the sky and the tree

It need not be so complicated
for you and
for me

said the sky

looking with warmth
upon the tree

but when
oh when
will all become clear?

asked the tree
shaking in the wind

when it rains
when it rains
when it rains

to all aspiring artists

You can be an artist if you are creating as you go. you live your life and you record it with whatever materials you choose, in whatever way you wish to record it, not necessarily how it appears to you, but how it feels to you, not necessarily each and every thing which transpires, but those instances which stand out for you, for whatever reason, good or badness aside, morality unnecessary, judgment removed, recounting perhaps some infinitesimal change may have established in your thoughts, feelings, sentiments, or even your style, behavior, fashion, or manner of dreaming or daydreaming, it's all up for grabs, whether it pushed you forward, pulled you in or dropped you out, whether it silenced you, gave you pause, made you more vocal or expressively settled you into new rhythms or arrhythms. you can be an artist in any medium but if you wanna be an artist try to be an artist every day. the chore may feel quite burdensome at times, and especially at the start but not only in the beginning, either, very often midstream, do not let this deter you, this aversion to effort, do not mistake it for a lack of inspiration, okay, we all get tired by work on mammoth projects in need of our unceasing attention, just battle on through and love yourself more for your ceaseless, tireless devotion to what you do. and remember, when you come across a crisis of confidence in yourself, perhaps in the face of the contender, or in light of a culture which has not yet opened its eyes to you, to your content, remember the unquestionable and valid fact of your life, that only you have lived this life, this life can neither be price-tagged nor questioned, this life is yours and your alone and you are and always will be its great historian. and without you telling it, showing it, representing it? it will not otherwise be known! let this thought alone drive you forward in your quest!

Grand Theft Life Book 1.11.2

Grand Theft Life Book 1.11

give free or die

I wish i could stop myself, arrest my forward motion, always in a rush the way i am, to be there for someone who is calling on me, in a hallway, on the street, out in the front yard or on the sidewalk heading to or from work or errands. Often they call and they always have. Years ago i stopped stopping for them, to give them my time and attention, no, i taught myself not to give my presence and maybe only a smile or not, giving nothing else but a smattering of words, before making my way to the next destination in a rush. i was usually in a rush. i still am. but it was more than that, i was also fearful and guarded of people from a young age, you see, i was the exact same age as the first kid whose face was plastered on the side of every whole milk carton back in the 1980's. those kinda happenings were iconic then and remembered dearly today, too, for they changed the operation of many a nuclear family, and likely the percentage of latchkey kids fell down for a moment, as mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles began to watch a touch more closely their kids. all i remember is i was called home many early evenings when i preferred to be out wandering the streets with my young friends. i thought surely when i reached double digits i could be trusted to come home in my own time, but nope it rarely happened. sure there was a lot of freedom, after all, this was america and this was new hampshire and this was live free or die country. so i did my fair share of wandering, skateboarding around playing cards, chewing bubble gum, and making out with other kids. still, guardedness got drilled into my dna and today it takes a concerted effort to open my heart to anyone at any time, for i always feel like many particles of magnet being sucked north. there must be a mantra in my head to help me along back into my original open and giving ways. give free or die! that's the one! i found it! now to put it in motion and change my life, i cannot wait! to start stopping for them again! fresh! to stop when i think i am in a rush and ask myself, why, katya, are you in such a rush? where really do you think you oughta be at this moment? can it not be here? with this one who is calling upon you in a simple greeting and willing to stop and give themselves freely to you? are you not honored? and can you not stop also and honor them with your presence? give of yourself freely today? what is the cost of all these moments in the halls, on the sidewalks of the world, in the streets, in the parks? the cost, my friend, is the life itself. for what is living if not sharing and loving and caring? these small exchanges, when widened and opened and made space for, they are the life! are they not? please, give free or die, i pray that i may answer the call of my people in the world, and today may i be with you. for you are all i really have, and i am yours.

eyelids fallen like my guard - cut #3

I suffer headaches

Tension too thick to mention

You know. I know. We all know. 

