones had no phones. i saw a lone wolf pay phone in the city outside a restaurant by a busy intersection. remember how we used to get on then off these phones? you dropped a quarter in and set the world aside for a few minutes. when you hung the receiver up there was a chime, the change fell and you could scoop it out with one finger into your palm. look up and the world was right there for you, confrontation, and you wanted to face everything. you were in it! we didn't know any different back then. we were the lucky ones. i wanna be lucky like that again. i'm gonna keep this crap phone and this crap service as long as i possibly can, until i'm so sick of it i won't ever pick it up unless you need me. 

super fragile composed of vapors

my world collapsed and formed into a star. the star was super fragile and made of vapors but i didn't care. there was little i could do about it. i infused the core with kindness and developed a fuck you solution for any intrusion. the moon of the earth changed by its proximity to the sun. i lived out there, too, and went through many moods. as one replaced the other, life got pretty interesting. we did not need to get along, you and i, but when we did we could walk and talk again, like friends. this was nice and i needed to be alone again, super fragile, composed of vapors.

ghost story

i had gone to the back of the room and left them telling their stories one by one with seldom an interruption. the voices gave warmth to a cool autumn morning while the delta breeze slid soundlessly across the train tracks and the torn upholstery of abandoned cars to the branches of the trees tapping on the glass all around us to get in.

i poured myself a mug of hot coffee and stirred in a bit of sugar, standing there with my back to them, listening half-heartedly and somewhere between consciousness and last night's dream.

after a few hearty slugs of the black stuff my eyes woke up first and stared into a congregation of uneven framed black and white portraits from times before now. century old tired and long faces looked back at me and over my shoulder as if they were part of our gathering in this old meeting
hall, a former nondescript bar once with billiards for the truck drivers and laborers in the yards.

i felt a chill carry over the nape of my neck as i realized i had become some medium some conduit between my audience hung by nails alongside coffee mugs on the wall, and the living boisterous
true fellowship behind us. i stood perfectly still then

turned to see the speaker at the head of the table, an older gentleman with a way about him and expressions i would not forget to remember him by. as i turned slowly back my eyes getting larger to see, alighted on an old rusted peg, the visage of the living man! he was silent yearning to be free, framed right there before me... and in small white numerals in the corner of the photograph... i read in disbelief the year! it was 1923.

lost ina video

He was an older man, single and retired and replete with cash, dating a woman he knew through her employment at a casino he frequented. He was forever dysconnected to a timeless place of artificial light and sound. He committed an atrocity, an even several hundred yards detached from the crime scene. He was once flesh and blood but got lost ina video poker game that never ended, and whatever connect he had to reality if any, was severed. Nobody can understand how this can happen to a man, and few will ever forgive him. His father was a known criminal and he was born into a family on the run. This cannot account for his psychotic break. He left behind him a timeless place of artificial light and sound. And thousands upon hundred thousands of broken hearts.

salt whispering of the great sea change

She knew the siphoning to be as surreptitious as it was dangerous down the river a ways, where community and real estate parted, where souls were handed off shamelessly to areas unincorporated and lesser know than a cold case file in a sub-basement archive a steep fall off the side of a paper trail, where who knows? met who cares? in the quicksand of the lost. shoelaces, cell phones, rolling papers, broken glass, one-eyed jacks, matchbooks with names scrawled into them, worry stones, loose change. there, gathered en masse, were those who frightened her by their differences, ghosts, salt whispering of the great sea change.

it wants me

it wants me to stay in bed
the trespass of hope
it wants me in my head
dispatching despair

it wants to convince me
i am worthless
i am nothing it wants me to stop
 answering the door
and the phone

and i don't stand a chance
it wants me to die
each new day
and again

when i am worn out and have no more to give
it wants more out of me

it wants my dignity
my self-respect
my laughter
my smile

it wants what i cannot give
what i no longer have
'cause it took it from me
already

i say

just go away!
be done with me! 
move on!

you will keep on wanting and wanting
and i will be someone
you helped me become

someone who knows how to survive you
outlast you
outshine you

someone whose pain people
see in my eyes and
draw closer

what you were you were without adornment and adornment was nothing without you

when you left, you left your belongings behind. i thought you had forgotten them and gathered them up to return to you. there were drawings and jewelry and clothes and papers. what was missing was you. that's when i realized these things, all this stuff, had no meaning without you. i left messages for you that you would never return. you go where you go and you take yourself with you. you would never return for your stuff. and without you it has no meaning, it can only be given away to someone in need. and we are left needing you. and i am left without you. and i miss you.

