Monday 31 August 2015

unauthorized autobiography

I am made up. I am made up of classic horror flix and criticism, behind the loving family. I am made of denim jeans and wrinkled dollar bills I try and iron with my fingers at the laundromat. I am made of blue-gray-green eyes and circles and ovals and triangles. I am made up of denial of certain harsh realities. When I embrace them, they are still wrapped in fantasy. My escape hatch is up through my head, where I sprout rare gardens reaching for the sun. I may be just starting when you are nearly done. My roots give up water to the moon and monsoon. I am a saline solution in a world full of problems. I have been known to border apathy to the east and sympathy to the west. My anxiety borders psychosis when I am not being true to myself. I am made of books and books are made of pages and pages are made of words and words are made of letters I transcribe in my heart out of blood. I can get by on French and butcher Spanish. The blood circulates all the way to my fingertips and comes out in English. I speak dead languages to bring us back to life. I would tell you more but I haven't been given permission.   xxx   KatYa

Sunday 30 August 2015

shaking salt. add pepper

Here's the spoken word for the piece i wrote this morning... I want to thank you all for adding pepper and salt to my eggs, you really made it interesting at high noon on a sunday. In return I took the liberty to rid you of those nasty demons which were casing you and infiltrating your energies. I gave them all a (verbal) lashing, and they should not bother anyone again. In fact, I turned them on to the UFC and they got really excited to get in the ring and take one another out like that. So call them ancient history!       xxx    KatYa


(so i write this letter) shaking salt at eggs on sunday

IF i could take your demons from you and battle them myself this day would be worthwhile, you see, it closes in on me and i don't know what to do inside my head inside my home shaking pepper on my eggs at the break of dawn on sunday. i could go to church but what difference would it make. i would rather go to see you and be with you. you won't criticize my hair or clothes behind my back. or in my face. we could laugh and talk about our boyfriends or our mothers over coffee. we used to go to the thrift stores together, remember? now i walk alone and ride the subways of my mind. my demons are okay they are not upset or acting out; even in the tunnels they sit still and quiet, hands folded, listening to the rails and feeling the side to side sway rock us into a new day. that's why i could battle yours if you would let me. the full moon fell out the window and the light is percolating and i don't know what to do inside my head inside my home shaking salt on my eggs on a sunday. so i write this letter and wait patiently for my chances. to meet someone new or be with you or you or you again, one of many long lost friends.

Saturday 29 August 2015

passages of clouds

I am giving up and giving in to sleep, and then awaken off melatonin with some fight in me for the full moon, stepping outdoors and looking up to her where she is reading clouds, passages of clouds, while I am slipping on my bare feet the black sneaks with the black soles and black laces, after lining them with powder. The clouds are assuaging the moon with great tales of restlessness and woe, and she: delighted, attentive, detached. I am pouring the water over the coffee grounds in slow circles, coming round to myself like i must every night, for when I walk into the world as I must, and raise my eyes to read the same unending jetstream from below, the passing encryption is solved, and the atmospherics release hail and torrents of rain to wash from me my apprehension, my anxiety, my indifference... and all mirage of dissembling.

Friday 28 August 2015

some of the stuff i like about this life nonstop

The experience i have of living is so precious to me, from the moment I wake up and even while i sleep, and even when i feel controlled or having to wait in line somewhere, someone i might talk to can suddenly make me feel special, seen, even free! the moments i spit angrily upon the gray urban concrete overcast city even they may turn over in a flash when am i awash in spirit filled with color by a song from a window of a high rise, an automobile passing by, the blue notes warping orange and green and fuschia as we comes and go and the distance between us closes or grows... a street artist, a jump rope kid, a skater flipping the board under his feet upon a rail and sliding down in the balance... the bass on a hot summer day spills out a trunk in a traffic jam to meet the heat rising in oil and exhaust, or the decided will of nature pushing up out of a frost until the sprout cracks through somewhere, a sidewalk a tunnel, a floorboard, even through the eye socket of a skull or a broken shell, the inhabitant long since gone on... hell, it warms my heart! an otherwise cold unfeeling is replaced. Life is nonstop. How could I question my freedom after a sight like that?

Thursday 27 August 2015

lucky

I had a lucky childhood mostly, which I could not take for granted after the incident when I was in my mother's belly on a two lane highway, an oncoming schoolbus swerved over the line and almost collided with us. I think I remember. I got the best of education and parents and a brother who looked after me with great care. I had my own room at an early age, though I wished I could share a room with my older brother still, in a sprawling Queen Anne Victorian on a hill. We had a dog, a cookie jar, steam radiators, and a piano. My mother issued spankings by the mouth of its winding staircase. My father came home from work and the family gathered round the kitchen table nights, and we picked a prayer from a deck of cards inside a plastic loaf of bread, to read with our heads bowed and fingers clasped before our meal.

I had lots of chores to do and lots of books to explore. I loved the Chronicles of Narnia most. I cherished those books. I had one foot in the church and one foot out, in perfect reflection of my mother's Christianity and my father's atheism. I certainly enjoyed exploring the great cathedrals of New York City and participating in charitable events. And listening to music all the time. Years later I became agnostic and a social worker. Television became a terrible faith. Mindlessness and magical thinking and unreality. I was much better off reading and using my own imagination, playing outdoors with the neighborhood kids in any weather. Skating, running, listening to music, fighting, writing.

