blanco y

grew up white ina world 

where nobody hurt you like 

you hurt yourself where if you

got any color and spirit you 

got beat down now how can it be 

any wonder in the world 

today white is unpopular 

distrusted despised? 

#katyamills

life in white and black

kids scoop pudding to their lips and make forms of the clouds, cartoon characters. careless the jets cross the sky. the parents have no custody arrangement other than when I feel like taking care of them, I will, until you grab them back, okay, and it works for a while. we think it works... the kids sure eat a ton of pudding.

I took to meditating on a hue. Even one color has endless variations; if I could see them all at once, this had to be my color. If I could not pull my eyes away, this had to be my color. If anytime I was in a daydream and this color came to me, this had to be. I really liked having something in common with a color. I could be in a terrific jam and the color would be there with me so I was not all alone. I could find the color almost anywhere I looked. I could soften the world's cruelty through my color first. I could pluck my color from a rainbow. I could hear my color in wind chimes, and taste my color in sorbet. Then one day. One day I could not find my color. The world so drab without it. I would not speak to anyone. I would not run and dance. I had to take a chance and pick a color all anew and make it mine to give to you.

like flowers

When I wasn't busy fighting for your attention, I was championing my own, to exist in space undisturbed by visual and audio cues. Social media was some hallucination. You could call it a hallucination inside of a hallucination. Any moment one could lose one's body and have to shop around for another one. Humans are like flowers and get erect in the sun. Out of bed. You cannot always see the roots. Black flowers like skin color get the shaft. White flowers went to weddings and funerals. Baby's breath was a delicacy, trembling in a fragile atmosphere. Fertilizer might help like steroids and hormones and minerals and daily chewable gummy vitamins. But sun and water usually did the trick by themselves. Only for a while, though, cause ultimately we all got mowed down or strangled by some or other weed. But hey. No worries. We will rise up again. Hopefully our passwords will still be saved so we can access all our friends.

the child

O wide awake in America, big sky highway hollowing out the ears predawn, cut me like a cookie and may i taste good too, share myself with you and you and you, sweet sugar has me processed in dreams and tumbled out a foamy bed into my own personal despair, sliding down the inner sanctuary of a question mark to collect and drop whole you made of me, sweet sugary period, plastic in my blood, pharmaceuticals in my water, disaster strikes and i lick my lips like you and smile, but no one smiles like we do, upside down or kinda flat, tethered to the mobile phones we kill by our deep sleep, counting ringtones like sheep, shearing and swiping the hell out of an alphabet, on a jazz or classical base as the temperature begins to rise with the sun, another day washing dishes and dusting and cutting boxes the perfect size to ship my ass away to some infernal packaging depot to be fitted with my personal bar code, my very own, which is linear and bold, impervious to black mould, scanned or so I'm told, taped then situated in some draughty unremarkable corner in the cellar of a warehouse to grow old. All i know is no one can erase me even if they try, I am forever etched into your hard drive, America, no matter how the cleaners cleanse, efforts to coat me over bleach me out only leave my prominent lines bubbling up from the cracks and surfacing again with all the gasses, grilling the faces of the masses ordering me around, yet still i stay aloft in my dissociated safe place way up high, finding me in a cut up creatively commoned place looking down, streaming on your horizon, only the light protects us now in our projections. Back out where I belong, some ionic bond, trashing your paint job with my spraypainted flare, exposing your destination to the going nowhere, breaking out the bars when i decode the code, fingering you with my fingerprint, America, until you see your own stars and go black and white again, from Birmingham to Ferguson, up the checker board and Martin Luther King you at the end, redoubled on a chance, green felt absorbs your glance in a healthy tribal casino where all the bad blood is blue, you see, the karmic knot we work it out, massage it real well, strike it with needles until you finally falter, sweet vulnerable America shedding your suit, crying and opening like that before the seamstress. And my lines are out of order, spinning into circular pools fallen stars, and the many shades of blue wash over me and you, when the world forgives and finds a place in the heart for a renewable source, because somehow you were always meant to be pleasant on the eyes, America, and generous though talkative and combative perhaps, you wear out your welcome in a superfluous way, and everyone has a good laugh and pats you on the head, for you are the child and loved just the same. Back to bed now with prayers, and we will see you in the morning, the rubbing of eyes, tumbling down stairs in your nightgown, little one, big sky highway musculature, heavy with some imagined purpose, dreams of carbon and oxygen and coffee churning blue to black in post industrial aftermath, shining oily head to toe, shedding another skin, inspiring us with your renewals. I will be there, my love, somewhere in the corners of your eyes, sucking on Maybelline, about to exit the glistening curve and drop unseen into your wilderness... where i have always belonged.

the golden roses technique

i cannot believe
where the mind
will go

sometimes
to hell and back

resurfacing my heaven
in black

under the hot and
featherless
tar

writhing
kicking
screaming
ticking

my heart with her
leavening tale
to tell

describes the only
way out...

i will blow golden roses
up in my head
to fissure and crack
the thoughts
jet black

haunting me monday
to sunday
and back

once i found a way
to turn the black gray
then dilute all to colors
with tears

took me forty years
and one

and now the mind lies
sometimes
vacant and
quiet

the desperate work
has been
done


© Katya Mills

concrete black and blue

concrete black
concrete blue
i scraped my knee
lost my shoe

while skate
boarding streets
to find you

now i'm scanning
the sidewalk
for glass

concrete blue
concrete black
my sister
she got
my back

young man
on a stoop
smoking rolly
in the loop
saw my blood
drawn down
to the ankle

he looked at me
laughed
and inhaled

concrete black
concrete blue
i am lost
what to do?
out here in our red
white and
blue

blasted
between high rises
by fragrant deli
monoxide winds and
the sins of
a glowering
sun

her colors
so real
the city
her sounds
wraps me
warm in
her tresses and
locks

i'm braided and tied
at the end

concrete black
concrete blue
by god
my angels
and you

may i find
my way
concrete black
through the streets
and back

the pained eyes
behind a shake
and fries
keep me honest
sincere
concrete blue
made true

and you
and by you
my life is full
life is filled
replete with my fate
accompli

lost i was
found
gave my blood
to the ground
looked up
came around to
alive

in this urban
chiaroscuro
delight

exhaling her sounds
inhaling the heat
shorn of my shoes

concrete black
concrete blue
descended
into
the mouth
of the subway
on the balls of
my feet

back to you