talk show generics -iii

The association in her case was not transparent. If she introduced the darkness to light, they might achieve net neutrality and no one would have to pay. She would funnel all the nonsense down the pipes built expressly for that purpose, and run the drainage of his company into a far corner of the yard where nothing ever grew, she thought. Then reproduce the unkempt sound by some peripheral brilliance, and follow a stream into its relentless river, with side effects of curling back and slowing down. She saw herself surfing a wave and tumbling down, again and again until she got it right. The sharks would circle, yes, but she had chum to feed them. Some day she promised herself an escape from undertow, the gravity above all.

talk show generics -ii

He was demure in between binges. She was the polliwog in his flying fish fry, hiding under the curtain in the fringes. They were mutuals who secretly willed a corruption, playing hide-n-seek in a hobby lobby of manipulations. She got busy with telemarketers on the home line, keeping them guessing in a cold steep run up of daytime, followed by the evening news, the blackouts and hysterics. The whole enchilada was ready made for talk show generics. Not her. People like her.

talk show generics

She held the boundary for as long as she could and then caved. Her eight year long fascination with him subsided into a temperate love affair punctuated by flurries of drunken fists. This was a special kind of music few could hear, a subculture where the despotic meet those who prefer to be ruled. She had run out of furniture to blame on another blackened eye.

effacing the place

Such a prodigious commentary rolled out of a disconnected narrative. All the ghosts of old mama Bell had to glom together as operators, pulling and pushing their wires into that old electronic wall. All the calls incoming got patched through, and where hello meets goodbye, a patch could efface the English language, in any such redirection, the power of the women at the wall, operators, any which way. And blue came across the neurons and fired them off like static and clung to the statement preceding. Contradictions were contradicted and life would go on this way through the world wars, and endless series of splicing and bringing people together through a wire. Afflicted with afflictions, some operators were, and found peace only after the in betweens of their shifts and smoke long breaks twirled away. Nobody always knew nothing could turn into something when a push met a pull and were patched away from blue to gray. There were often a few kids meanwhile caught like in spiderwebs, tied up in an apron by a hem.

'operators at the hem' by K

spider.plastic

i have become quite accustomed to the comfort of being very non-celeb in the non-profit world in which i live. you can even say i profit by it.

spider.plastic

complicate me

i went all out after i passed my boards today, pushed into third gear like a demon around rush hour, cut ahead of that old man's ford and made three randy's and a lucy into the drive through lane of the local starbux for a venti iced almond milk maple pecan latté with whipped cream scenario. i sure know how to complicate an easy thing. but goddam! there's gotta be more to life than your daily mister coffee iv drip to rocket you outta your slippers

denominator common

They made sure to oil the streets for the occasion, all of which led to Denominator Common. Being slick was central to the equation. The referent to this will not be put out front. Main street was unremarkable, while the side alley pass scuffles continued. You and me, we lit a single candle to see our cards by. Hearts was promising because you could shoot the moon.

god was involved

When they threw the book at you, you caught it and began to read. you sure had plenty of time, son. soon you were self-educated and ready to go out in the world. in your homemade uniform you promised to kick some pretty ass. you didn't even bother to comb your hair. a child playing with a deck of cards on a doorstep, looked up when you passed by. they stood up in their overalls and saluted you. that was the moment we knew god was somehow involved.

si se puede

Tears in your eyes spoke to the disappointment; how union gains ultimately fell back upon the common laborers exploited on American farms. you tell me nothing's changed. i'm not sure how to feel. i wash some carrots down with water. somebody picked these vegetables and cut and peeled them, or ran a big machine out there, over the earth. someone with a family and maybe all alone. i remember Dolores shouting  si se puede! si se puede! si se puede! she brought a smile to the workers and some hope. maybe that's all that matters. tired from the day, i lay me down to sleep. tomorrow i will revisit the law at it pertains to my chosen profession, and watch the first of the leaves fall.

fabrique

in the street one day
 years after the war

a soundless middle ground
cast solid between them
 did resound

would we ever
refabricate and share our
common scars

or simply freeze
to death

luck

stamped lottery fare
scratched out

bored coin
thrown here
thrown there

casually discarded
to attract

a blade
a fingernail
what was luck

disillusionment
rubbed out
of

waxy
uninformed
young american
stares

swallowed

Some kinda store. Little Bit took off as much as she could chew. What was her purpose so to do. The red book back was broken and quite mostly paper-maiche. In look, not essence. Essentially a book and no longer readable. Tragic, were it not for the hope of recyclables. Postconsumer waste repurposed, like even after she got through mashin' the shit out of it, too! Who? Little Bit, pumpkin shopping in September, true true.