Thinking back on my life... there is no wonder i am changed and yet remain quite the same at the core, rock steady somehow, trying to be an innovator, trying to express myself in meaningful waves, and hopefully many more years even twice as many years in store, which i could not even say three years ago today, when was my time of dying. Some like myself cannot stand (for our health) lashing out upon the world when we feel we have been forsaken. Instead we go inward and hurt ourselves, which is no less terrible perhaps - but I would rather swallow the poison than poison you, if between the two was my only choice. That's just me.

Wednesday 26 August 2015

the current

awaken to you
your strength in
the sun

awaken to me
black lashes
white walls

to the river
we go

your hand in mine
we watch
them drift along

i wrap myself
around your broad
back

i press myself
into you

the sky and the sun
the river and geese
me and you

by the current
taken

Tuesday 25 August 2015

solar storm strike

Soon it will be as though I never existed. I did the dishes and swept the floors and vacuumed the carpets and dusted the shelves and made the bed and paid the bills and put out the trash and wiped the counters and bleached the tub and sink and soon it will be as though I never was here. Inside the pillow the down is on the rebound, for I have left for work. The kittens are chasing shadows, inattentive to the faraway sound of classical music in the faraway light from the closet. A guitar neck edges up from a dark corner. Silent. The glass is cooling off fingerprints. Spiders are waiting for someone to open the door, will someone ever come open the door? Our houses and possessions, what will they do without us? How will the things inside continue to live? Someone will come. And then the gods of destitution, financial and economic futility. I find myself back in that different life, like a dream now - was it real - helpless and hustling ...  mixed in with the street level decay, perhaps unappealing to the eye, a vibrant if desperate life demanding all of one's innate qualities be brought to forefront without notice! The very same things gone dormant for hours upon hours behind locked doors at home, behind books, behind screens, behind bars. Comfort was comfortable for a moment before it murdered you in a stifling blanket party. I urge myself out of bed, off the couch, urgently I urge away from the television, the movie, the dinner table, the concert, the opportunities to hide and plant myself and vegetate. The clinging vine of pharmaceutical quality anything, uncut mental and emotional, physical and psychic vacation, the headphones, the lottery, eye candy, ear candy, the hailstones get bigger and pummel us down and pound us into the ground, fragments of brain lying in shards of glass and ice. The trees weep for us. I urge myself away, back into the self-generating energies, and always what I left behind me comes back again like a solar storm strike. My glasses have been shattered. I grope across the keyboard how to say it. My heart is frozen in my chest, and I nudge it toward a thaw, urgent for a season, decidedly optimistic in the atheistic static. All the gods slap my face with all their many hands, and I wake up out of blue and into time to thank you. I make myself a solar-powered sail, a foil, a blackness to absorb, a whiteness to reflect, I reshape my fucking attitude into a redemptive puffy cloud heaving water, then I rise above it all floating, singing the screams, vomiting terror, rubbing confusion into my eyes, then looking blind into space. Thank you. I hate you life full of suffering. I love you life come and go. I will not forget or regret you made the most of me. Use me. Abuse me. Love me like you do. For I am you.

Monday 24 August 2015

the child

O wide awake in America, big sky highway hollowing out the ears predawn, cut me like a cookie and may i taste good too, share myself with you and you and you, sweet sugar has me processed in dreams and tumbled out a foamy bed into my own personal despair, sliding down the inner sanctuary of a question mark to collect and drop whole you made of me, sweet sugary period, plastic in my blood, pharmaceuticals in my water, disaster strikes and i lick my lips like you and smile, but no one smiles like we do, upside down or kinda flat, tethered to the mobile phones we kill by our deep sleep, counting ringtones like sheep, shearing and swiping the hell out of an alphabet, on a jazz or classical base as the temperature begins to rise with the sun, another day washing dishes and dusting and cutting boxes the perfect size to ship my ass away to some infernal packaging depot to be fitted with my personal bar code, my very own, which is linear and bold, impervious to black mould, scanned or so I'm told, taped then situated in some draughty unremarkable corner in the cellar of a warehouse to grow old. All i know is no one can erase me even if they try, I am forever etched into your hard drive, America, no matter how the cleaners cleanse, efforts to coat me over bleach me out only leave my prominent lines bubbling up from the cracks and surfacing again with all the gasses, grilling the faces of the masses ordering me around, yet still i stay aloft in my dissociated safe place way up high, finding me in a cut up creatively commoned place looking down, streaming on your horizon, only the light protects us now in our projections. Back out where I belong, some ionic bond, trashing your paint job with my spraypainted flare, exposing your destination to the going nowhere, breaking out the bars when i decode the code, fingering you with my fingerprint, America, until you see your own stars and go black and white again, from Birmingham to Ferguson, up the checker board and Martin Luther King you at the end, redoubled on a chance, green felt absorbs your glance in a healthy tribal casino where all the bad blood is blue, you see, the karmic knot we work it out, massage it real well, strike it with needles until you finally falter, sweet vulnerable America shedding your suit, crying and opening like that before the seamstress. And my lines are out of order, spinning into circular pools fallen stars, and the many shades of blue wash over me and you, when the world forgives and finds a place in the heart for a renewable source, because somehow you were always meant to be pleasant on the eyes, America, and generous though talkative and combative perhaps, you wear out your welcome in a superfluous way, and everyone has a good laugh and pats you on the head, for you are the child and loved just the same. Back to bed now with prayers, and we will see you in the morning, the rubbing of eyes, tumbling down stairs in your nightgown, little one, big sky highway musculature, heavy with some imagined purpose, dreams of carbon and oxygen and coffee churning blue to black in post industrial aftermath, shining oily head to toe, shedding another skin, inspiring us with your renewals. I will be there, my love, somewhere in the corners of your eyes, sucking on Maybelline, about to exit the glistening curve and drop unseen into your wilderness... where i have always belonged.

