harvest

the crop harvested and placed in burlap

the children beat their wings against it

the blood pushes and floods the capillary fields

we need never go hungry grandpapa says nor

starve ourselves of all earthly delights  

#katyamills

the love that could not last

wrapped around a light beam

she was. with him

unraveled the cinnamon bun

she had him and he had her 

breakfast lunch and dinner

walked around holding hands

half the day

yet whatever was going on 

in the romance department

no defenses run so deep to 

hold the world off

 

the life of them passed like the sun

basic filaments burning 

less than a year since they met 

caught that fiery orange contagion

cross the sky 

dreaded (came the darkness)...
there, now (she knew it)...

embedded (all the memory)...
it's over (she said it)

#katyamills

action on the street. two thousand some.

the women with newport smooth hundreds walk the sidewalks, smoke sweeps into their lungs. heads dizzy with the chemicals they swing their upper bodies down over the bus stop benches, regretfully, and around go the hips, puff their lips out at the strangers, push middle fingers out at dangers. the drunks duck into meeting halls, intoxicated by sweet anonymity, the junkies escape the blistering heat of the valley, prayers and those who care, or want to care, inside open doors. tears of misery. tears of joy. the women born in the forties and fifties come out with abandon, pushing upper ages into push up bras with powder, in triple digit heat. the older they are the stronger. the men have become very kind and sugar sweet with old age. out with their canes, in wheelchairs, on walkers. ripened and unashamed to be weak after lifetimes of having to be strong. the heat has the strip malls and parking lots cooked, melting tar into rivulets dripping down where the rainwater is supposed to take the oils, the wheels they are spinning and change direction to avoid an ugly truth in the road, the film drips off of grills embedded in the pavement, the fishtails of boys in cars dragging the streets take water in through the gills. the ones been around the block stand there talking, don't need to go around it again, the quiet ones come out to listen to the talkers who are talking to anyone and no one, the young ones quiet and listening but not for long, the young girls holding the hands of the young men and young women, smile and kick up the dust, the young boys are satellites who blush. the workers are working, the players playing cards, the surveyors, construction, on the job, hammering and drilling and surveying, connecting wires, hard hats on hard heads, staring at a soft ass passing by on the street, hard, hammering and measuring and shouting over the trucks, wishing they was talking to some honey, sugar sweet. the smokers are kicking snipes into the street, newports and kools and camels, dehydrated, rolling embers off the end of a half-smoked marlboro, rollies, talking shit, looking, the girls gossiping and looking and laughing a little, the men boasting and smiling, the punks smoking reds like joints. real estate agents taking smoke breaks on the hour. waitresses cursing into their breaks, called back in by a supervisor or line cook to get their asses inside and grab that fucking marinated mountain trout with rice and green beans. they sashay into the air conditioned dining rooms to their tables. waiters incensed by ten percents, dropping cans and butts on cold cement. then out on the streets, free, after they all punch out.  #katyamills

24 hour variables

an ice cube 

to cool a summer sky

the selfless moon faded

to nil. of course none of this really happened like we thought

they asserted with frozen logic 

from outer space

#katyamills

sudden 2

noon comes and goes

god i am tired
my neck and eyes hurt
all forty some years of me
but i endure

tomorrow when the
sky turns i will roar like a tiger
to the whistle of steam

fuck all the noise
i got it in my mind to help

somebody 

there's all kinds of ways i

choose one

#katyamills

beyond the wildest dreams

following your convictions and craft to they desperate ends will appear to others like superstitions and even a great waste of talent and time. you will be labeled if not belittled in this world where one is supposed to abandon one's dreams and visions and face reality. though devoted and even spiritually fulfilled, you will feel like you got crossed. you will be lonely and almost bitter by common society's rejection of you. you will be aching sore and if you are anything like me, stubborn. swore and demanded more and doubled down. they will tell you your stuff is no good, for if it were everyone would be reading you. this is a lie. you will be tempted to lie to yourself, too. do not. go all in and why? because devotion is uncommon and rare. keep at it, with self abandon, and, i promise you, the kind of wealth beyond the wildest dreams   #katyamills

january 31

dishonest with herself 

on truths she could not countenance

she gave the world the middle finger 

not because she hated life because

she loved it

#katyamills

we wait...

