dys.mantle it

they pick your bones

because they can and 

you're supposed to take it

capitalism says so

you haven't figured how

to dismantle that so you get drunk and sad

turning your anger

inward   #katyamills 

#blemish

hit all the keys

leave the blemishes in

let go of perfection. exhale

let them write us off 

a rock in the shoe

a distraction... let it be 

they deflate while we 

rise

#katyamills

September 5, 2022

Sacramento broke its all-time heat record 

i was feeling dead tired running central air relentlessly i

got my prescription filled. leaned in on the paper

writing forms bringing something to life

#katyamills

out.stand.ing

we run on sentences

sunshine coffee and rain

we stand out in a world 

run on credit and oil

and war

#katyamills

see by the heart

a fallen mood made my eyes

hide. they opened when asked

to lean into the demands of the day 

then closed like a book of magick

in time i would learn to see by

my heart. in time to see

by the heart  #katyamills 

zomby warhead

we all got a hundred problems 

and i got mine. zombie on the road

coffee seeking missiles capped with warhead aches

too early for the sun and so

we exist in darkness

#katyamills

starfish

on a superyacht 

at the bottom of the sea

their destiny as starfish

came to be

#katyamills

bend down low

they pick up the morning paper 

take the morning pills they watch

the markets fall and rise like

fortune and loves from long ago 

it's these memories lodged in the spine

can give them dynamite chills

#katyamills

1984

we caught our breath in an army 

navy store after running three blocks

you held a pocket knife

under my neck. gimme all you got

my face turned red and hot

i dropped an elbow in your gut you 

were my best friend

#katyamills

#PTSD

watching the many screens 

killing the endless hours and

they say there's a heart in your chest

i don't remember and they say 

there's thoughts in your skull

i don't know. but it's better

to be numb than feel

#katyamills

spirit plasticity

immortal again our spirits ascended

having circled the drain for years inside the human body

had we only remembered the future

we would have long ago wished

we were dead

#katyamills

either or

they wanted us dead

like an error in some brittle code 

we could crash the system

and the system wasn't nothing

without us

#katyamills

translucent orange

my brother made a family 

to keep the lineage alive while i 

produced only a masterpiece 

literary in nature to mark 

these times

#katyamills

paper gray

in the fields they look like deformed volleyballs

paper lanterns in the trees

why retire? the old man said 

keep working. eighty can feel like fifty 

paper gray wasp nests 

manufactured under the eaves

#katyamills

silverado

i drank the sugar water out

the bottom of a snow 

cone took a tumble in the forest

jumped a '78 Silverado for some men

gathering cedar wood for the winter

you cannot fake happiness why

would you?

#katyamills

leaving base camp

base camp

cool dead quiet before dawn

jumps into packs tied down

sheets spikes knots

and clothes

a thousand eggs for breakfast

a hundred cups tapped off 

the coffee urn

radios full of feedback 

my love my love the dreamers 

swoon

above the swirling winds 

howl around a hidden

peak

#katyamills

my subconscious

the things that keep me up at night

cats on catnip and cars on petrol

 kids lighting explosives in the alley

no longer bother me. you could say they

save me from my subconscious

#katyamills

scout

the scouts covered alot of ground 

in the 45 hours i was away

formed a line along the baseboards

dove into gaps in the caulking

yet they would not find the 

sugar

#katyamills

Volcano, CA

your son taught you how 

to take a photo remotely 

by your watch. we made a totem pole with our heads

the phone banded to a dogwood sapling

inland from a rocky 

beach

they called off the search 

a month later. all they found were our belongings

circling a carved trunk of cedar 

now hollowed into a home

for squirrels

#katyamills

ascension

life in all its sprawling nonsense 

and sincerity one moment full of the awful 

and thoughtless the next colored by some 

remarkable act of selfless ascension

#katyamills

8.10

there was a way. you could not go to bed a moment after nine. you could listen to the BBC and lie there between sleep and consciousness, or actually fall asleep. you could not get up a moment before five. you had to care for the animals before yourself. stretch the body and mind. you could say a prayer if you believed in gods or try to get your true feelings out. then a cold and hot shower for to see both sides of life. some boiled oats with sugar and coffee. there was no other way and the rules they kinda made themselves. #katyamills

swipe

how do you tell a story

when half your thoughts are liars?

swipe them away and

tell the truth

#katyamills

new high

sunday morning

jazz club

Tampa Bay. 1997

struck by a social chord they 

got the beat back

having failed to prosper

in willful self

isolation

#katyamills

8.8

they had a change of heart

subsumed by the weight of evidence

magnified by a fire sky

if you're gonna do a 180

may as well make the wheels 

sing

#katyamills

bang

the dreams wanted me

dead or alive. i blasted my way out

at 4am. now it's midnight

i'm fighting sleep again

another rockstar another 

bang

#katyamills

pass

he made a pass at me like a plane flying in low visibility without an instrument panel. i slapped his face. quickly. so nobody suffered.  #katyamills

8.10

a bar fight 

a skull fracture

no one knows who did it

deep in the forest

far away 

a lonely dog

calls out

#katyamills

commission

god is an artist

the commission has no deadline

drawing us in 

and out

brushing over us all

with fresh

oils

#katyamills

century HK

as a kid in Germany

he tangled with hitler youth

in 1938 got out alive

enlisted in WWII with the Allies

got a gold star tracking down gestapo in his homeland

went on a sociopolitical 

lean. advisor to every US administration imaginable!

2022 kicks back in New England

working on a century

recorded by the 

BBC

#katyamills

clingy vines

on the first of august 

he contemplated murder and suicide

she was with another man now

he picked up the brushes 

instead of the rifle. drew some clingy 

vines over a fence. they was

only thoughts 

#katyamills

Grace

all two and twenty years 

i wanna be a social worker she said

scribbling down our orders

 i came from a broken home

her blue-grey eyes hard yet

softened by hundred stacks 

of pancakes 

#katyamills