Friday 30 August 2013

jaded as jade

There i was...

Headed out from my apartment on foot, wearing cheap ass walmart moccassins showing my toes, dressed to the eights (a casual step back from the nines), with blood on my arms from where my four month old kittens attacked me while i was sleeping off a one night stand with my pen.

There i was...

A young american single white female, contemporary of all the other genXers using some sort of animated fiction to report the hideous truths that could never be received by the culture embedded within them.

There i was...

Takin' myself too seriously. All the way down the stairway, with my bicycle on my shoulder, to the street... and then some. Tryin' to take my ass light-heartedly through my morning. Riding on down the street, in the middle of the road at sunrise. Highlighted strands of hair falling out behind my Fuji Feather, licking the base of my neck, like blonde flames. Under the influence of anti-gravity. In the dark and baby blue of the dawn.

There i was...

Down the street after dawn. Dealing with all the personalities of the world in a single room... and then some. Tolerating as best i could tolerate. Day #5 without a cigarette. My own personality, the most difficult and least refreshing of them all. Splitting hairs with split personalities. Jaded as jade. Spitting in the wind.

There i was...

Banana fucking split! Sitting upright on my bike, riding back home. Five miles of legs. No hands. Praying i might take a dive on the railroad tracks. Just so i could feel something different.  Split ends and all my hair falling back anti-gravity to lick my neck, in the wake of me.

There i was...

Dealing with the sinking depression that clung to my soul, all of my life.
Sinking back into my pain, as the burning sun rose silently over my head. In the pits. In central california.

Here i am...

Split ends and all
In the wake of me

Without shade
Praying for a miracle
Jaded as jade

- Katya 08/13

Tuesday 27 August 2013

somewhere in the middle of nowhere

The prison industrial system had gone haywire. White collar criminals were housed with the social media criminals, in a less than secure fashion. They were hatching and then carrying out leveraged buyouts of miniscule candy-wrapping companies, via aggregate snatches of pooled, so-called friends; who then became encouraged to open their google wallets and paypal pocketbooks to support fabricated facebook (et al.) causes. 

The money was then laundered, of course, penny by penny, into offshore accounts administered by friends of the white collar criminals, through joint accounts. Then the money returned to the United States, clean, and ready to be put to use in any way possible to get the imprisoned braintrust of the two specialized areas of expertise, out from where they were currently located, ie,  somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Political inflluence and bribery, were the preferred methods. And were rather successful.

The prison industrial system had gone haywire. Statistics, like usual, had not yet caught up with the situation. Patterns and trends had not yet become visible. There were wealthy pyramid schemers and social media predators conspiring, while eating shrimp scampi and watching flat screen televisions in common areas which were wallpapered, carpeted, and quite nicely ventilated for somebody's comfort. This was somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Where your average taxpayer was seldom located (thus often unaware).

Somewhere in the middle of somewhere, your average taxpayer was busy working and coming home from work, eating, sleeping, fucking, arguing, drinking, watching family guy reruns... and returning to work in the morning. And doing that all over again. And doing exactly nothing on the weekends. Other than maybe babysitting or arranging babysitting for the kids. And all the aforementioned activities, in between. Oh, and watching meet the press so to have a finger on any non-developments in politics worth arguing about, customarily, at the lunch break.

The prison industrial system had gone haywire. Summarily. If haywire is still currency in the english language. The English language had gone beserk. What with the movement away from the Oxford standard and the Merriam Webster. Hardly anyone could remember who the hell Strunk and White were, anymore. Except that they rode tandem. Even less read their book on grammar, the Elements of Style . Exactly nobody read that 1918 text for fun, anymore. The Urban Dictionary got the nod. Wikipedia got the nod. Scrabble and lottery crossword scratchers were among the new tools which replaced the old tools. Punctuation was a luxury, not a necessity. Spelling was often a free for all.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, white collars combined forces with social media criminals to bilk millions of their hard-earned hundreds and thousands. Amounting to millions. While eating extravagantly and laying their scheming heads at night on feather pillows, on the taxpayer dime.