I know we all know what is 

about to happen

sentiments left touching

 thin air

original

 firm

 comforting handshake

 they had

time trails into some 

second hand see ya

 later 

lead into some 

cold

   late

    lonely night pin cushion

 never to 

return


you, too, would have left it that way...

like i had to... 

let it go...

like i
did

you would have had me

 leave it like up and

    walk away would 

not you

before you
found and held
and loved the fuckin
hell out of 

me

mercilessly

to the expense
of my breath
of my lungs
pressing me

pressing in on me
pressing me out all whole again
in the end

goddam i miss you
goddam

imprinted. 4 life

These are not simply memories which are recalled to haunt and thrill me from time 2 time, no, these experiences I have had, the powerful ones, are accessible always, and you will find them in the way I speak, the way I think, the way I walk, the way I feel... you see, my friends, we have been imprinted and this is 4 life.

The life (lived) sinks to the deepest part of you, floating in a pendulum arc to rest upon your bedrock, where all is cool and slow-motion, your hard drive, safe and preserved, and takes form of an emanation, begins to glow! The loves, the friends, the places, the losses, our greatest moments and cavernous falls. The rush of it all, and yet resides in us, and when we meet again following some passage in time, you see the change in me, and I the difference in you. This light is not unlike sitting down with the beaten back pages of your favorite book, water-stained and dog-eared, tarnished and soft in your hands in your belly in your heart on a rainy day, deeper than any tattoo.

A song comes along in the cloud, have I told you how it hits me? Any one of the numbers between 1973 and 2017 and now I am all curled up focused in the center of the novel, all the many faces all the actors situating themselves inside the pressure of my blood. The world is one of endless colors then. I am who I was all over again, and it makes me.

It made me so. Made me who I am and for that I am thankful. I will never regret a drop of it, a day, an hour, a starstruck moment in my own endless night.  I may have changed, my dear, but only for the better and only for the best!  I am and we are all of the world which has touched us, though we maybe long ago hiked ourselves right off that decrepit map... we found bypass.

  - KatYa, 2017

the last living smile

many years from now
when shyness is the greatest of virtues
and skepticism the license
to live

your eyes will come up over the ledge
of some old tome so heavy
in your hands

in a bare reading room
in the last living library
against the ticking
muffling the heart of
this city

and ask me
out from under the skein of our technocracy
what is goodwill?

and like a sun just risen
above any horizon
i will decorate the room
your face

will decorate
the room
my face

with the ancient
 smile

we are young -ii-

i hurt by all the friends i lost
by my involvement more than anything

 they ever did

a revolving door of well-meaning kids 

who tried to help this kid 

when this kid was deeply

 unreachable

now and again a horror
such a demon at times

 i been 

have i healed or will i ever
be so terrible you will
not wanna remember me

turn the blinds down
light up the no vacancy
keep me far away

have i done the same

 to you

i believe i suffered 

(before and after you)

i am young

lead me -- oh! -- very young what 

of darkness and derision

 to faith from 

indecision

inside out of me 

-- of us all -- like 

vapors we pass

 through

change us
 i am sorry

as we get older i believe

 in our presence

 

we are young

we are young

The days run away and I cannot do anything about this, I do not understand my age. I suppose we are all very young, even the very old, and this appeases the cruel god who comes out from time to time to command us away, life changes and we are not welcome anymore...
                                                                                                                  you are done with me and i am done with you and all our messy nonsense of two thousand three hundred forty-five yesterdays. I cannot say what came over me but i remember crying when i knew i was no longer gonna be protected or saved. I was to be blooded and charged with my Appetite For Destruction and to carry all the old Lies again, in rare form; they coulda made a fine killer of me, at the academy...
                                                                                                                                                            what I want to say is, losing you, this was one of the saddest of neverending losses, what i wanna say is sorry. and you have no need to forgive me unless it helps you -- please -- i think i forgave myself but i wonder -- when i hurt -- thinking of all the times you told me fuck off  

before i finally did

once dream cars now we need help

We need help, too, our once dream cars now smoking on the freeway and off the next exit not far from home, thankfully, pulling over to the side of the first street off the ramp not being swept today and no meter, thankfully, and not the worst neighborhood in the good old usa, thankfully, and release the hood and look under it at the old beast, V8 like the juice, and the radiator's miserably old and fucked, she's gonna need to be cool before we wanna twist that top, we need help and we drop the hood and head in any direction, searchin ourselves for the local friend to lend a hand, cell phone's dead, legs dead from a heavy day of work in the city, week long and no one's home to put an iron to those worn out clothes, the way we dress reflectin our feelin inside, we need help, edging over a desk into an office space, delivered back with an easy full swipe of any screen, lit like a lamp with a high wattage eco-unfriendliness in the atmosphere