Book Review - LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN

23957933
's review 
Aug 24, 15  ·  edit

Read in August, 2015

Very impressed by the writings of Selby Jr. He takes no prisoners in his account of Brooklyn back in the day. Some of these stories really turned my stomach, the abusive nature of the characters, and the ordinary trapped lives, expressing freedom often by attacking the world that has locked them into situations that are at very least irritable if not untenable. The ones who aren't out pulling tricks, scheming, boosting, searching for shortcuts, desperate for the adrenaline rush of fresh 'kicks', are not the subject of the narrative. Apparently this book was originally not a book at all, but rather a collection of short stories mashed together and focused on happenings in and around 'the Greeks', a local establishment where all delinquents gather to swap spit and stories, and find themselves a fresh mark, whether that be a working stiff, an officer, a seaman, a doggie, a union man, or one of their own. There's no mercy on these streets, and there's no mercy at home either, where lies all the embedded -isms and hungry mouths ready to eat away at you. Sadly, nobody here finds much of consolation. Perhaps the ones who have accustomed themselves to a life of dreadful wearisome highlighted by rashes of benzedrine and alcohol fueled violence, cold harsh winters, labor strikes and picket lines, humid hot summers, coffee and cigarettes and 'tea', marriages of convenience, and momentary mobflashes on unsuspecting lushes or johns with money in their pockets. These stories really made me sick at times. What I love and what kept me reading (when I could stand to keep the nightmare in front of my face) was Selby's honesty and fearlessness. He lets us witness the world without any tint or flavor or filter. If the sun is in your eyes, the sun is in your eyes. The reader gets no shelter. I just stopped reading every time it became too painful, and picked it up when I felt the urge. By fearlessness I mean the writing style. I love the way he writes! Minimal on the quotes (sometimes a bit confusing but mostly not), slash marks in lieu of apostrophes, fresh with colloquialisms, and indeed rhythmic if not lyrical throughout. My favorite story and favorite character, hands down, is Tralala! From a young girl fresh at the Greeks and on the streets, we watch her evolution. And if you notice, the writing is at first herky jerky, short sentences. And then it begins to literally bloom into long unending passages, and the story is forefront, the action, exactly what is transpiring from one moment to the next with an almost seamlessly integrated bullshit meter built into the wannabe street savvy but (more accurately) street jaded young woman, as she moves from the Greeks to Times Square and back, caught in every bar and seedy motel or hophouse in between. I found myself reading this story aloud to friends and laughing all the way through. I guess it was a defense mechanism against the brutality. This is an America you cannot miss. Thank you Selby Jr. - KatYa

Sunday 23 August 2015

k - fashion

This reading is a nice example of my style today,
versus the post i recently shared from 5 years ago.

The words to this piece are located here:
DISTRIBUTE YOURSELF 


numbered. in the modern age of numb

I am sure my days are numbered in fact I number them myself. I already killed off something in me today, for my left index fingernail is too long but even if it weren't the scar tissue from the recent wound along its side, too tight, pulling the tip of the nail down to the keys so when I type this nail hits the key before the finger the print can strike. I have a situation causing me pain and the pain won't go away.  I am half the age of the modern lifespan and there is someone shouting out there in the early morning night. To all these things am I unaccustomed and therefore wanting to wish away.  Neither wanting nor wishing is made to be... so I light the fuse and watch the perfectionism blow, and shield my screen from all the gore. I know it's Sunday morning but now I have found some peace, after the killing, and even the delta breeze has fallen to its knees and settled down, dear god, thank you for any small favor in this time of ticking technological convenience, in our modern age of numb. I am sure my days are numbered. In fact I still number them myself. And no new system, platform, application, automation, no hard or software, is gonna take that away.  - KatYa

Saturday 22 August 2015

evolutions of KatYa

I feel like this post I wrote a few years back showcases my
writing style, like a snapshot in the evolution...

https://kissilent.wordpress.com/2015/08/22/7am-and-the-city-picks-up/

i hope you enjoy reading.
yes i know. it is gritty, it is dark.
a good reflection of my life and the world around me
at that moment in time.

October, 2010.
Oakland and SOMA
South of Market Street
San Francisco.

KatYa

friday morning. recalled

Swiss made time by cheese, I thought, semi-conscious through the drought. Life she makes us suffer, and suffer makes me someone i can stand by, i don't know why, the processes consist of their own metabolism, and play across the bones and drop another fathom. What a jerk to transmit to you something makes you suffer more, but flip that pancake as it bubbles, and wonder again, years later as you pay to play, if it was not blessed, the cursed thing, aching in your many frames and asanas, as you cobra up to free the energy in the spine with a click, and the python of the body shows you your confines, my dear, oh that I would wrap my loving arms around your neck and kiss you again like it was, run my fingers over the turf of your grey hair, press myself into you for the longest time after breakfast, despite the cats crying for scraps, the coffee steaming its goodness in milk, the morning light guided by blinds... you a working man you work so hard has only made you stronger and i become softer by you. do not give me nothing bad, please, with or without intention. I must open your apology like a flower like a fortune, and remember I am soft I am small for these moments, after which I can blossom with your kindness into the biggest me i can be. and i thank you and lace my arms up and around your tremendous back broken not, and the clock has no sway over us, not now in August, and you say nothing changes and though I get what you mean, it cuts to the spleen because in our intimacies everything made different and new by me by you, my love... we are independent spirits reaching out and suffer still, just like all the life the world around, so I gotta keep it cool and let you go after I gave you your sustenance toward your work, I hope, because giving is gold and taking got old. I want the new and i am into you.