4 our luck to change 

4 them to text us back 

4 the rain that will cleanse our soul 

4 inspiration when we have none 

4 that ancient laughter we once shared 

4 that immaculate silence 

2 feel something truly penetrate us 

4 something we cannot get over 

2 get over it

#katyamills

eldorado resort casino

spectrum girls in their dresses
after the ball. happiness is 10 bucks
on a saturday night for penny slots

a man in a wheelchair

jacket pulled over head hiding from the games 

alive and ready to be played 

the earthbound ones lay out
their demands then dissemble
into innumerable grains of sand

#katyamills

biggest little city

 

touched by the gods

encircled by sierra peaks

Reno is some half century old Vegas

pawnshops and desperate cowboys

who lost they hats but found

they girls under the grand 

marquee

#katyamills

votive remix

deceased lay the flower beds toxic and soaking perspiration thick as glue. we passed the ethereal fields cranked the shaft flipped a bitch and sailed due north, the agonists and antagonists darting out from the shadows. we released the nitrous oxide mixed with half and half burned the white sage whole off the stern.

petitioned a ragtag battalion of orcas like white blood cells to seal in the heat, caustic energies aft and starboard, signals blaring into the night. the candles they flickered and danced.  #katyamills

writing tip

emotional coloring

extractions from the past 

by intention

can transform the ache of remembrance
and bring your history

back to life

#katyamills

real time

thoughts accumulate @ the corner of up and down just above freezing

mufflers give away ignitions in the silence behind double pane motel glass

corner of down and up on the back of a harley feeling the torque insane or sane 

we are the strange circumstance of being in this world

real time

#katyamills

saturday special

here comes Carlo 

to bless us with the egg mcmuffin

all i got this day i hope to give 

coffee. sucre. crema

a crystal clear morning 

i wanna live 

#katyamills

break of dawn

run your colors

light your skies 

give away your lasting hope 

to dawn and open 

eyes

#katyamills

be the sea

rise and take the land
speak in tides and rhythms
sing them all to sleep
heal by touch


this is why


when it comes to revolution
capturing minds and hearts
those who disbelieve
it is best to be
the sea

#katyamills

from the heart out

she was in her twenties

existence a slow drip of unhappenstance 

when she surfaced from the midsection of an iceberg

the frozen contents of some formerly fluid 

collective subconscious 

experience

ready to travel the world

she began finally to thaw

from the heart out

#katyamills

the one

walking the mall i

rode the escalators up

and down

thinking 

i might one day find

you knowing i might

never

until then

dug out some cash 

for the dreamy sweater 

wool 

#katyamills

120s. remix

under the lights
the supermodel shows well

backstage draggin on
Slims 120s holds it in her lungs awhile
then lambasts the makeup girl
for missing her
mole

when she exhales it
all goes up in
smoke

#katyamills

the key

between them

the impasse had taken the shape of a mountain

yet they would not be 

apart

on the verge of incommunicable

they tapped morse code 

across the stars

will you stay in town

tonight? i will leave

the key 

#katyamills

17

when i meditate on those i knew who went down hard and whom, after all the shock had been absorbed, by anyone who meant anything to them, ascended to the heights of recollection, i am filled with great sadness, giving a damn, decidedly, when i got no damns to give.  #katyamills