Inside the prison walls, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, was crime. The enforcers paid to enforce there, became careless and distracted. Being non-tech savvy was the norm for a guard. Hours of conversation in the well-ventilated, carpeted common areas, drifted to the topics of the inmates' expertise. Many a guard had his eyes opened to the new world of androids and their usefulness in killing paid time that had no precise designation. Somewhere in between locking and unlocking doors, spot checking rooms, etc.

This kinda special acquaintance between a man and mobile phone, quickly accelerated into an attachment disorder. The inmates knew the psychology, having experienced this, themselves. They did not share the psychology with the guards. The guards were not interested in psychology, anyway. Not until they lost their jobs over it. Long after taxpayers lost their paychecks. For having been easily enticed into ramping up privileges, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, at the confluence of white collar river with social media streams. The currency on the floor was now petty wifi favors. The extraspecial yet ultimately simple tasks of rooting phones for free wifi hotspots, to enable laptop access of mature internet content. To escape the eye of intranetworks and the data clocks of mobile corporate carriers. What mattered most to the guards who would soon lose their jobs, but not soon enough: getting mature content on to larger screens. They were easier on the eyes.

The prison industrial system was off the hook. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, on the taxpayer dime, in between the locking and unlocking of doors, on a cush-comfort carpeted feather down experience, where white collars collided with those found guilty of social media crimes, under the distracted watch of wannabe enforcers who spent the greater majority of their relaxed minimum-security level shifts, gambling or watching youtube videos or texting girlfriends and wives, and whom would soon lose their jobs...

Somewhere there in the prison system, on the taxpayer dime -- was crime.

Katya Mills 08/13

Sunday 25 August 2013

six different ways since sunday

The dreadlocks were thicker than fingers, and held by silver and gold rings in various outcroppings from his nappy, happy, pretty head. He told her the stories behind the various rings. Each story was like a gem. She listened, intently.

His caribbean roots surfaced as a generous smile in the eyes, which beamed out a distance equal to the length of the island of Barbados. She must have seen him six different ways, since sunday. And he always had a smile for her. Even if he was locked in the turmoil in his mind. Behind those beautiful, open eyes.

Rolling up on a week, maybe two, of much conscious contact between the two.And maybe a screw, or maybe two. What with a screw or two loose... what's new ? The world perpetrates the sanity. Yet the dreads were somewhere for her eyes to lay easy. Blurred into an single aura. A home for a while. In a smile the length of Barbados.

Wrapped around a light beam. She wanted to let the world and everyone, know. She wanted to unravel the whole, sweet cinammon bun. And he could have her; for breakfast, lunch and dinner. She was content to just walk down to the farmer's market by the grande lake theatre, saturdays, by his side, holding hands.

 Still, the essence of him could hardly be touched, and not by holding hands. Whatever was going on, was all condensed and rolled up from basic filaments. Though she felt the warmth of the sunshine of his spirit for some time, now, no defenses run so deep to hold the world off. They would not last long.

She was sad to watch it all pass over her,  like the sun across the sky. Then a somewhat fiery, diluted, orange ending. And so close to halloween. Less than a year since they met, and no time in between.

Embedded (below the horizon)...
Dreaded (came the darkness)...
There, now  (she knew it)
it's over  (she said it).

Katya W. Mills 08/13
originally written in 2009-10

Sunday 18 August 2013

some action on the street

The wheels were spinning up there. The chrome was gleaming in the sun. The heat had the streets cooked. Melting the tar and oil into rivulets dripping down where the rainwater goes. The wheels were spinning. The spinning rims decided to spin the other way. The film and oil dripped off the grills embedded in the pavement. The fishtails of boys cars dragging in the streets, swept water in, through the gills.

The women in stilletos smoked newport smooth hundreds, in the streets. Their heels sunk an inch into the melting tar. The smoke swept into their lungs. Their heads got dizzy with the chemicals. They swung their upper bodies down over the bus stop benches, and around their hips. They puffed their lips out at the strangers. They pushed their middle fingers out at danger.

The alcoholics ducked into aa meeting halls, got lost in sweet anonymity. The addicts ducked into na meeting halls, to escape the blistering heat on the street. Their would be prayers inside open doors. Tears inside meeting halls. Tears of joy.