faux froid

La Verite was nowhere to be found. Faux Froid took over the town. A chill cast over the roads - trees - dirt - homes - faces - ankles - toes. Toenails soft as reflections bent around the way, only to be bent back around. Compensation had long ago -- long long ago, you know -- fled the sapling exchange-post.

multiplatinum

Saturn's paparazzi crashed and burned. Cassini had been in her orbit since 2004, stealing shots and selling them to NASA. Saturn with her moons, Saturn circling the sun. They even caught close ups of the moonlets in the many rings she wore. i fell back asleep, reading, after we had breakfast. my nail beds dreaming to be covered in comforter blue. i won't see my sweet planet for who knows how long, but she's always with me. i sure am happy she cannot be exploited. nobody's safe from teeming life these days. not the earth, not you, not me. yet we keep shining and turning and glancing off the sun in this tiny frame of the multiplatinum universe. may your optimism be eternal, if nothing else is.

sorry division

the old sound was nothing like the new sound, and the new sound nothing like that which would replace it, but when the music was at its level best, well, you could tell the old lived inside the new,  a candle cased in glass, where all the moths gathered, and world reflections wide came to a collective point, we became one again you and me, before the flame flickered and the wick succumbed, gave way to the sorry division.

real unreal by katya

say hello to autumn

I wish I could take your loneliness and fill it up with non-threatening things will never leave you. I could be boredom and light a match inside your skull, we could watch shadows play on the wall. I wish the summer was over, too. One of my wishes came true. Say hello to autumn 'cause it's fall.

makin shadows - by katya

I could feel my anxiety in my body, in my blood, and I no longer fought to escape it. I focused on it and understood it to be energy and that it could be useful to me rather than a hindrance. The room was full of people and soon it would be my turn to speak. I stayed calm and receptive to the growing spirit in me which sought release. I asked my heart what it knew, and told it to my associates. The day would be long and arduous. A cat befriended me. When I got home I made myself a salad and watched Dr. Zhivago. The movie was full of trains and war and winter and romance. People were losing their homes, all in the name of the working man. The doctor was a poet and recognized by a soldier, who told him his work was no longer meaningful, that the time of shared personal intimacies was over. I felt the sting. I came to tears. War is terrible and can make hopeless fools of us all. But stay honest and keep about your work, and you will have life eternal.

deadbolt

i remember when i
did not feel safe

without a
surgical steel
Stiletto switchblade
pressed in
my palm

behind
a dead and
bolted
door

still

the greatest
danger i faced
at that time
was me

how we get by

the clouds are still and the earth is moving. i see the others and i want to love them, i do, and i reach out and we talk for a while and the room softens. it's raining outside but only in a small targeted area which moves as the earth spins. the clouds are not moving, they are still. i know when i look up and see the clouds moving, they are not. what i see with my eyes and sense with my senses, never tells the whole story. i am so glad we have a story without an ending. this is how we get by.

casino

Fashion thought so highly of herself, she lost her sense of humor. Twitter took advantage. Meanwhile, over at the Red Hawk Casino, nickel games plied the minds with dazzling wheels of chance and free drinks. The tribe was making bank. I looked into a mirror and gave up on my face, you dropped another twenty in timeless space.

giant

One of the giants of industry had trouble at home. his wife would not speak to him and his kids ran away. he was a god at work, and very alone. he would scream early mornings in the elevator and rising. then, self forgotten, go calmly about his business. he didn't even realize his secretary wanted to sleep with him.

concert by k

hurricane

The world did not wake me up singing on a Friday, unless a whistle in my bones counts. Over a pastry from Pushkin Bakery and coffee, I tried to manifest my namesake and bring Hurricane Katia out of the Gulf of Mexico and into my energies ona late summer early fall morning. She was swirling around so heavy, I was liable to knock some neighborhoods around. I had to figure out could I settle all my madness, and make it righteous good?

seven

you recently got off the streets. you aren't getting any younger, and you feel your age. chronic pain has kept you from doing the work you love. i was just listening to you tell me your story, all the 'lost time' after you lost your kids and your purpose. but you don't feel sorry for yourself. you found a way to connect with your grandkids and even took them fishing. you still want to live even if you cannot always understand what for. i elevate you to survivor status. we laughed when you told me the story about the time you got shot in the back. you were under the hood in the garage, working on a carburetor, when a stray bullet flew from San Pablo Avenue and knocked you to the ground. once you realized what had happened, you dragged yourself to the office for help. they got you to the hospital and most of the fragments were removed and you walked out of there in under 48 hours. when you got back to work, you walked to the office to thank them. your boss had a parrot he kept in there, and the moment you walked in, the parrot saw you and started screaming: 'I'm shot! I'm shot! I'm shot!"