Friday 21 August 2015

on a murder

Last night before bed I read and I read, and I found a picture of a young girl in the Sacramento Bee who was killed in my city, in the dugout beside a diamond in a bad part of town, near where she lived with her mom and they fought, she stole her dad's Camels and headed out to the park, and swung on the swings with her Goth kinda look as described by the witnesses who saw her that night, after sunset in March, twenty twelve, after dark... they say she was unlike the style in the photo was released, where she looks like any American girl in the fifties, black hair kept up from her face, the bangs cut to the neck in a tame kinda way, this was not how she looked on that fateful night, after mom and the fight when she slipped away with dad's smokes, her hair was longer and pulled mostly over one side of her face, dripping down to the dirt as she hung her sad head, wishing to see dad with whom mom was estranged... two men in their twenties who saw her that night in the park asked if she felt safe, for no one was really no adults around, and she spoke with the confidence of an untested youth, she had a fight with mom and was not going home yet, she spoke out her truth and they left her, walked away in the dark ending light... some time later, they say, between eight and nine at night, when most kids are asleep tucked in by sheets white, she must have walked over across the fields by the diamond, then stepped down to the dugout maybe to hide herself from view, thinking it was safer and really who knew, she could have been lured by one of those young men who came by, it's all speculation no one really knows why he returned to accompany her for a smoke, to hang out... for they found his DNA and hers mixed into the snipes, nine butts on the ground, maybe six they had shared, the profile was submitted and just as they feared, the national database struck a match with a man ten years older, a domestic violence charge in his file, so they went to interview him for a while... he denied being there in Rosemont that night, denied meeting the girl at all, yet his friend (the other man on that fateful night) called him out as the one he was with in the park when they asked the girl was she safe when she wasn't, and they walked along to a third man's house who told the cops the two men talked about her before leaving, the girl in the park... so the cops had their man, locked him up for a trial, which began yesterday after a long delay, the defense lawyer balking at the profiled DNA, for many people do pick up cigarrettes already smoked, in low income areas and high income, too, to take the last drag before the filter is reached -- or to take the last breath of a girl whose been beaten and stabbed and asphyxiated to death, a middle schooler who came to an end too soon, found under a bench in the morning in her hoodie, with a hickey on her neck next to where she got stabbed, she must have resisted when she was grabbed... and no matter how it is framed, who did it or why, the loss of a child, a most painful goodbye.

Thursday 20 August 2015

distribute yourself. aromatic of the locale. unalterable you.

Distribute yourself. If you find yourself, once you have found yourself, distribute yourself to the world -- it's gonna be a long and heartbreaking journey cause if you choose to live to really live you must be cracked to enjoy the taste, your heart must also be broken before it's any good. A coffee bean in the roasting process gets hot and expands and turns from green to toasty brown to oily black, and cracks twice before it turns its beautiful blood out and down its sides, aromatic of the distinctive locale, and then ready for mutilations into fine grain through which boiling water shall bloom... and then the world wakes up on it. You, too, shall bloom for us if you let us in, the world scalding you with its heat and fury, once your goodness is known and worn on your face and in your creations, the world will beat down the boulevard to you to open our eyes, please, distribute yourself to us, across all the seas in every port known, let us harbor you and sink your ship to the bottom, then pull you up with the Roman artifacts for a deeper inspection, blow you up so we can feel your remnant blast penetrate our collective body, yes, distribute yourself evenly across our marrow in the zigzags of Paris and NYC, let our rain fall hot through your grain, when we rip you off the walls of our museums so our eyes can be pleasantly deceived, wanting what you have so bad our wanting precludes our having, and then all around you let us become a shield for the loving code we have cracked, melting in global neural plasticity, on our knees woken up and sacrificing ourselves deliberately to experience the wonder, the inextricable merging, then the slack before the pickup, coal shovelled into the furnace, ropes tied round, not anymore you than we were before as we found, now the tugboat of your movement is pulling our giant half-submerged whale of acculturation, lifting us from the mothball fleet, releasing us into the open sea where finally we shall confront the elements again like a child runaway, stripped of all we have known, hyperventilating on our feet, wide eyes woken, devastated thanks to you, stone cold you, drowning, turning deeper colors, fluttering in the zigzags, breaking into stride... beside the unalterable you.

Wednesday 19 August 2015

weighing the heart against it all

My heart I had to weigh and it came out so many oz. I weighed the same amount of plant matter and tossed the matter into the same amount of water brought to boil. I had to do something about us and what else could I do? on a whim, but so are some of the most brilliant works of art recorded in one session, and so I went on while listening to jazz I went on and on, and in my kitchen tossed the plant matter I had procured from the yard and that means earth, into the pot of boiling water, and I saw and froze in my mind the sight of the vapors coming off the water tickling the undersides of the very seche very very very dry crop borne of the drought, and the expansion began as the water gave life to the earth, and the earth gave substance to the water.

