unfashionably

the zillion cheers Hip Hip

Hooray in the murky gray 

of the UK

super uneasy

reluctant with scepter and orb

out of total fashion

in the year twenty 

twenty three

a new King 

takes the 

crown

#katyamills

farewell to the pm

in the House of Lords

we watched you hold court past the point of despair

your ministers deserting their posts 

the podium propping you up like a stand

falling on your sword between general elections

 night falls. the people cannot save you 

somewhere in Kyiv Zelensky picks up a burner 

to offer kind words and

help you rest      #katyamills

tightrope.hk.leadership.manuscript

My thoughts turn to Hong Kong where democracy leaders who have fought for the ‘one country, two systems’ were recently arrested and detained. Timing is suspicious as they know the global pandemic is likely to edge out anything else (no matter how relevant) for headlines. An age old political tactic for sure. My thoughts turn also to less fortunate countries in these troubling times. Covid19 has had a terrible impact on the USA, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, UK, China. All countries with historically thriving economies, mostly well connected and funded, top notch with research and development, technological advances, and responsiveness to crisis. One can only imagine the devastation when it marches through impoverished areas. How will Africa and India and South America be impacted? I worry for the global economy and a second Great Depression. People gathering at State Capitols across the nation, protesting stay at home orders, their jobs and livelihoods at stake. And it is true that for every family every single job is not non-essential. People want desperately to get back to work. We are all walking on a tightrope it seems and for various reasons. The world needs true leadership. Who will step up? So far we’ve seen a few. Dr. Fauci. Angela Merkel. Gavin Newsom. Andrew Cuomo. Anxiety about the contagion and keeping it subdued competes with fear of the economic impact that comes from not working. I feel increasingly fortunate to have my job and my writing habit and my friends and family. Work keeps me sane. GREAT news! my manuscript is complete and ready to be published. I’m grateful for freedom of speech.   #katyamills

what you think of yourself

a parliament of youth came together in the U.K. to talk about issues and I watched them on c-span. the most spirited among them stood up from the green leather cushions and waved arms and smiled toward themselves, you could see. I was drawn in by the process. these kids with their fantastic regional accents trying the whole chamber, the whole house of commons, for some eloquence and persuasion. may be what you think of yourself in the end that triumphs.

Not-To-Mention, mentioned #iii)

Let us circle the wagons back to the horse and the automobile, and the loving kindness with which the horse gracefully agreed to help us build our cities (Sacramento) rather than fight us. The horse may not be indexed generally with the great predators of the world. Still, no one can deny that many a lineage came to its conclusion, behind a horse.The horses today, grandsons and granddaughters of the workhorses of yesteryear, could they not be more grateful to the vision we have together realized? Would they not sit down at desks with feather plumes and fountain pens, armed with loving kindness, beside troughs of ink,  hoof under chin, contemplating before composing epic love letters to Mr. Ford and his former and now widely forgotten associates?

From Stallion, with love. From associated former groups of poor single mares without stallions, on welfare. On behalf of all the mares who were forced to raise their kids single handedly. Single mares living through the nightmares on the farm. The instability of the stable. Untold abuses at the hands of the stablehands. Former oatwinners, shackled to the yoke and the shoe. Chasing mechanical rabbits like the poor greyhounds before them. Stallions reduced to workhorses, side by side with the most meagre of asses! Superlative, indeed.

How tragic, this history. But how the tragedy has turned on a dime and become cause celebre, 21st century! For generations pulling haycarts of America's least wanted. The hayseeds. The rednecks. The layabouts! The long awaited uses of manure toward betterment has arrived... shit for sale! Pulll up a cart! Take a number! They will form in line to worship Mr. Henry Ford et al. They will form a horsepower V, if propriety dictates. You thought the line of humans would be long to give a hug and a handshake to Henry Ford? You were right. Motorheads from as far away as Villarcayo de Merindad de Castilla la Vieja, Spain. Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll of the UK. Rumour has it some expatriates of the ministry of this settlement, which translates loosely as St. Mary's Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel , fled to the States and bestowed all formerly assigned virtues upon dear Henry. After all, it was he who made the migration possible, in original Ford motorcars, out of the hollow and on to an industrial era barge (surreptitiously with a payoff to the captain) to cross our dear lady the Atlantic.