Women who were born in the thirties, came out with reckless abandon on to the street. Pushing their upper ages into triple digit heat. The older women were strong. The old men were very kind and sugar sweet. They came out with their canes, in their wheelchairs, on their walkers. They came out and talked to the talkers. The young women got quiet and listened. The young girls holding the hands of the young women, smiled and kicked up the dust. The young boys were satellites, who blushed.

The young men were not always around. Maybe somewhere working. Maybe playing cards. Maybe surveying. Maybe construction. Maybe surveying a location, on the job. Maybe hammering or drilling or connecting wires. The young men with hard hats on. Staring at a soft ass, on the street. Maybe hammering or drilling. Maybe talking to some honey, sugar sweet.

The smokers were kicking snipes into the street. Rolling embers off the end of a half-smoked marlboro. Rolling their own. Talking shit. Girls were gossiping. Men were boasting. Punks were smoking reds like joints. Real estate agents taking smoke breaks on the hour. Waitresses cursing into their smoke, before and after they had to get their asses inside and grab a fucking marinated mountain trout from the line, and sashay into the air conditioned dining room to their tables. Waiters got incensed by ten percents, and went down into the basement, to do whippets off the whipped cream again. Dropping cans on the cold cement. Then out to the street after they clocked the fuck out.

Katya 08/13

Friday 16 August 2013

Wednesday 14 August 2013

notarize the thighs -vi)

Sex continued to sell in a recession-proof kinda way. A woman could turn a profit, with only a fuck-all mentality pushing her envelope. Boys and girls on the streets, of course, could reap whatever they chose to sow. They had youth behind them. They could do very well. So long as they did not allow the reaping to be turned over to any of a thousand common sneaker-pimp, grim-reapers, sizing them for pawned Fred Perry tracksuits and enticing them with Baby Phat faux leather. On top of spaghetti, all covered in cheese. In return for a personal attendant pickpocket leech motherfucker who will make a misery out of anyone, with some coke and a smile.

Sex continued to sell in the USA, despite any casualties on the streets. Despite rampant victimization. What was the attraction? Who knows. Sex continued to sell despite all opinion polls against it. Both predators and victims alike, took advantage of the resources offered by the county coffers and non-profits. Wolves in sheep clothing were abundantly known but rarely snitched on. They might try and make it worth your while. Though they had nothing of value to offer. Smart girls on the street, inevitably found it better to notarize the thighs. Become self-employed. Make her own bed. Awash in entrepreneurial spirit.

Sex continued to sell at all times, and in all conditions. Meanwhile, the grande eras of upswing stock markets easily navigated any overhang of massive U.S. debt, like Kelly Slater coming through a Fiji wave tunnel; one million salty tears a second rolling over his beautiful aquarian-californian head. Awash in passionate, competitive, entrepreneurial spirit.

Meanwhile, even the mention of legalities could not exorcise the dollar signs from the retina of the corporate maelstrom surfing the jetstream libre, por favor. Freedom on the backs of tax incentives and lobby concessions. Though many an executive took a personal interest in getting bound and whipped by a dominatrix of choice, in a dungeon of his choosing, there would be little interest in remaining bound or tethered to any law that impeded clear and present profit for his corporate entity holdings.

The corporate executive. There at the top of the food chain, on the hill overlooking the streets of skid row. Far, far below, the seemingly effortless give-and-take on the streets. The corporate exec. Even this karmic nightmare of a lifestyle, could be somehow justified and embraced. Casual, episodic subservience appeared to help balance out his power-tripping and episodic fisting of mom and pop cottage industries. Domino's to be lined up and knocked down, mercilessly, so to make ample room for his twenty to thirty-thousand square-foot monstrosities, to capture mass consumption in the crux of commercial real estate purchased up in the aftermath of heavy rotation roadshows to drum up institutional investment, internationally.

Katya Mills, 08/13

Monday 12 August 2013

zen hen

Before they found her...