And there were those who got out of bed quickly, those who hit snooze, hundreds of thousands who rolled off their partners, hundreds of thousands who did not, who flew solo, and some would see the sun and many would not, and every minute was a new dawn depending on where you were in location to the sun.

And there was my heart beating contra to the jazz keeping time to many miles away... you.


Tuesday 18 August 2015

08.18

Find yourself behind your eyelids.
There you are.
Read all about you.

Touch the softness of your upper lip
pressing into your bottom lip.
That's you.
Soft like that.

The enamel surrounds your teeth.
That's you.
Protecting you.


Visualize all the media of all the days
getting vaporized. So your head is clear.
Finally free.

Now remember who you are.
Who you ever were.
What you wanna do.

Canary.
Ocean.
Yellow and Blue.

The blessed.
The good.
In me.
In you.

Now
can we love?

Monday 17 August 2015

variations on a bird nest updo

Honey put on your peacoat and galoshes and go out and look for that perfect nest for your updo! Factors for your individual fashion may include matching hair color, texture, length, volume, level of moisture, sheen, quality. For instance, a north american goldfinch nest surely will not do for dreadlocks, unless you are going for shock value or modern art, while the Gray Catbird variety may not well complement an afro, and never ever attempt to situate an Chimney Swift nest atop a Stepford wife variety hairdo. The fashion police will be sure to arrest you!

Be sure to not steal any bird's nest currently inhabited (you can tell if it carries eggs of any colors, is still warm to the touch in the midst of a frost, or has chirping chicks pleading for worms), for if you do you will certainly have your eyes and head pecked upon and you will deserve it! Many a fashionista in the new millenium has lost sight and sound as a result of thirsting after the perfect nest they have found, attempting to hide behind a manmade canopy for the purposes of approaching said nest in possession of a such ruthless fowls as the Cedar Waxwing, Dark-eyed Junco, or Downy Woodpecker. Bloody hell! Find an empty nest somewhere in your backyard or local park or forest, and when you are sure it has been abandoned you may take it into your hands carefully, looking left and right, up and down beforehand, then quickly walk away. After dark may seem like the best time for a nest grab, but this is not so! for the only one who cannot see in the dark, my dear, is yourself!

 Go home and shower and then towel dry and mess up your hair as bad as you can, then hang your head down so you can grab it all up to the top of your crown (or however you yourself prefer to prepare for an updo will do) and hold with one hand as you raise yourself back up to the mirror, with the birds nest now resting on the edge of the sink and blown dry clean of any dried insects or other items momma may have flown home (from rusty nails to hairpins to the nubbins on the edge of notebook paper fallen off the children's backpacks walking to or from school). Of course if there are squirrel nuts in there you know who took advantage, and these nut shells and fragments may be glued to the bottom or sides of any nest for decoration, or otherwise discarded. Do not attempt to return whole nuts to squirrels, or otherwise clean, cook and eat them at your own risk!

What with the clean nest on the porcelain and your hair held up now by one hand in front of the looking glass, my sweet and gorgeous one you are, it is now time to scoop up the nest with the other hand and (firmly now) seat the nest atop the head or slightly to one side if that's your style, and commence with the pins around the circumference to get her situated so she won't fall away and embarrass you in the middle of your tea party. Messy nests are preferred, Hermit Thrush and House Wren nests and so forth, for any branches sticking up from the nest may also serve as natural fasteners coming down upon your head. For close cut hairdos and larger heads and egos à la Miley Cyrus, smaller fowl nests may be preferred for juxtaposition. Utilize a companion or friend to doublecheck your work, and to offer a second pair of eyes in case your taste is bat-crazy! And go out and be lovely, my dear, and one last and critical point! NEVER go to an outdoor party (wedding reception, football tailgate) in the same locale native to the bird whose nest you borrowed or stole, for you will surely attract all the wrong attention!

xxx KatYa xxx

Sunday 16 August 2015

sundays

Sundays were never dark even when it rained, and it rained a lot. I would drip drip dry in the back of the house then take off my clothes all soaked to the bone, hang them on hooks (the wood floors start to groan) then run up the back stairs in my underwear in sandals, all ten toes goodness knows i was quick on them, too, and my brother in his room tryin' to learn the guitar, dad in his study with rifles on the wall, and where is mom? well she's coming with a big colored towel, and wraps me inside then takes one to my head as I try to evade, and there's nothing in this world for this life I could trade, growing up lucky in a country so fine... god blessed america is what i want to believe, returning to my knees like i did in my youth (for what's in the heart does not need living proof), i made my own hell by my thoughts and beliefs but i turned it around and hung it on hooks, ran up the stairs for some help  i would look --then fly into the arms of someone who cares, even if it's just god or a pet or a stranger you met, or yourself in the darkness running for light, in the darkest of darkest of darkest of night.

Saturday 15 August 2015

where sound was frozen

There were cold nights in Boston, passing by the Tower Records and the Berklee School of music, over the Turnpike bundled up against the snow and harbor breeze. The snow would turn to ice and become crunchy underfoot, and dirty. Street vendors pushing carts with pretzels and hot dogs and coffee sometimes. I was always on the outside, finding myself excluded from notice, and I was always on the inside, immersed in my art, placing my feelings on paper, curious about the life. Outside of the storefront cast light, in the parks and alleys and coves of huddled homelessness, out by the swan boats the snow was blue and the fountainheads underwater under ice, where even sound was frozen. I knew then and there, in the stillness, I was chosen.

