bodhichitta

they watched true crime

not because they liked suffering

they watched to awaken the compassion

toward all who suffer

#katyamills

before life

before life

they found refuge in film and music and books

withdrawn from the world

dreaming

scared

when they awoke

living became the premier

entertainment

#katyamills

journal #

i would never see Drama alive again. i came back 5 months later from rehab in Oregon, to claim him. they said he had been struck by a car at an intersection not far from where the our mobile home had been. i buried the poor little guy up in Martinez, in the hills. i felt terrible. but all the nightmare i lived over the previous 4 years, was over. i had been beaten, downtrodden, and become willing to let go of all my old ways. i resolved to live differently, to live right, if only i had a chance to live again...

journal #

i can clearly recall my awakening. it was over five years back and i was close to street homeless. i remember the date, 12.12.12 and how some had attached to it an apocalyptic forecast. i was living in my friend's truck and very alone. i was full of powerful feelings and fears. i was dreaming again of my family and better days long behind me. i was getting high around the clock, for i was addicted to methamphetamine and could not escape. i used it alongside the psych meds i had been described for anxiety and depression. it had become my medication. the allostasis in my mind was severe. i heard voices through walls. my depressive moments lasted long and deep. i was unkempt but i had access to laundry, electricity, food, and water. i had witnessed crimes on the streets and been assaulted and manipulated more times than i could count. i knew a dangerous dead end romance like i knew my middle name. much of my energy was lost to hypervigilance and traumatic recall. i feared people and economic insecurity. i listened to am radio talk shows like they were my only friends...

as is

Sometimes i don't care
how i look or what i wear

i just get myself up
and get myself
out there

eyes that could be would be opened

The shelling was compelling, for though it destroyed many a home and many a life, it was something London (among others) learned to live with during the Allies war against Germany and the Axis. These times are long gone now. And yet someone somewhere being shelled shouts 'look at me! look at me!' (Palestine? Ukraine? Syria? Honduras? Yemen?). Shelling is a poor repeat performance of the human race. Let's disturb and destroy the perceived enemy's civilian population, by tossing from a cowardly distance and protected by armour (tank, missile, barracks), an explosive device into your family's sacred space. Peace swept off the table like porridge by the careless arm of a drunkard. Then the machines begin to pack up with ammunition and roll. The mechanism is diabolical for it cannot be stopped by a simple soldier with god and country behind him. Morality was annihilated in boot camp. The heart again subservient to the great mind. A human failing, repeated.

The shelling was compelling. How dare you say that? You must have grown up in an era of peace and flat-footedness. You must never have served your country!

True. And I say again, bearing witness to history and human nature; the shelling was compelling. For it woke up the civilians. The ones who lost their homes. The ones who knew the ones who lost their lives. The revolution began with loss. Set up an indispensable activism by proxy. Eyes that could be would be opened. The shelling was compelling. For all the pain and hurt and loss it caused. It caused a reaction that would change the world. It caused families who once had no interest in one another, other than typical mundane interaction, to become intimately involved with one another, and thus an extended family was realized. The potential was limitless. Just like any location any ghetto any land of lack or violence. The families become greater families become movements become love and compassion in motion.

The shelling was compelling. For by it, the best of human nature was yanked forefront into the world. The photographers flocked to the location and fired away. The photos would go down forever flat on coffee tables worldwide. The children would pan through the images and find out what their little hearts really can do. Seeing the decimated lands and homes. The sacred places where people came together to survive. Victims of attempted holocaust or genocide or declared war in the name of anything money could buy. Innocents. Angels. Hands reaching to embrace total strangers. Marches in the name of the sacred. Principles and spaces. Interlaces. What a dream. The shelling was compelling, only by the effect it produced which rippled around the world. Eyes that could be, would be opened.

deja vu afterlife

© KatYa


A strange creature this life been
given to this strange creature
is me


i go to my work and don't ask me why i
walk the dubstep until i feel high


then go to my sleep after saying
i love you. after prayers and the fightin'
and arguin' are through


then my belly rumbles and calls
me away. then i go out to play
it's a dream

then i am hurt then
awaken. a
dream


some emotional wave comes over and
leaves me on a sandbar
resigned. looking back trying to remember the
feeling


how strange to become so
independent. the freedom is almost
obscured


how strange the day come
to be no longer seen and no
longer heard

and then to be part of
a deja vu after life. after
dying


strange nights follow
strange days and all i wanna wear is black
in the day white in the night and let my fears go die
of the fright

young family portrait @ dawn

The day started well. We were asleep, as the night folded in and retreated, real quiet like. Real nice. Left without anyone knowing she left. After sharing her stars and her sweet summer darkness. Her shade cooled the earth and the air and the waters. She asked nothing in return, no, nothing at all. The night she retreated, and the day came, to call.