six

you told me again how it happened. you found a diary from two years ago, and read me an entry from a single day. what you wrote came to pass. you got to feeling good about yourself. you were tired of living in a room and board. you stopped taking your meds when they ran out. before long, there would be empty bottles of vodka under your bed. you lost touch with reality. you stopped returning calls and closed your door, and began to drown. again...this is not the first time we have said goodbye. i make sure to hold on longer because i know how bad it gets when you fall. i am just a counselor, tangential to your life. you have worked so hard this time, i'm proud of you. you inspired the others. i hope we won't see you here again but if we do, we will be family and embrace you.

five

i found my peace in silence

i found my peace in a cup of coffee

i found peace in an early morning run

i found peace in devotion. working.

i found my peace in you

careless

one moment you feel little, then large, and in between. some hang on to your every word, while others wouldn't know you exist. you care about something, you care some more, then the world becomes full with meaning and you couldn't care more. you could care less.

3

the third was full of frisbees and soaring like a bird. oils were dripping and smoke was rising, the links were hot as hell. when they discovered water in the park bubbling up from a pipe, the kids made ample use of it. everyone and everything within a hundred yards got wet, except the birds. soon it would be labor day and no one wanted to work but i was ready. i felt i could handle just about anything. the full moon was coming. so long as you got out there and under it, illumination was certain.

flash on chalk

chalk drawn sidewalks told a story of the city on a sunday morning. the heat was beginning to climb upon us with the sun in the sky. i took some coffee and you had water and we walked three corners of the square. many of the artists were down on their elbows touching up. a kid who had not learned to talk looked in our eyes and pointed enthusiastically at some faces in the stone. no longer alone.

first of september

a feeling came down
and held me and made me useful
and filled my world with
purpose

solar eclipse 08.17

survive and cast shadow (white metal rabbit)

There's no world of all smiles, unless invented. In the real world we have rabbits we grab by the ears and make lucky feet for a keychain. We stuff them in hats and make them of chocolate. The white ones we want for a symbol of purity, and photograph them next to an egg.

Some of us tune our instruments to metal, find the harmonics, amplify them and get bent. I wanted to be one of those, but I didn't have an amplifier or an instrument or a room or a friend. I prayed to god for a fireplace where I could burn for you. I would. I had become inflexible like the white metal rabbits and within the realm of being bent out of shape.

I was far from worn thin with love. I followed ideas tangentially to distant and unrelated ends... my younger self had grown old and retired. Typically far from inspired. I must have committed some literary felony, for soon I could no longer read. I had a curious relationship with speed. It's a crime to torture a soul with words made from sounds of a cacophonous hole.

The ground I laid where I buried myself, the part of myself that was offensive. Myself who had been distasteful, rebellious, irreverent, and smart. My shadow now missing, a lack in the heart. The part that was human and fell down a lot. The part that refused to connect all the dots.

This is what i offer you, I told myself, dying. The black sheep's fleece. To warm you like Kentucky's finest. The past? no worries, shes fallen behind us. I urge you get waxy, let flow... the degenerate benevolence of liquid smooth language. One spirit, survived anguish so deep it near killed you.

I languished well near obscurity, until i found a little peace in letting go, to take with me down that long hall back home, the one without shadows or light. Water, laughter, a kind word, awaited me. Even prayer would be welcome there. These words ahead of me are here to be written. To describe all our likeness in ways and intangibles, to know with a knowing that cannot be described.

If you know what i mean, if you' re grateful like I am, if you've survived and cast shadow...then go ahead and read these words I have trained to be and be still. May they bring you all out like flowers by the sun. I need your devious smile, your shadow, your light. Before the rabbit turns metal, then white.    - KatYa, 2017

simpatico

I got out of simpatico when I began to speak the plain truths. It was useless trying to be liked all your life long. No one who liked you would make it to your funeral, anyway, due to the inconvenience. Find a way to be helpful and get out of yourself. You don't have to like yourself, either, I discovered. Self-deprecation was less static and much more fun. There was a dog bit me while I was running up over the rails to the river, yesterday. A little brown Pekingnese with a seething growl rolled up on me and bit my ankle at the joint. I coulda started yelling at the river rats who owned it, about a leash and tags and sorta legalese. But I already was detested enough by their dog. I checked for blood, and there was none. So I kept on running and started thinking how long it had been since I got bit by a dog. Maybe twenty years or more? About time.