Friday 14 August 2015

a voice from the locked away place never to be accessed again. collected like ink into my pen

 i am now like a universe, elliptical and spinning, knocking over furniture, ending and beginning, smoking and sinning... i died to become only more who i am, i really died so i could be somebody, like a reduction of a simmer off a pan, buried with a spade, they threw flowers down upon me, above me where i layed, they left flowers on my stone, teardrops by my grave... and i still am, if only they knew i am alive now like a universe, elliptical and spinning, knocking over tombstones, ending and beginning, smoking and sinning... here comes the dawn, all i ever was to you is gone, and it's sad in different ways, we are going through the phases manifold, younger now i'm old and doing what i'm told and it's tiresome getting weary i will have to move along, sing another song, try to hit the high note and hold it very long... my sadness is unlike yours but it's sorrow just the same, and i love who i am and that will never change, i love the hell outta you, out of the cocoon so we can look up to the moon and see things clearly once again, when we were best friends... dear god the memory, if i linger it will kill me, kill me where i stand, on a high rise, rising, in Shanghai or Hong Kong or Dubai or Chicago or Mumbai or LA or NYC or Vancouver or Helsinki or Madrid or Firenze or Berlin or Amsterdam or London or Hamburg or Paris or Brussels or Vienna or Rome or Athens or Moscow or Prague or Warsaw or Dublin or Saigon or Toronto or Monte Carlo or Santiago or Copenhagen or Port au Prince.

may we never suffer the way we suffered then

all the experience has collected like ink into my pen, i can work it out on the pages, you and me, my friend, while the pot of oats now boils over, cascading down the sides, puts the fire out, and now in darkness hides. then we give it to someone who needs it. i hope you feel the same. fumbling with the keys to unlock the deepest mystery... never again. abstract and untouchable. that's okay. you are a little more like me. in fact i know you are, because of what we went through you are always with me, i am more like you, thank you for the lonely nights, gone! searching for something and finding something else. and loving that, too. now we know what we needed was not what we thought, not what we wanted! we may not have a key. let's leave it there, locked away forever. i think so. i think so... i am now like a universe, elliptical and spinning, knocking over furniture, ending and beginning, smoking and sinning. i think so.

Thursday 13 August 2015

the universe isn't just dying

The universe is living. Maybe our universe looks to be collapsing, but who knows the outcome. We are each an infinitesimal particle of our universe, so whatever is going on inside us may be considered representative of the greater whole. We may know the universe personally. And when I consider my intimacies with our universe, going inward, I see that our universe is very much alive. The universe may be dying, but the word carries too much baggage and grief. I think what's going on is change, the universe is changing.



Wednesday 12 August 2015

memory # sun light strike

I remember my mom cutting my hair when I was a little kid with the same scissors we used to cut out shapes from colored paper,  long with a colorful plastic handle it made a funny sound like a metal cricket when its two sharpened legs came together, one of them cold resting against my forehead to steady her hand, the high-pitched shwee-sh-wooo, and the air in the autumn smelled of crunchy dead leaves, the smoke from the chimneys came across in the breeze, and my eyes wanted to look around cause we were outside, seated on a stool on the porch my dad built, the door behind us painted a bright cherry red when all the adrenaline rushed to my head as the cricket danced across my face, and my mom's hands loving but firm taking hair up between her fingers and licking it to make an end, like a stamp for a letter to a friend, shwee-sh-wooo, then stepping back to check her work and guiding my big head in her hands, eggs and bacon on the breeze coming off the neighbor's trees, the sound of distant lawnmowers and some petrol I can taste as she cuts behind my ears and my face, shwee-sh-wooo, and presses a thumb behind my ear, and her other hand cupping my head, saying hold still! in a firm but even tone, the old school ringing of the phone behind the door, shwee-sh-wooo, getting impatient saying sit up some more so I scoot up in the chair and try to hold myself there, but the colors of the morning and the itching of the hair, have my head following my eyes, and the metal crickets almost cut me, hold still! - I thought I was - and the now she's working on the fuzz on the nape of my neck, shwee-sh-wooo, the goosebumps come up and I giggle feeling chills, and my mom's got her allergies on her allergy pills, maybe hungover from the night before and the mischief we made, my brother and I in the night feeling brave, tiptoeing up to the attic on steps all of which creaked to play air hockey or just watch tv in the dark, feeling adventurous quite high on the lark, shwee-sh-wooo, and now I am hoping it will be over very soon, as my keeper is not happy i'm afraid, leaning into me smelling of dad's cologne and perfume, shwee-sh-wooo she pulls at my hair and shouting hold still! the tone of her voice demanding and shrill, and I picture my ear cut off on the boards, bleeding down into the planks on the porch dripping down into the ground in the soil, to sprout in the dark some ears on a vine, and then i will pick one to best replace mine, and though there is forceful aggressive hedging going on, I still cannot repress a long sigh and a yawn, for I know I am safe at my sweet mother's behest, soon in her loving arms will I rest with her fingers running through the blonde wave she has made, all the ends misplaced and bangs askew I'm afraid, but who knows and who knew and who cares I could say, lucky and kept in a rough-loving way.