They were looking for a pleaser like me, or like you. Carefully. Like a mental health evaluator, after monthly quota of eligibles has been met and just exceeded. In the fullness of our lives, on the dark end of a half-moon feather cut of a night. On the cornish line. They were looking for the special chosen one. The ten out of ten eggs are good, hen. Initial results were disappointing. That was before they found her.

Now the inspectors flashed their zirconian smiles. Delighted. Soon the cheap rock would be scraped off and replaced. A different tune would play. Thanks to our totally realistic, alert post its inertia, cluck or duck, fix-whats-broken, walk-on-eggshells, notorious to be, substitute teacher, future-minded zen hen... there she is! In the wheat corner, the favorite, the oddsmaker, the two to one super-standard! Our saving grace! There she is. Rearing a thousand chicks...

Future numbers girls? Only time will tell.

Saturday 10 August 2013

credit is good (at the food bank)

She did her day like any day before it, squeezed the juice out of the whole orange. She was a benevolent juicer. And a clear and present danger to rinds, husks, sheaths, shells, and exoskeletons. Snakes slithered away from her grasping hands, in the tall grasses of her her unmowed back summer yard. Turtles sped away. Turtles!

She had done her day. She had chased the sun over the horizon. It started like any day before it. A dark room. Predawn. A box fan sucking cool air, and spitting it, into her face. A goosedown blanket, tossing feathers into the breeze. Like some retentive golfer, worried any ever slight change in the direction of the wind might add a hook to his drive, and a stroke to his score. One of those night lights you can buy for five bucks at Rite Aid, splashing a spotlight image of fish in water, on the ceiling.

Featuring prominently: the awful sound of her prana, facedown in her pillow, half-suffocated by the weight of her own head. And by virtue of relentless dreams in which she was being chased by a clock with great arms and long legs. As the arms windmilled around the face of this clock chasing her, the time seemed to age her, in this recurring nightmare, and before she woke, breathless from her mouth in the pillow, she was an old woman losing ground to the malevolent clock behind her.

So she cried out, startled, then, upon realizing she was in a soft bed with a soft light of fish splashed above her, and a boxfan of fresh air blowing into her face; she snarled and grunted, and turned to her side. So to Live! my friends So to Live! She was and is and will always be a survivor, like that. Saves herself, from herself, every predawn morning. Wow.

Near dawn, she hunted down the tv and chose a special treat from among a sparse channel universe. There would be extra-special commercials with former NFL legends touting catheters for men. Former talk show hosts touting blenders. The Fonze, touting reverse mortgages. Alex Trebeck, hawking life insurance. Wow.

In between the deafening roar of former TV-icons gone dollar signs, she got drool relief from the wonderful world of cold cases, put in the DNA microwave and come out piping hot. She was only one of denizens of global tv junkies and insomniacs who had fallen completely head over heels for the soothing voice of Mr. Bill Kurtis from Chicago.

Aside: She was no ordinary listener. She had once directed courier traffic to Mr. Kurtis' very office on the near north, arts-intensified, hollywood central of Chicago, Illinois. True! Thus was her tenuous, personal connection to that lullaby soft voice, which helped invigorate, relegated files from the eighties. She neither knew nor cared to know anything about his legend, how he exposed Agent Orange, among other things. In her mind, TV has bombed the hell out of Vietnam, and she was sick of it. She wasn't even born in the sixties, yet she had watched so many war stories, she felt like she had fought in Vietnam. She even considered naming her three cats, Ho, Chi, and Minh. 

Nudging the darkness back into some light. That's what made the difference in her days which were all almost the same. Being just like Bill Kurtis. Staring at death, with a benevolent kinda gaze. The kind she would have between her and her newborn, if she ever gave birth, again. The kids she had already created, were trying to destroy her happiness, she thought. She preferred to think on other things. Nudging the darkness into light. Having survived herself at dawn, facedown on the pillow, she could relate to the victims of darkness...in the most tenuous of fashions.

Aside: Not to mention her other glorified attribute: she was a hot-blooded, one part Irish, one part Icelandic, lightning rod for truth! Any personal description of her, risked undermining her exceptional aura. Only her television set cast a brighter light, than herself. Oh, and her credit was good (at the food bank).