99 cents @ the quikstop

i am singular

organic yet 100% reconstituted
of unknown ethnic
origin. uncompromised 

inside a racial

divide

i feel island

composing metaverse
they wanna buy me
for 99 cents @ the quikstop

a generation why
32-bit clerk in
16-thread scrubs
calls me off my platform
in the pink cloud
brigade

radiating my
tertiary-processed
64-bit self-serve themed
limousine queen
ego state

they blister and
sizzzzzle

#katyamills

flag.stone

downcast 

sitting pretty on the front porch 

calling you

year after year

my feet bare

upon it

the flagstone 

stops my thoughts

#katyamills

remix she

she takes

these rules-of-road
these mandates federales
these ideas of fairness and fears
she licks them 

speechless

swallows
the music the man

the mainstream
swallows

the age-of-fad line

the cess 

poolz

she carries 

the asses
makes u 

her bitch she 

can liquefy 

the earth 

ignited she fumes
she sucks all the fumes

black with blood
she unassumes

and 

somehow

opening up 

through cold rain of
insect-stung steel

crossing

the many states 

america

kid eyes full 

moon

sending steam

beneath shower head flowers

behind ribbons of rainbow
summer hydrant
waters

somehow

like no one like

no one she 

loves 

#katyamills

california unincorporated

up the hills
to the llama farms

fields of upturned soil
the black sheep tagging behind

unincorporated
california

into a clearing

in the darkness of a day
sunlight woven like cotton

round the swab

they ran

this one

don't need no help in hurtin

do they? a gardener declared

hands on her hips

self-demolished

exhausted
dejected

they ran

finally

into arms

#katyamills

dream state

where divining rods
find us
symbols define us

hard of seeing hearing understanding
it signs us

a snake
with patterned somewhat deceptive
hieroglyphic designs 

jaw unhinged

bolts forward 

to strike

#katyamills

s.lavish

frazzled cutting wires
bending over and under 

endless machinery greasy pipes growling

cobwebbed and cornered they

never started finishing school

blackened by chimneys

smoking snipes

thats how god wanted it 

and it was good

#katyamills

teenage communist

only nineteen reading Marx
she was calmly pronounced a communist
by her ever patriotic 

American family

arguing was useless
she laughed so hard

how would she get the grades they demanded

if she blew off class 

assignments?   

#katyamills

the blues of 20.20 twos

to the top of our lungs

the same songs we sing at the top

of the subway stairs

carrying our wares

carrying our 

cares

we pick ourselves up

the world goes around

like there's no future

we let ourselves 

down

may we keep working

through the winters of self

may gratitude blossom 

so renewal can sprout 

from the roots

into shoots

smokin reds

singing blues

the choices

we chose

need not be

the choices

we choose

#katyamills

statica

 

the divine 

exists in the space between stations

where molecules cease 

to behave

#katyamills

cold steel revisited - one one

cold steel got love 
by Katya Mills 


i remember this well. the cold steel in your eyes reflected off the glass of high rise buildings and bottlecaps rolled flat into the street. in opposition to the glossy sky, the kinda deep blue you rarely see anymore in a city. we got together around the time Drake cut his first album which went viral before viral was an expression. the best album. life got crazy for us back then, the whole of us, maybe a core of ten or twenty related intrinsically to a greater constellation, maybe fifty or sixty or more popping off the skin of the larger community. a bunch of anti-establishment mad motherfuckers with nowhere to go just live for today. you won me over quickly, at a time when i was in a lot of pain, my cousin had died, i couldn't make the funeral, my job was hell and life was like a bad breakup. your life was hell and we both knew nothing of a future until it appeared and it was us. something special had arrived. sometimes Hollywood comes out of nowhere, anywhere, thin air like. now Hollywood is Hollywood and behind the scenes it's all one giant character assassination. but it's a damn good show if that's what it takes to create it. you cannot help but fall in love with it. everything decompensates around it. between us we formed a concept. it was our little secret and there could be no dissent. when you feel this, you know this. magic. real end of the rainbow shit. storybook status. like we already made history, before we made it. cold steel got love like us. cold steel got love.

one one

like the one before 

we start our year with trepidation

a measure of chocolate 

and coffee some vigorous exercise

in the frosty air the drip 

of time into our veins renewed 

by the construct of one

one

#katyamills