Tuesday 11 August 2015

blame it on the remodel

The edamame was sea-salted and I ate one after another after another while we talked, pulling the soybeans out by my teeth (sea salt took edamame to a whole new level like Greek took yogurt), and the waiter came back to apologize again for the remodeling of the place, which had us bewildered (the waiter not the place) until finally someone asked so we could discover he was referring to the facade of the building and the scaffolding -- OHHHHH! sung the choir, and the waiter leaned out after the secret had been shared, and the linked chains around his neck (which looked like old-school bike locks) clanged, and a hairstyle worthy of Andre the Giant back in his perm days tried to stand up but fell greasy upon his face and recoiled. This was the first and last time I would ever eat here. I don't know why because the mixed tempura was great, fresh and light fry batter. Maybe good food isn't enough anymore. Maybe I need a waiter who doesn't look like a wrestler from Queens. I think I will blame it on the remodel. The soybeans sliding down my esophagus think so. And probably all of Japan.

Monday 10 August 2015

papier-mâché

When i put forth the greatest of effort 
and try

then left all forlorn
with my    y-y-y-why?
when my eyes
see your eyes
and the eye lashes back


honesty says
look away now
love, look away
how I feel all alone
and your loneliness
too


i wish for your love
though there’s nothing to do



i hate all my wishing
i hate all my hating
hate all my feelings
this way and that


hating you
hating me


and then
get quiet
all turn
to stone



then come dark clouds
fifty thousand dark shades
the long and dark nights
the endless dark days


my ears start to bleed
my sight starts to fail
in exchange for choice words
my Latin, your Greek

choice merciless words
me to you to me speak


the storm in my head wants what happened, unreal
the turning over, my hands, what got stolen, not to steal

i stole from you 
steal from me

away from us
now

the wall between rooms
made of pa·pier-mâ·ché some
how

I would pull all apart! all the glue and the pulp
and i know you would, too! i swear this is
true


i will send out my linens now
white flags on the line
if only to know you 
were part, my design


i will unshape the monsters, tie them with twine
with hair if i have to, to keep unrefined
all the hatred between us
the base, solid kind


above which we once drew our cottons, with care
before they got soaked in our red sea and glare


unmoored
in the midnight dead sky
freshly fallen
lost love


instead i am left to wonder what was
with this broken heart, because and because

surrounded by white flags
and my
why why
  why whys


the tears
the wood floor
now dries


soon to burn
in the hearth of my heart
down below

knowing exactly
what i never wanted
to know

Sunday 9 August 2015

cement mixer

If I had a cement mixer on wheels, I would clean it out immaculate and turn it into an old-fashioned ice cream mixer, and drive across the land pouring ice cream for all the world so I could see all the awestruck happy faces, and if the press began to follow me, I would drop ice cream slicks for them to slip upon, and shovel themselves out of rocky road.

To the writers out there... consider your mind a cement mixer, and never forget to drop the concrete into your ideas, your abstracts, so to pave the way to your success as measured by all the happy readers who you left with awestruck, happy faces.

Saturday 8 August 2015

the binding of a book

I once thought if I had more energy and moved faster I could get ahead of myself, and I did, I got ahead of myself and all there was to see and comprehend, and made the mistake in rushing about off-centered; so tonight in the early phase of my routine I dropped into the plush green easy chair for a brief meditation after championing my breakfast of Lucky Charms, granola and coffee, and let go of my yearning to handle it all (ahead of it all), and rediscovered some deep bottom faith (somewhere in the muck where I misplaced it) and took it up in my hands and my head and held it where it was shining, there captivating my attention. Then I looked around the four walls and studied the kitchen table I recently lugged off the street (as the plush chair long before it, things tend to appear magically on our sidewalk in the middle of the night!), which was wonderfully sized, rectangular within the greater rectangle of this room, and all the life of a kitchen I have created over time, the knives and wooden dish rack, and coffee mugs strewn about, the plants and the coffee roaster, the tea kettle turning brown off chrome from use, and pleasing the dark grains against lighter grains of wood, the cutting boards and cabinets on two white walls around. My faith restored me, thank god I found it. I will again hang it for sure in the balance of the day, perhaps leave it draped over some lucky person or thing I encounter. Okay, this is life. Discovery often happens not in the press, but in the sitting and letting it all settle to the bottom so the clarity returns. Then may faith shore me, Center me so I can begin again with a more sustainable effort, like the binding of a book for to keep all the loose leaf in place and make sense of my life written down.

Friday 7 August 2015

1983

Tonight again I miss something we had, the je ne sais quoi from 1983. Togetherness. A bit wild we were in an America no longer the same, and I was a kid only ten... smell of petrol and tools, and cars that broke down, water that froze in the pipes in the winter, seasons we spent without cell phones. And where will we go when the earth meets the flow of the sea? Storms and long thaws, and it was never easy but we had eachother, laughing and bitching and fighting. I cried and I sulked when I couldn't get my way. We ran ourselves ragged by the end of each day, and tired at night all slowed to half  the pace, then half of half the pace - then a resurgence as the kids put to bed, the ice I heard clinking in the cocktails, new laughter arose and I wanted to be anything but tucked in, and found any excuse to go out to Mom and be with her then. Back to bed now, go on! The music stops playing and all is quite silent while under the water, heat lightning flashes the sky to highlight these tides, seen through the screens of the porch. The wind whistles.

We won't care so much when our senses our gone and an unbroken dawn cracks and poaches its whites by the sea, I promise, the rolling is fun and into the sun with the elements the same and no one to blame, neither you, neither me. The loss was magnificent and tragic, and you may never love that way again. And again we won't care so much having been there, in the sharp cutting glare where all is exposed as a life that has died as life always does, again and again, and again. So push up your hair with your hands, see where it stands, and roll your eyes all around the earth. You will see that we share an uncommon bond, untouched by time and strong as the vine, and wide as the sea may be long, so you can smile and laugh, sing a sweet epitaph, and roll your tongue merrily along under the names of the ones you have loved, again and again, and again. In memoriam, 1983.