And still the humans are outnumbered! Legend has it, innumerable studs pay homage to the birthplace of Mr. Ford. And to his gravesite. And to those great ruins of Detroit, including where stood his first assembly line factory. Untold fillys and colts of untold single white mares,  untold crews of anonymous black stallion studs worldwide, together take on the distance and swim the seas if necessary to paw the sacred ground. To hoof and trample any man, woman or child stands between them and their iconic father. Regional roundups from California on east, have witnessed the escape of denizens of horses gathered for such human affairs, rarely without fanfare or incident, and most certainly never pressed and published (for the shame that would inevitably fall upon the heads of the sacrosanct cowboys involved) by local media quickly lassoed. These uprisings would have most certainly made for great press, indeed! Alas, the captive reporters were instructed by the cattlemen to shuck it off in the alleyways of local obits in that American calm regurgitation: death by natural causes. 

Of course calm does lie at the center of it all. Mares and studs, men and women, live strangely yet peacably together under the watchful eye of the Fords. The great state of Michigan would certainly be no more than a footnote of Canada, were it not for the legacy. And it is quite thoroughly understood, the great parts both horses and humans alike played in the fanning out via motorcar of an American zeitgeist or pioneering spirit full of life. The wonderfully yet still violently marked canvas of towns and cities that spread like butter from Detroit once and still buttressed by its man and horsepower from Dearborn and Kalamazoo. In memory of the heaping spoonful of bastard foals and fillys from such strangely named townships as Bad Axe, Climax, Hell, and Jugville.  Those poor begotten desperates from the far reaches of the Upper Peninsula.

Rolling allostasis -iv)

She was in her twenties, when she surfaced from the midsection of an iceberg, the frozen contents of some formerly fluid collective subconscious experience. In the middle of nowhere, mind you. A slow drip of unhappening. Congealed into living memories (consistency of molasses).  So she thawed from her heart out, and the ice around her began to soften in her light and heat, and collect supine at her feet. Aqua devotion. If water had hands... then prayer beneath her dry eyes. So rare did this sorta manifestation occur. The glaciers melt in their natural way before her. And she takes her damn time. You don’t hurry a glacier. You age it, like wine. Or wait for her to melt, to reference empirical evidence of global warming. Melting butter at room temperature. She never left the kitchen table. Painting her daily bread. Turning and turning yellow over time with the wallpaper. Gotta get worse before she gets better. Baby blue with white flowers, soft and malleable. Almost vulnerable, fallible – almost human again. As she wishes. As they want her. Sorry says the fight inside her, delivering the roundhouse Queen Anne Victorian style. Round one...TKO. From a frozen warrior #2 asana. Feel the heat. Sauna.

She got more high than school (a chemical romance -1)

She was a dandelion chewin, flatbed lyin, urban cowboy screwin, truant from way way back. Like high school. She got more high than school. He was a youngbood creepin' west-side posturin' punk from Detroit, and he must of run game on her cause she thought he was the shit. She called him the m.o.a.b. thats the mother of all bombs. He called her the m.o.a.b. too. Mother of all bitches.

Her friends sought out to neutralize his fake ass masquerade, and win her back like a scratcher recompense for a month long losing streak. Her friends lacked mercy. Here it gets worse, see. Their connection grew more intimate, exclusive and chronic. He had stepped out upon her moonscape. She revolved around his planet.

Little did she know the gravity of his influence: demonic, sideways, maybe halfway satanic. Her tides came in rushes, in spurts, twice a day now. She was emotionally rewired to his synthetic new standard. He watched her do dishes, he watched her ass move. He lay listless in bed, like nothing to prove. The only extension he gave to support her? A bourgeouise yawn, with laisssez faire torture...

to be continued