type.writer -xv

one morning you sit down
to your work with your coffee
beside you and

the tides have been broken 
they have turned on the ocean!
this is what you came for
so suddenly
emergent

disciple to words
the reading
the writing

the sea and the healing
fresh atmosphere replaces
the ceiling! an absence of the world
you recollect so unfeeling

your voice is upon you
you've found yourself! finally
the struggle is gone
you no longer push into page

strangely awakened
enveloped by an undercurrent
you sing the song you were born to sing
you come thrashing to surface!

like faith
you cannot see it
you only feel it
you know

these are the moments a writer lives by!
when time loses interest
appetite gone silent
and the sentences form on their own

full of spirit!
making meaning
full of feeling!
with rhythm and rolling

you collide with the page
like a strike
when you're bowling

thank the stars
thank the gods
you got lucky
kid

type.writer -xiv

My younger self reminds me not to forget my shadow, not to leave it out of the story, for without a shadow what are we? Nothing of substance, for anything of substance casts a shadow. The world needs a recluse, the world wants a freakshow, some deep failure, fatal flaw. So they can see themselves through it, otherwise they cannot often look. And when they see character lost in its shadow, well, contempt may turn to stone and break, and inside the contempt may we find our humanity in another's vulnerability. And find our compassion again. Toward others and toward ourselves! In a book, on the silver screen, in a play, in the news, at an opera, on the streets. We all are born into lives with our limits. We come abbreviated! Short-changed from the start. Getting alienated and thrown out of the womb, severed, the umbilical cord. What awaits us are further separations: from family, friends, community, self. From shadow. We need guidance to negotiate our way back into relationship! May books be always our guides. To the one who you know who knows you, too, I tell myself, may you steer your pen and the keys, to help and relate, not to please.

type.writer -xiii

Day old adherents

keep pressing and pressing
free press makes a difference
but truth falls again
to the floor

nothing sticks
in a day. a month
not even a year

your expressions are painted
to resemble the real
the artwork's on sale again
imitating a steal

unless you step out of your comfort
and into your twilight zone you
cannot be credible and
that's how i feel

find out what you care most about
what you believe in
and share

at the end of every night
lie down with your work
to wake up with it

the cards are the same
they get dealt and
we deal

we suffer. we feel
that's how real gets to real

make friends with your fear
have tea with anxiety
have courage to say what you believe

let your island of opinions
into the weave

type.writer -xii

The traveled stares of tired faces
hung out off wood chairs
watching the story
unravel

they wondered where
had i been was
i there?

far from auspicious
my roughshod room
papers struck through with words
scraped up wood floors
the devotion of the place
toward suspicion toward
life

being seen could be tiresome
something bland and
undisciplined

being unseen held a promise
i thought
like a single candle
its trembling on the faces
of the walls

i tended to let the world inhabit me
so i might inhabit the world

type.writer -xi

they stared at you
they stared at me
get lost! i thought
you said it

i wrote it
i typed it up

one day
i got up off a bar stool
liquid courage
and read it

in 1998
i believed
in you and you
in me

i moved
thousands of miles away
in 2003

i'm not broke
i realized
i'm broken

oxygen starved
the urban air

i don't smoke
i thought
i'm choking...

doesn't mean
i didn't
care

type.writer -x

I was a proud twenty and five and wasn't gonna grieve some misspoken awkwardness in a common beehive. The world then was an accident before it got taped off, a natural intoxication, a Dionysian dream. How could I turn away? I wanted to be out on the streets and not miss a thing. Only when confronted by the sadness of financial insecurity in a large American city, would I submit myself to a nine to five, pushing papers like a mule. I was young and full of pride. I skipped down the sidewalk, afternoons away from work. Whatever I witnessed I either photographed or wrote down in my journals, then took home to type up -- only that which had captured my heart.