Thursday 6 August 2015

the living dream phase

I really hope to see you randomly in the streets, to meet you there in the sun or the shade, the rain or the glade, by the fence or the tree, the lamppost or newsstand, you and me once again have a chance at a life, a stopping of time. I am only fortunate because I believe myself fortunate, and it would be a great misfortune if I did not. I only love you by showing my love to you, but who says you cannot show your love in a thought or a prayer? Life gets more confusing and then I stop thinking, let something else take over, less abstract and more concrete (perhaps right under our feet), there need be no confusion so long as if or when the moment arrives on the tangent of our lives on the streets of this city, we see one another in that random beautiful way and connect in that semi comfortable way of matching up against the small changes in our separate and recent fortunes, and what I can do at that time, if that time were to arrive, is turn my attention and presence to you completely, perhaps with a smile - definitive in the eyes - and listen when you speak and not interrupt and not let the magic dissipate by any technological device in my possession (calling to us like they will), but rather undivide my attention toward you and if the chance arises for a handshake or a hug, choose the latter, for who on this dying earth does not wish for the physical rapport? - some great reassurance in a small gesture - and though we may go on our ways off the tangent back on queue, and though I may depart without any certainty I will see you, I can thank you for your time in one of many different ways, and show clearly how I care, burning through the haze... the living dream phase.

Wednesday 5 August 2015

the cadence is funny and tickles the mind

The cadence was artificially piped into the atmosphere via an alarm clock radio, summer night setting, based off a recording made back in the era when recordings where made on little brown tape, and before then on vinyl frisbee in tiny little grooves, and the cadence of genuine sounds artificially delivered did not succeed in curing my insomnia, rather chopped up my thoughts into small intervals between rubbed legs and wings in a forest I might never encounter in any other way. A young woman ten years my junior, meanwhile, had an analytical trap mind and would never understand my humor.

Tuesday 4 August 2015

lilac and hues. and drops

I painted my nails lilac and went out to say hello to the sycamore trees and the killer bees, and when I touched the sky, the paint proceeded from my fingertips to join the morning hues, creating a colorful pageantry of blues, inside of which found my eyes blinking half the time, dropping salt and water and searching for my daughter in the clouds. I wondered why the flags were half mast today in California, and I don't really wanna know. I listened to some jazz and got a real good rhythm for my spirit, all I had to do was hear it beyond the usual channels superficial on the land, to the deep sea ones carved beyond the hands of man. Arthritis in one finger reminded me I will never be all right, and the essence of my imperfection helped me sleep last night with one cat curled up around my calf, the other making an orange drop upon the blanket. Gore Vidal was in my dreams, up there with the gods and fighting with his mother. She wasn't happy with his books, you see. Drunk as usual.

Monday 3 August 2015

Third of August

There's smoke particulate in the air from all the fires out here in California, 47,000 acres are burning just north of here, up in Lake County, and things get hazy when the fire is burning inside me. I pray and am thankful when it all clears, and the sky never seemed so blue, the conscience so clear even birds will fly through.

trolley by K
All those nice things anyone ever did for me also shaped my character, not just the things that I have done. Someone sees you struggling and stops what they are doing, to help. Someone's presence. To let you know you aren't alone. Someone's reassuring smile.

I may not be the best at anything. I might not even compete, by choice, hell. But I am more than likely to be there for you when you are down and alone. And when you get your strength back, I will let you go. What a blessing you were for me. Without you, my fire might have burnt me to the ground.

Sunday 2 August 2015

confessions after a blue moon

Cali state fair by Katya
I ran the fields and I was considered dangerous for a time, twenty-nine years ago, and what a great feeling to be a wild one, the one who ran right past you and left you standing cold. I confess I am not very feminine in the traditional sense. How difficult a word to employ anymore. Let me unemploy it then, for every girl and boy.


I am still in heart a wild one, the one who loves the heart of the storm and cherishes the sound of sirens, yes, the one who  hastens to my death sometimes, Thanatos, keep my blood refreshed! Now I am in love with the life, again, like I was back then, when only the good died young and I wanted so bad to be good. Now I am having the adverse reaction to TV. Now I am restless in the sleep. Now I am pursuing the dream. Now I am indifferent. Now I am free.

Saturday 1 August 2015

august walks with the memory of july

If I could only follow back along the crooked line of life, crickets keeping time, to see all the faces of the ones and when I loved them most, then stop upon a snapshot at the point where it was mutual. If I could I would deposit each Polaroid in my aching head and let the neurotrasmitters have at them, relocating the silver base beneath the image and then spreading like chain link jewels across the synaptic mind, so sparkling are the tears that fall in almond globes upon my clothes or to the ground without a sound, then break apart with me from my reality, back to better times between us. Those times are gone. Tonight with coffee cupped in my hands like a prayer, I can go back there and see us coupled out across the diverse cities of my life. Chicago. St Pete. Boston. Oakland. Evanston. San Francisco. I was younger then but in many ways I feel the same. A button. A shred of clothing. A letter. A wisp of hair. I wonder do you mostly feel the same also? It only takes one residual thought, a flash of silver and the faith, to move the holotropic mind along new pathways recreated of the fabric we once wore out together. Then we may have a chance tomorrow to walk with one another in our hearts and live again.