after hours cuz there's nothing else to do, overtime cuz extra cash is a screw, locking into union squares with high echelon affairs, all these bios laid out sick and sweetly with photos on websites pushing free streams well into the vingt-et-un of our recorded history, centuries upon centuries of layer cake separated by cream cheese, thought we had a whole generation of twenty/something concentration high kids worldwide leaning and dancing into our wondrous worlds of fluff, they definitely related well with our sundried front street placard mentality, they did our snuff, waxed with plastic veneer smiles over reality. we thought we were badasses big thumbing and wet through sacred pages now soiled -- and oh how we fell -- cried when we came across our beloved mimeo-copied verse, generous endowment long, sticky fat thumbprints on the cornices, pages I through XLX... who needs sex? not us, thankfully. we need help.

made an urban dictionary out of our constitution

When you came into my life I was shooting pool, and neither were the other kids in school. There was a break and all the balls started rolling, and who could be prepared for a world administered by twitter feed, half-mad on fast food fry-batter, running down an uphill battle? The recycled oil had turned, the battery gone dead. A postmortem analysis found the conditions out of which the nightmare came to steam. All the way in the back of the tired rolodex of eighties-punctured index cards, we located the moment butter got sideswiped by Country Crock. Even the name gave it away! Yet we accepted the substitute and without any hardcore/softcore vetting. Consider us fucked right there.

Dare I look into these projects you are slumming? Somewhere in each one a person pushed out front, coat-tails blowing up egos in need of personality. Altruism was suddenly a four-letter word like media and Muslim. You made an urban dictionary out of the constitution. Wannabe celebrities still slinging their ghostwritten books, to get a stab at some easy cash before the crap inside all the margins falls out of consciousness and to your cutting room floor... now ankle deep in film, archaic, in a dark corner of ill-literatures.

Meanwhile...

Here we find a thorough & recent review of my work:
GIBNEYS BLOG: BOOK REVIEW 

Maze - the latest word on the street...

Customer Review

A cliffhanging sequel that can be admired as a standalone., February 16, 2017 By  Heraclitus This review is from: Maze (Daughter of Darkness Book 2) (Kindle Edition) Some top-class writing is on display from Katya Mills. She picks up the story of Ame, and introduces a new character with Kell, a young woman raised on the Texas border and forced to flee to Oakland. The similarities between Ame and Kell do not end at exile to a new life. Kell acts as both a mirror and new set of eyes for Ame. Meanwhile, we also hear about Maze's story. Ame's bad-boy skater dude love interest has a lot going on beneath the surface, and it's not all good. Indeed, there's lots of subtle interactivity in the various relationships we've been introduced to over the two-book series. There's a cliffhanger in this too - but as a standalone slice-of-life involving supernatural beings, this is some great and unique stuff. The (e)book can be purchased here:  MAZE on AMAZON

GIRL WITHOUT BORDERS 2.7.1

Girl Without Borders 2.6.2

one and one makes one

with curiosity and presence i go
long on hopeful inquisition with you
the one who volunteered to
come and face me
and talk

kinda cool how we discovered

one and one makes

one

swiss.miss

Swiss miss and her illiterati, they were slick and unfriendly, i could not get a handle on them. they reappeared one bad night in a cemetery of the living dead. how could i have forgotten? memorialized, shrink-wrapped and placed bedside for his or her personal pleasure, in the sickening days of settling spring. the city was crawling all over itself. perfect time they chose to show up, just after you took a shot of distrust to the arm.

I offered her a pipe dream to leave, sent her on a google search, chasing after an elusive $100 gift certificate to one of the old bludgeoning corporate book peddlers and thieves -- fucking Borders -- oh, how they made panhandlers out of bookshop keepers! Never could any decent community forgive them! 

I gave her a routine about signing up to test out books for free. "They lend you a pair, you break the spines, and if you don't like them (even if you do) you got ninety days to return them for a different pair." And on and on. "Work it, girl. What's the catch? All you gotta do is review them online and grab that gift certificate." I could see the avarice behind her eyes. She was on her way down the rabbit hole, but I'm sure I would see her broken soul again. These types are resilient as weeds and never go away. 