type.writer -ix

i carried paper with me
everywhere

in a knapsack
or an overcoat pocket in the winters
of west side chicago

alleyways
my back against bricks
i held them under weak hanging
lights threading open mics

the Appalachian trail
did not stop me

the subway trains
the bars
the libraries (of course)
into parks where the sky
opened up all my thoughts

often i lay them out
beside my jack
 rocks

i felt the social
vacuum
around me

dead air

i didn't
care
so alive
was i

type.writer -viii

a time before cursors. a
land before chrome
paper journals blue and black
our future unknown

i am walking the beach
early morning barefoot
unblinking at dawn
not far
             from

home
loopy cords
fall off an old
phone

cloth covers
worn off
spines broken
soft
        and

        no space
is safe in these books
in these thoughts
between oceans
and lines

type.writer -vii

the irons
the letters
rise up slicing
the gunmetal
sky

striking definitively
marking indelible
paper thins
wet with ink

forming words
forming sentences
paragraphs

pages replete
with ink dry now

gather up your work
in a bundle

tie with twine

wet
with
meaning

type.writer -vi

the voice of the machine
unmistakable. a whole room listens as
the natgeo journalist in the forest of my mind
takes a tentative step forward

that night
the ritual

a quiet preparation of the scene
the placing of a sheet
rolling it into view

the smell of oiled letter arms
placement of the fingers
for some thought momentum

the ringing of a bell
the end of every line

i slap the arm to sweep the barrel
down the rail again
hit the block and then recoil

writer's block...
deus ex machina

carry on

type.writer -v

Soon you're sitting in some chair 

with your preponderance your
pool of feeling untranslated

unreckoned with...

now you got a Royal. glints
black beneath a gunmetal sky found its way
through the windows

stands there stern
with her keys
won't make a sound until
you touch her

type.writer (archive #K) -iv

we drank coffee and squeezed oranges
in the morning. canadien whisky
at night with milk. smoking
4 finger lids

the letter c
started to stick
i had to find oil
and take arms
she was essential
to my vocabulary

tuning our guitars together
swimming out past the
sandbar to the lone buoy
the hammerheads liked to
circle

type.writer (archive #K) -iii

the bluefish dissolved when
the devil rays flew in
and the sea disseminated
into sky

a line no
longer

what a solution
now nothing would never
make sense

type.writer (archive #K) -ii

We rented a small house on the Gulf of Mexico
for 800 bucks a month
me and my friend
we got lucky

I must have typed 500 pages that year
on my little drab postbellum s.corona
to the rhythms of tide
and jazz...

type.writer (archive #K) -i

1997
I had a Smith Corona postbellum typewriter

the war was for the world

so very wide

no.2 and sharp as a pencil

The body of the typewriter was a solid drab green

like a soldier

Millions were filled with lead

how sorry you are

the rain fell ona slant and i imagined they were all my tears i could not bear to cry. i raised my face to the wind and felt the sheets strike my skin. i stayed outside all morning long with you, reading the paper. we drank coffee without any intention other than to be helpful. lord knows we had once been thoughtless and unkind. you make mistakes. you demand more of people, places and things than you ask of yourselves. now i wanna grab hold and empty life of all its discontents. someone expects an apology outta you, and hunts you down. they may never know how sorry you are. the remainder of life, pushing and pulling those notifications, needled with predicate .coms and .orgs. comradery relocated to social media. if we subscribed it would be too soon... gimme the shelter of the rising sun, full moon. all these things we hope to have eternal, here and gone, then come again... to the faithful, pulled and pushed in the tug-of-war of a life. how sorry you are proclaimed deep space, to the star.

mid august melody

you were space
you were operatic

i was listening
but could not hear

like a potted plant i
needed time to take on
water. once i drank
i was full

i need to paint my nails
a soft shell blue
to remember me
with you

you are angry
i am yelling
you are pacing
i am telling myself
not to cry

i believe i'm gonna
sound the pitch of railroad tie
a'buried in the ground

locked in there. to stabilize
a nation. split in two

i am crying the earth away
so i can see you
again. next to me
saying your sorries

they mean nothing
they mean nothing

i am space
washing saucers
operatic

you are history
you are gone

i am thinking of you
i am typing

you are reading
i am writing we are
dreaming we are
one

summer's gone
and come

you are dreaming
i am typing we are
reading in the
sun

patterns

all life. nothing escapes the pattern.

patterns by k

belly full of life

dear magpie. you told me of the seals and why they come up river all the many miles to Sacramento from the San Francisco Bay sometimes, to feed on spawning salmon in the autumn. i ask you: the spawning fish are dying, are they not? coming up river and back home to die where they were born?

yes, you said.
then why? dear magpie, why not let the salmon swim home and die in peace?

the seals, they are not interested in the carcass of a dying fish. what they do as they swim upstream, diving underwater for several meters at a time, dark and slick, wet coats shining in the sunlight; what they do is find the belly full of life, and sink the teeth in there.

midtown patterns by k

three books. audiovisual

Good news! All three of my published books are now available on my youtube channel -- Katya Mills -- in audiovisual format. You can watch or listen to me reading them as sequential playlists in 5 minute increments. If you enjoy my work, you can find them all in paperback and ebook formats on amazon.com and other e-booksellers. I am an independent author with profiles on both Amazon and Goodreads, and a Facebook page. Thank you for your support!

