turn off

the hum 

drum 

of political bs 

on fox cnn

 tmz 

and the 

like 

made u 

wanna exit 

the earth 

it was easier 

to just turn 

the shit 

off

by

#katyamills

time blind

The sun set on a quiet winter day and they fell off into a faraway cavernous thought space with music playing off a box radio plugged in and hung up over the sink with bungees so they could access it from the bed, too heavy to move. Time got lost in their blindness of it.

#katyamills

September

the bells continue to ring
the birds continue to sing
the seasons to change
the locks to turn
the fires to burn
the dogs to bay
the thoughts 2 stray
the spirit 2 yearn
love 4 life
everlasting

#katyamills

shift change

they smiled @ shift change

worked the whole night. a double

 'oh what insanity' 

fell out on season six episode 

two. late late July and thank god 

did the numbers 

drowsy can rest knowing i 

made the rent i 

made it

 

#katyamills

quote

"we are not so helpless to find our way back to our own states of mind" 

#katyamills

anchor a bridge in a sea

we wanted it to be something it was not. we so badly wanted it. the distance between us made for sadness. for confusion. for anger you had to push aside again and again. and again. the distance grew. it would take years to anchor a bridge in this sea. it's no use being angry i'd rather be sad. it's no good being sad and alone. not having it the way you want it. the way you believe it could be. but it's not.   #katyamills

coordinated thing

it's a coordinated thing, doctor healing patient then making love to a nurse, lights down, in the operating theatre. it's anarchy, ballet slippers breaking apart, toenail cracking. a shot of anaesthetic... it's coming out of it, tossing and sick, creeping toward war.   #katyamills

last kopeck

One sent him postcards while traveling the world. Another doing meaningful work and being paid handsomely for it. This one celebrated a newborn baby. Where was he in life? Nights at the bar, dropping his last kopeck. Then at his desk writing furious without any promises.    #katyamills

love gone bad

shrapnel of moon in the sky
four rooms to pace
they felt like chewed to death gum
the stairs
stacked three cases high
a couple of lost souls on their asses hanging arms through bars
on the rails. names carved in a heart
in the top of a post
circling the well

#katyamills

highlight

the darkness 

obliterated by the light

the rush of euphoria charted upon your troubled face

gave credence to our 

cadence

#katyamills

Royal [8.15.1998]

Exertion to almost dawn evolved into something effortless… the whole production seemed almost pointless but that’s what made it carefree… the later the night the heavier things got… the drinking, the smoking, the chasing… powder folded up with mirrors hide the life lines cracked like former factory floors, the pores like potholes clogged with oil and dirt… rising up from the basement of tax brackets into some starched shirt’s arms… lush Cadillac interiors rolling low on tired struts below the immense buildings… the money clean the language dirty. wanting it all. coffee stains the teeth like lacquered tables. a simple twist of a blind loosens tongues behind loveless lips. service workers bending backs for high tips. exhaust bubbles up over a line of pipes along the curb, a stone’s throw from a great lake, outside clubs with cathedral ceilings. sometimes life is a mess, empty pockets and hurt feelings.

by #katyamills from 8.15.1998

suffer 4 not believing

Millions of phones ring simultaneously every second on earth. A couple side by side at the top of twenty stone steps. The relaxed lips of lovers before the heavy orange door. A car drives past, music blasts. Kids shouting out. Coming so close on a scratcher and losing. The one who caught the bouquet at the wedding again and still unmarried. Sunflower with a dark center. We are possessive, scared of losing, of who we are without it. Apartments and homes hopelessly cluttered beyond recognition. Drawn away from whatever we are doing. Tempted to drop the cigarette on the carpet and walk away. Life is simple and absurd. Breaking the truth to someone way beyond what they believed and having them stare at you tearfully wondering why you are unreal. Life is complicated. Now you are the one to suffer for not believing. Life is strange. with nothing to do you drink vodka and join in song home on the range feeling emotionally withdrawn.   #katyamills. 8.20.1998

Royal [8.23.1998]

It was mid August when he said goodbye to his friends and traveled north from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes ready for a different life. He had a small savings and signed a lease for a flat off of Armitage, three floors up from the ground, northwest of the city. The space was unremarkable. Surrounded by red brick factories. All four winds could travel through it and there was a slender view of the city skyline and decent light. He signed a lease on the trunk of the man's car. The week after he moved in a former tenant shouted up to the open window and reclaimed an oak wood desk he had left. Someone crashed a car at 2am into a telephone pole in the alley and set it on fire. This was no accident. He went back to bed while his cat watched the flames from the windowsill. A kind woman named Monetta shared a back porch with him and they got to talking. She was spiked on vodka, Stoli. He discovered her terrific laughter when she learned of his favorite drink. Seagram's whiskey with milk on ice. One lazy Sunday they walked down to Western Ave and had lunch at Lazo's Tacos while sharing art and literature.   #katyamills