Her crew, the illiterati, could only read between lines! What good were books and Borders... they sought covers, discretion, walls. Together they insinuated one wiry upper body full of hot and senseless air. Cannot you see how I shudder to think of the lives could benefit from the air you suck, you and your crew, swiss miss? Her chub nostrils flared out at me at the top of the stairs, could I restrain myself from giving a push?

Into a marble broken fall
Blood dispersed across the smooth texture of it all
A chalky taste at the back of my throat
Homicide suddenly seemed...

okay

three. three. four. gin

I thought about you after I met you and we played cards and I thought, wow, you are a really good person, you are someone special, and I remember putting my cards down, three three four and declaring GIN on you. And you were happy for me, you didn't need to win at all, and that was lovely for both of us. Then when I saw you again you could bend your knee a little bit more, and you said someone bought you breakfast because they saw you had no money, and then someone else gave you money for smokes but not enough for a pack, and you were able to talk the corner store clerk down for one, and you've had it for three days and haven't even finished it yet. And I was happy to see good things happening to a good person, and that you've been able to cut back on smoking, too, cuz it's bad for your health. I told you how I thought about you and how you're special, and I wish that your life gets better and everything turns out well for you and you can walk again, and that you are able to open that orphanage someday somewhere like you wanted.

Grand Theft Life -- Book1. Chapter X

Grand Theft Life 1.9

not.getting.it.ness

I fell into my own fantasy as a keeper of the flame for the children new to fresh books books books. Even fantasies have antagonists and she was a beast, she related well to the kids what with her smiles and false promises. They wanted what she did not have, and fresh matte finish covers became less attractive as the eyes tend to follow the shiny dangler. So what? An asshole relates quite well to other orifices, I imagine, and cannot recuse themselves from toxic flushing, outlyers from anywhere life might thrive. I could only bring a few around to the treasures of reading, but we could proliferate from there. You know, kids tell other kids about a book and soon everyone is reading it. That was the best aspect of my fantasy. Funny how it used to be a reality, back in the Harry Potter days, the Chronicles of Narnia Days. These children were born with google roadmaps of life, and Marvel movies where once we had comic books. Maybe if I pulled the old trading card trick and attached sticks of bubble gum to the spine. Anything to greet them with language and keep them from falling into her world, the common unconscious of not getting-it-ness. Fighting for space. Craving intimacy. Technologically sound. Animals equipped with smart phones doing three quarters their mental work for them. Grades by emojis and trading in texts, subjugated to a subhuman comment thread without end. I dont even consider her subjects of the same genus as we. I just see elephant seals fumbling about for dying, flopping fish. Mammals with computers and electric outlets. Mall grubbing video grabbers. Android celluloid.

hierarchy of need

librarian by day
book burner by
night


the transition 

was natural 

gotta keep warm
she says
you understand

did it have to be

my books?

Girl Without Borders 2.6.1

Journal # february five

A school of puffed up little clouds swam across the sky, chased by a storm, some were not quick enough, i saw them overtaken by the darker water vapors and manipulated into the greater whole. i myself was running, too, through a morass of thick mud and robust grasses, softened focus without my eyeglasses. i split into two and then into four (could have made eight if it weren't such a chore). i once loved our leader, but not anymore.

Grand Theft Life 1.8

weathervane

All the Hollywood icons
all the Bollywood icons
inspire us. they sweep our floors
in black and white

All the grandeur of southern plantations
made to capture the sun
arabesque

We live on through these times we made
the oceanic minutia
we consecrate
       describe
        classify in our tomes


Our differences we set aside to study
before bed. chamomile tea with lemon peel.
we fall asleep on them

We all do the same                 in the sun in the
day in and                                      shade
out           after
                      the same nonsense
iced tea
lemonade
sugar cane crystals sparkle

Our children ask for help
without having
to ask         they ask us
                         help

we live we die
we live again
cuz

Life cannot end
when you die
         you cannot really
            you do not truly
                        die

unless you're just
another asshole
weathervane

pointing
the wrong
direction

the worst thing you never did

sugar was followed by 

  salt was followed 

      by sugar 

    again

     then i told my miserable 

         self why don't you

eat a fuckin 

  apple

and i did

   pardon me

it was not the 

    worst thing 

  i ever

    did

44

four found a friend
      in four

 four and four made
of arrows

birds flyin cross
some tracks

of elbows
of arms

profile made
four -n- four
side by side

in prayer

and greater
 than the sum of them
    selves

with gods

the deuces held court
the days were short
inside them

the nights began
at eight