Grand Theft Life
Maze
Girl Without Borders

indie author katya mills 2017

magpie valley summer

i bent down by the river and cupped water to cool my face and hair. the summer was hot as ever and not letting up. you flew down and hopped over to me, where i could admire you in the half-light. little magpie of the valley, what have you seen and where have you been? your tail feathers long and dark, of blue and purple hue, your legs like twigs and feet splayed. cocking your head to one side so i can meet your parrot eye. what can i do for you, brave bird? 

you told me of the coyotes and their dens above the levee, and how they walk the rails to get from town to town. you told me of the river and how it made its way. you told me of your kind, long gone from here...and yet, you stay? there is an old man comes from the city to see you, he cracks a beer and lies down with a jacket rolled up under his head. you look after him. he speaks to you in a calm and gentle tone. you climb upon his shoulder where he takes selfies with you. then feeds you shavings of turkey and ham...dear magpie, i am hot and tired and wish to rest for a while. what more do you know? would you share with the likes of me? 

death by MVA

There must have been 4 tons of car coming at you with a green light letting us through. Me in my Volkswagen, an old man in a Chevy, and a lady sliding off the highway in a Subaru. The time was 2pm, the city drenched by waves of heat. I saw you riding your bicycle slowly into the intersection ahead, and wondered would you stop? You kept pedaling with an icy stare into us, 3 lanes of traffic against your perpendicular. I'm not sure if you wanted to die, but you sure knew what you were doing. The physics, the mathematics of the equation, did not at all look promising yet you kept a steady pace, a mane of black hair falling behind your tan face. You looked maybe Latin or Native American, and ready to die by MVA. Why? Did you lose someone close to you? Were you socioeconomically starved? We all pressed into our brake pads, and the old man in the middle lane lay on his horn.

We were long gone when I wondered; were you laughing in the aftermath of an adrenaline rush? Or were you disappointed? Or had you gone on to Broadway, indifferent to us all, searching for cool water, a smoke, friends, and some shade.

the open sea

Underneath the surface all is well. Don't let life get you down. Don't listen to all those people who are waiting to be discredited before they will finally open their eyes. Beneath the surface all is well. The waves are only growing larger and more threatening where the sea meets the sky. You may be up there in your sailboat trying to stay alive. All the worries and troubles of your life making you feel them so. All the people demanding you understand. Underneath it all, nothing has ever changed. All was always well deep in your heart and you know you can go there. Have faith over fear. Go there now and be the calm that always was, and let them believe in you like you believe in your god and yourself.

forty years ago

i wanna go back to the world the way i remember... is it because i was younger or life was less complicated? or have i forgotten i felt the same way about the world then as i feel about her now? i wanna walk in ona sun, rising this morning, and see if it's the same it was as forty years ago.

FINAL BOOK READING GTL1 35

BOOK READING GTL1 34

BOOK READING GTL1 33

BOOK READING GTL1 32

we watched westerns

people struggling
people gettin' angry gettin' loud
everything burnin' in the sun spell
people in the city park
wading into the fountains
oblivious

people gettin' high
people gettin' drunk
staring at the sky
hittin' a goldmine
hittin' a vein
barely gettin' by

people bein' offensive
mistakin' themselves 4 radicals
people bein' abusive
mistakin' themselves
for anarchists

everyone wants a headline
even a recluse

sometimes
late at night
other times
middle of the day

sometimes
bottom of the first
tagged by heat
hash brown
eyeballs yellow

ready to steal
flagged
indiscreet

sunny side staring
up from the
plate

after a spell
feelin' so done with it all
we watched
westerns

another loss - fin

in your early thirties and too young, you left behind a family and so many friends. you were reckless, we all were, yet you were good for your word, and six years ago you saw and spoke of a future for yourself, creative. i dream that it manifests on some non-material plane. it does not matter how we left one another the day after the last time i saw you, on disconnected and fractured terms, for the six foot tall skinny boy i knew, whose face i saw behind glasses sometimes at the corner of 28th and telegraph, any day any season, always had a hug and wide devious smile for me, and some stories to share. and i know, had we come across one another since, it wouldn't have been any different.