Gold Coast. Chicago

I drive my beat up old car fast with graphite and paper up and down these beat up old streets glass strewn everywhere factories looming heads specked with pigeon guano hair unwashed after a night drinking then downtown battling for the loading zone  

by #katyamills 

words curated from 8.29.1998 diary

Royal #9.14.1998

Not trying to be anything other than you was beautiful the same way silence was. When I dropped the fear of precursory judgments it was easier dealing with situations in general: strangers and transactions, getting measured up to standards. I was in my mid-twenties and on my own in the world when i figured this out after so many fails. They saw right through you out there, the ones who were surviving out there by staying alert. They tested me less once I made it. Coming off capable if not fearless, not so awkward and green. You can feel it when you have entered this dragon. You are the city in its many expressions and the streets are within you. My eyes turned asphalt and my body to clay under a soft rush hour rain.

by #katyamills

Royal sessions [9.13.1998]

The top of the back stairs looks over the string factory and the windows filter out all the sun’s colors excepting the blue and can barely be seen through. On a Saturday night the workers are wishing they found another calling trapped in this ball of yarn. The potatoes are ready to come out of foil after I go down three flights to give the dryer my washed and spun clothes. There’s a heavy Mexican in the apartment below stirring beans on the stove, door open, television singing over the baby’s cries. I can see the tomato cans lined up in the pantry. The canned goods they don’t embrace change, either, you have to shake and hit the tin with your palm, they don’t want to come out, it’s better in there than being dropped into a pot and cooked into another life and consumed. My cactus keeps dying and coming back to life. Same with my guitar. It’s my fault. I keep playing favorites and the typewriter always wins. I have to turn down my stereo to hear my phone ring. Lenny Kravitz is a romantic. I am paying attention and it doesn’t cost much. If your phone never rings you distrust people. If you keep your phone off or off the hook, you cannot trust yourself. A candle that is melting without a burning wick tells of summer in Chicago. A single word in any book is less trivial than any single image on all of television. Which is a demonstration of seeing the world through my values. The secret to happiness is acceptance of suffering. People living in a hard part of town are more decent and less frightened. Reality is scarier than fiction, but not as scary as not being real. This paper is thin legal. This is the best typewriter paper around.

by #katyamills

STAR 67

I remember the first time we fought. We were sitting in a booth at Mel’s Diner and he made a comment which offended me to my core, and I just got up and left him and my denver omelet behind, farewell to the fluffy pale sunshine masterpiece. When I get that stirred up it’s like a profound abandonment, someone completely misses me, it’s like all the long talks and understanding got wiped out and canceled, like painting watercolors in the garden in the rain. My blood pressure went haywire and I started to feel hot and freezing cold, I left because anything he might say could only further confirm my bias. I hate it when my armor goes up, the absolute worst because it’s the exact opposite of what I’m usually going for, the connection. Then the memories show up. They dive at me, engines blaring, like kamikazes, intrusive and blowing up my mind.

by #katyamills. (story opening)#WIP

Royal sessions [10.2.1998]

What if it was premeditated what if it was orchestrated what if they broke in and attacked her what if she wasn't strong enough or fast enough to get a dough roller and crack it over their skull? The slightest movement or sound and she played it out to the fearful end. It took a precise and steady routine, a military exercise almost, to get herself back to baseline. She knew she was ridiculous. The dude was locked up in a max state pen and he was too miserable and weak to risk getting sliced into ribbons by barbed wire. Of one thing she was sure. She wasn't gonna let fear get the best of her. Bad things happen to good people, which explained why her grandfather was lying on his back in his small bedroom dying of a terrible and punishing disease. She got up and brushed her teeth until they foamed. She talked to someone with a big reputation without a voice without a face without a driver's license or an address whom she called god. She sang the most joyful songs she could remember at the top of her lungs.  

by #katyamills

Royal sessions [10.11.1998]

Like boiled water feels tea. Like rhythm it could not be seen only felt. Like empathy pervades a room of liquid bodies in cotton polyester and leather. Giving made it all run. Giving your all for nothing in return. Oils and canvas looked into the sun of a thousand thoughtful inspired faces and the artist long since deceased. Outsiders were not insiders though no one was actually excluded. The meaning seekers often ran with false narratives they claimed to be true. You can make money but you cannot actually exploit it because it could not be exploited. Yes, the newsprint in plastic at the dewy morning doorstep brought it to peaks and valleys of world eye watching, falling under scrutiny and misunderstanding to an unceremonious public death. It had a difficult sincerity about it. A paragraph in one of history’s tomes would do it no justice at all whatsoever. But this would not matter because it did not need justice or publicity or anything else. When the course of the earth was navigating too close to the sun, basements and attics would be frantically searched for it, so to bring the world back to some fantasized forgotten condition, it would not resist being rediscovered, mourned and celebrated all at once. Not at all.

by #katyamills

free on planet oat milk

the story is not compelling. i zone out. grocery store in slippers. lagging behind you as you go on about independence day. i make a break behind the spray mist. aisle 15. stop to admire the gallery of cereal boxes. the creatures playful not shy. eighties music. sliding across floors waxed here on planet oat milk i am free  #katyamills