The air was a cool fifty. The sound of the silence was heavy, delicious. Like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Quiet. Rich. Impermeable and whole. The air, a cool fifty, going on fifty-five. Circulating through town, with the taste of corn and scent of almond, and sweet summer wildflower. She carried the scent of sweet wildflower honey.

Then the birds started up, politely, maybe two at a time. The calls they repeated, maybe three by three times. Then tried out a different spacing, between breaths. Carefully setting the tone. Up in the trees, or down under eaves. Outside the home, in a nest papered with leaves.

 A clock am radio, at a low volume humm. Some nightshift wonder, still talking fresh into the day. With a warm-hearted colloquial, and a laughter contagion. Rare few would catch it, the laughter contagion. The lucky night owls. He shared his thoughts so sweetly, and with such elation. Through speakers. Talking to anyone. Drinking hot coffee in his sneakers. Laughing about kids in his life, maybe nephews and nieces. About coming together...or falling to pieces.

The day started well. The air a cool fifty. The birds set the tone. Against the graveyard shift dj and the wonderful silence. The box fan shared generously, the breeze from the delta. We felt it come over us, in our dreams and subconscious.

We were all asleep in the apartment. The Tibetan bell hung from the ceiling fan, softly chiming every once in a while. The ceiling fan spun slow on its calmest rotation, pushing the moist delta breeze, pusing fifty. Pushing it around. The air did not care. Kinda liked to be touched.

The moon was running high, when it started to fade out, like an ice cube dropped into a warm summer sky. The moon, she had offered us all many chances. Chances for romances in the tall grasses. Chances to find what we otherwise lost. Chances to appeal to some final burst of energy. Some reservoir typically untapped. The moon offered chances, before fading out. In the tall grasses, in the outskirts. In the outskirts of the city.

The sun came up slow and easy. Would have been shot down in a gunfight. So there would be no gunfight, not when the sun appeared that way. The day anticipated peace. The scavengers hung their heads and searched the soil for worms. The sun warmed the earth, and made the day up like soft clay. The sun made the day. The day like soft clay.

We all awoke to this. This soft day of clay and moist air, set into tranquility. With birds and clock radios, calling us out. Circulating air a cool fifty. Summer dawn sun and moonlight, kinda blue.

You and me, and the kittens make four. Four little creatures inside a small house. We all awoke, all four, all four of us. Number: 4. We all awoke in one room, but only one at a time. One by one by one by one. First was the kitten, the orange one, to be sure. The orange tiger tabby woke up by your feet. By your feet, in the sheet, curled up by your feet.

Next was me, I woke up next. Back to your chest. My soft summer feeling arose from hard, wicked dreams. My countenance, upset. Almost disturbed. But my youth returned to me in a flash, not just thoughts but some feeling. I could feel your arms around me, and your body come up against me. I was harbored by you, that's why I smiled in the sheets. The cats were curled up like some ropes around cleats.

I smiled in the sheets, by the bay window there. In the cool air. The blue white light. With the kittens at our feet. This was so welcome, like the sound of the birds and the box fan and radio. Like the silence that surrounded and harbored us, each morning.

You were still asleep, next to me. Next to me. I was slowly awakening to the light of the day. And the orange tiger tabby, who awoke first of four? His big brown eyes looked in mine. Up from a valley, behind the white sheets. Behind the pure dream of my waking, and yours. With the light from the east, and you by my side. With a kitten by the west wall and another by the east. And those beautiful brown eyes.

Those golden brown eyes. Your golden brown skin.
My pale figure, heavy rising up from the bed. To replete the hummingbird feeder, with liquid sugar. To get some OJ out of the freezer. To pour orange into blue cup.

Then you raised your pretty golden head. And you got yourself up.
Then the cat by the west wall, stretched up like a pony.
The kitten. The west wall. The starch sheets and moist air. The blue and white dawn of the day, so clear. I awoke next to you, next to you, my dear.

by Katya 07/13
kissilent.wordpress.com