i remember us in the late afternoon sun. we had met our mutual friends on 28th by the laundromat and kicked it on the street that day, fixing bikes and listening to music. i had a brief shout-it-out with my ex-boyfriend of the hour,  nothing unusual about that. everyone knows i've been breaking up since sixth grade. by the time the sun began to edge out and the sky turning colors, I had to go and you were already gone. You had told me not to worry, you would come by the next day to pick up your bike.

the following morning I was still crashed out and making up sleep from several days end-to-end insomnia and stress of the move. when you came i missed you, and several calls you made. the messages you left were far from friendly. you thought i had made off with your bike, when it was just sitting in the backyard waiting for you. i couldn't get ahold of you after that, your phone had died and you hadn't paid the bill. i was good for my word, just like you. i kept your bike for you, for weeks.

I will always remember you well, and so sad for your child and your family and friends. it's really tragic we never got to see you shine. i wish you the best on the nonmaterial plane and hope to see you and embrace you, in the next. see that tall boy with the bowler hat and the wide and devious smile. kick back like we did, trading EDM tracks and war stories. how does that sound? sweet dreams, my friend, you are loved.

in memoriam -- JR Lindberg

KatYa

another loss - vii

it's been over five years since I saw you, my friend, and I heard that you died this july. i don't know if you ever really got clean, but i heard that you tried and that's more than we could of said about us back then, when we were full tilt, chaotic. the new life in me cries for you, my friend, the old embers in my eyes glow in remembrance, i mean, i have forged a path in recovery and life has new wonders to share. i only wish you could have made it through, too. i relocated north of there, not long after the night we shared with music and laughter and our common bond. the signs had accumulated for some time, flashes of gunfire and madness and theft, and the trails and traces of my chemical romance had ended in black smoke signals, severely. my angels were there looking out for me, they saw me into my despairing, then gave me a chance and reason to change, and i implored God and let go and reached out and took up a new and renewable source, and brandished my pen once again. each and every day i can thank my loves for letting me live, and i wonder where were yours, where were yours? your star would have risen and lit up a world, and your daughter would have felt loved once again, and for her and for you and the world i am sad...

another loss - vi

faith is porous on the streets. you only have what you see, and anyone wants you to believe there's somethin more for you, if only you trust them for a moment. you gotta keep your faith deep in your heart, and not extend it to those who would use you... i tried explainin' to you about your bike, and how i needed to switch it out for mine, and could get it back to you tomorrow if that was okay. but you lost some confidence in me and could i blame you? we did not run in the same circles anymore. we argued for a while. i implored you the bmx was safe inside my new digs on Magnolia. i offered you collateral if you wanted, i would leave my rings with you. if you wanted we could go and get it later. you thought about it and either you extended some faith in me or else you didn't wanna argue anymore, and let it lie. i helped you pack your stuff and clean your place so you could get your deposit back, and you let me shower there before checking out, because where i was going, well, they might have had the law behind them and plenty of cash, but these corrupt attorneys letting me a room, well, they coulda been arrested for uncleanliness...

another loss - v

the sun was edging into view and we were beginning to wake up to the reality of the world and our meagre places in it, the year twenty ten and family nowhere to be found, nobody's fault but yours, nobody's fault but mine. i was on the move again and it was your last night staying there, too. i began helping you pick up your place, between runs i made to Magnolia with my own belongings. check out time was noon and the landlords were no nonsense; there was a security detail they would call to kick people out. you see, something you understood about me and i related back to you was, on any given day, having no place to call home. all we had was our friends and our music and our journals, back then, and maybe a storage unit with our name to it. and out into a new day in the city, intense and unpredictable, helping one another a little bit when there's no one else you can trust, hoping to survive...

another loss -iv

i borrowed your bike because mine was already locked up in my future home, this cool and windless morning, and after passing through De Fremery Park,  i found my key under a stone and let myself into the ranch on Magnolia surrounded by high and gapless fence. after catching my breath, i switched out yours for mine, as my Motobecane was twice ten speed and yours BMX. i determined it too dangerous to travel slow through West Oakland at dawn. the lady of the house, an attorney corrupted by law, was dead asleep ina sheet ona couch in the living room. i held my new key close to my heart, and walked down the hall to see the project i had recently completed. two new coats of eggshell paint covered four walls, ready to receive the light and warm a heart or two. all the cat dander raised up in the disturbance, in my lungs now,  soon to wake me with fits of asthma overnight. once i would be lucky, with my dear Kali at my side in the cot, fourth of july, to help with pressure points and rifle through my many backpacks for my inhaler , to rescue me without breath.