Katya Mills, 08/13



Thursday 8 August 2013

struck by her

He was struck by her. He had seen her in the grocery store, once. Then at the farmer's market, where she accepted the half of the walmart receipt on the back of which he wrote his digits in small, insecure handwriting. He was not insecure. He was an accountant, and wrote very small. She read the name, Tony, which was not a very attractive shortcut for Anthony. But his name was not Anthony. His birth name was Tony. His parents liked shortcuts and hated formalities. Well, not his mother. But she was subservient to his father, atleast when it came to naming her firstborn son. She was gonna name the boy, Marcus Aurelius, but deferred to her husband. Secretly she called the boy Marcus Aurelius, though he responded to Tony.

He invited himself over her house, Tony. That was after she called him. She called him to find out who this poorly named boy was. He was a man, but she preferred to think of him as a boy. Any man who slipped her half of a receipt from Walmart with his little digits inscribed on the back of it, was a boy in her mind. She did not necessarily want to get to know him. This Tony character.

So she called out of curiosity, and you know what they say about curiosity. He was so excited when he realized who was on the other line, that he broke a sweat. She was so anxious afterward, she ran to the bathroom and spoke to the porcelain. Both conversations would be brief and unpleasant.

He was struck by her. Before and after the phone call. Before and after the farmer's market. Somehow he got online and performed some queries, over google search. Whitepages.com was a nice way to find out basic information without breaking any bank. He felt a little guilty, but more curious than guilty. You know what they say about curiosity.

She regretted having called. She turned the half of a receipt from Walmart, over and over in her fingers, until the oil from her fingerprint rubbed the ink of the digits, half-off. You're not supposed to use paper that way. Like a touchstone.

He had hoped for more of a chance. The conversation had been so brief. About as brief as they come. There had been an awkward silence. He needed time to absorb the fact of her, on the other line. Her voice was not pretty. Pretty common, maybe.

She laughed at herself after speaking with the porcelain, after speaking with him. She laughed for a second, about the nature of the first conversation. So awkward. Like kids.

He felt himself getting younger. He felt like just a boy, again. Not many women made him feel this way. He wondered why. There was nothing special about her, really, except everything about her. Except the way he thought about her.

She was not prepared for his visit. Neither was he. Just a boy, visiting a neighbor girl, is the way he thought of it. His visit. She thought of it as a supreme offense to her entire being.

He was struck by her. By the flat palm of her hand.
Not very pretty. But pretty common.
The way he was struck by her.

-Katya Mills,  08/13

Saturday 3 August 2013

notarize the thighs -v)

Now you are vulnerable. Now free. Now the nerve sheaths dissolve and leave you cold like feet on cold ground. Deprivation of woolen socks. Comfortable couch dissipates. Now may you lie on barren segregated place of great intentional discomfort to sweet awful induction into pain and panic. Flames and manic. Backed up in time. Given a ticket. A seat for you: on the Titanic. Iceberg headed. Frozen. Embedded. Your personalized matter you so evolved into? All gone. Shredded. Or so they want you to believe. An otherwise terrible terrifying time. All to get you back in line. True your wheel to the capitalist democracy owned and operated by taxless republic-loving, class-choreographer paradigm-administration-pleasing standard.

Now you are vulnerable. Well. good to take pause. Take a deep breath and remember:
Silence is not lifeless. You need not tune your vocal trax to nothing! You need not live or die by publishing house grammatical demands. You need not speak, not immediately anyway. You are young. They cannot empty you and fill you up with hay and corn. Nah! Carve your own avocado, in your own time, and self-nourish! Do not always speak when prompted. Not for free, anyway.

Not when you are so tender like you are. Silence is grace when nothing needs be said. Everyone can wait. After prayers. Before breakfast. Some time in there, maybe. Saying so does not induct talking into the reaper hall of disdain. This is only an opinion of a large and decided minority. Within a single species which is, as others before and around it, at this very same moment in time, thanatos self-anaesthesia beyond recognition... beyond birth... beyond pure and back to the pushing points of tension; the ones raw from pull and half stretched ten times any limits of graciously regarded doctor's relative overdosing ever was.