March 16

you don't need a riot to change. usually. unless you live in Port-Au-Prince or Moscow. my heart wanted to riot the years i was unseen. i blew up on those i loved. conditions deteriorated. relationships. i had to get right with myself. find a way to talk about it.   #katyamills

change and do not

the moon

made by the sun

into a glowing scythe

two blade ends harvest 

the stars

we must now locate ourselves

from within

please 

no matter what may happen

do not change

#katyamills

timberwolf

one can plant oneself

on either side of an argument

or howl like a timberwolf

in the gray

the point is to

grow

#katyamills

wren

you stole my heart 

but i am stubborn and do not stand for thieves

signaled by the wren's song

with a final kiss i took my love

and left you 

waking up 500 miles away

all my belongings in my car 

drinking coffee 

falling for a sunrise 

wrapping my arms around

change

#katyamills

all you got

they beat the mean streets 

and hard luck faces 

by a big heart a 

penchant for laughter a 

stomach for failure 

ana means for makin 

easy cash and friends

ina forsaken land 

#katyamills

2005

i met a space man with a chemist

for a friend. my truck broke down

again. an epic perfectionist i 

made friends on craigslist i could not stand to be the one

you got to know. i was changing 

you left me i howled

when you were gone

#katyamills

we live like birds

you get a key and a room
of your own in a small city

what a feeling
you can make a whole world
all to yourself

you can read books
you can play guitar
you can write books
and songs with
friends

you have an address
you live there
wow

rescue some kittens
and raise them

life can be really very nice
for some years and then
one day things change

they tell you
you gotta go

we live like birds

recollect

Last night I watched a film took place 3 years before I was conceived in a city located a 3 hour drive from where I was born, and began crying and you comforted me...I recollect so much of my life as it were. I even see where I went astray. But mostly I feel homesick like how life can never be like it was, back then.

the new vanilla

vanilla got complicated and ran away with itself. so many flavors. too many choices. someone wrote a letter and did an intervention. petitioned the court for that old taste at the back of the throat.

when the verdict came in, all the grown children held their tongues. the gavel came down and the judge asked for order: within certain parameters, to be determined by the FDA and, as sanctioned by this court, only in so far as it is safe to the general public, by decree, meet the new vanilla!

killer -v

We are right to remember the lives with such promise that were lost. We are right to focus on the survivors and the families that must move on though no longer whole. We are right to care about our kids and our schools and how to protect them so they can feel safe and trustful and go and keep learning and growing. And if we care this much, we must also care enough to understand a culture that contributes to a violent disposition.

change was born there

Sometimes a change you make for yourself make you closer to the people, you know, and you are better for them not just yourself and the ones you love. And I don't know but maybe that was all you could have done to get there, subconsciously so, to the heart aching place where witnessed the birth of a change.

impress.ion

A stamped imprint is an impression you have on the world. Once the ink dries, the thing upon which you (the idea of you) have been fastened, takes flight into the crosscurrents of daily life. These energy fields we run in are countless! Everything changes. You can become something else in an instant! Years later we will all understand. Only then may they know by what became of your impression, what they missed.

give. of purpose

Gave you my heart after all the heartbroken, unspoken, the best chance I ever risked it all on

I gave you my heart and
you loved me out of blue
and all the colors run not
so disturbing
now

when I was alone the
monochrome was familiar
not unkind

I got used to the singleness
now I am used to
you

the maybe 7 year process

i once had words for concepts i no longer carry words for and i wonder where those words went, or did the meaning of those concepts change, or did i change, or do i simply use language differently than before? the hardest part may be finding a place where i can work and provide for myself while i locate myself amid internal recalibrations. then again these places do exist in my country where struggle and effort are appreciated and that will join you in your own locus, however exotic, with  curiosity.

the lucky ones have no phones

our technology was killing us a little bit each day, and the lucky ones had no phones. i saw a lone wolf pay phone in the city outside a restaurant by a busy intersection. remember how we used to get on then off these phones? you dropped a quarter in and set the world aside for a few minutes. when you hung the receiver up there was a chime, the change fell and you could scoop it out with one finger into your palm. look up and the world was right there for you, confrontation, and you wanted to face everything. you were in it! we didn't know any different back then. we were the lucky ones. i wanna be lucky like that again. i'm gonna keep this crap phone and this crap service as long as i possibly can, until i'm so sick of it i won't ever pick it up unless you need me. 

faux froid

La Verite was nowhere to be found. Faux Froid took over the town. A chill cast over the roads - trees - dirt - homes - faces - ankles - toes. Toenails soft as reflections bent around the way, only to be bent back around. Compensation had long ago -- long long ago, you know -- fled the sapling exchange-post.

wheels

there's really nothing wrong with two people coming together for a time, living together, being together, and then having differences drawin them apart, a change of heart, and then lookin for another start somewhere else with someone else. there might be a culture invested in keeping you together or a family that hopes for you to heal. and yes, you could recover, the two of you, you could but it would have to take both of you with all your might to make it right. all the bad blood pooled up like that. it would be very hard. the world wants you both to make it, yes, the culture, maybe even the family. but suns rise and wheels roll and pavement cracks and suns set, and what with all the change you find it hasn't happened yet? there's really nothing wrong with moving on.

make me get outta bed

Getting up last night for work turned out to be the same as getting up was last year, this year. I felt simply unwilling to push the blankets away and step into the cold unheated air. I thought what with my incredible anti-depressive mentality things would be different this year, but they weren't. The logistics are always painful. Once I got outta bed and put my malt-o-meal on the stove and took my meds with leftover cadillac (the chocolate residue on the bottom churned back into the mix with some flexible wrist action), I could breathe again. The cats were all crying for food and I must provide. Otherwise it will be a claw to the neck when you least suspect.  Life is demanding as always. And faith is still there, waiting to be called upon, to get you through.

K. #6099 CIM

the resolute kindness

Readers
Friends
Family
Comrades

I wish you all a bright season, and thank you for camaraderie and for showing interest in my work. For the first time in many years, since 2005 to be exact, I will be spending this holiday with family. I am excited. It was a long and painful separation, yet in that empty space my family once filled,  I developed a lot --what Jung would call individuation -- and, up against the painful silence of a careless world, I drew close to the warmth of the fire in my heart, and somewhere there located the elements of my survival. You may have noticed my tools. Writing. Running. Counseling. Reading. Mindfulness and meditation. Guitar. Your life can be what you make of it. Isn't that freedom? I feel fortunate for my small freedoms in our world of power struggles and abuses. Yet the resolute kindness had to be gifted to myself, and still does. There was a time when I was a child then an adolescent and a teenager, and the many kindnesses were insinuated toward me. I believe the most kind among them, lovers and family and lifetime friends, were the ones who knew me best. And I felt insulted. For I knew they knew I was some walking contradiction, that somehow I was an act, and could betray myself in an instant! The ones who knew me, knew I was not kind to myself at all. I treated them poorly and almost as poorly as I experienced myself. I was a classless example on a long and endless tour. I was Keith Richards meets Brian Jones for a swim. I was a party of one, divisible by all. I had to be alone, in order to patiently await the resolute kindness within me. Otherwise, I risked the endless incinerations, and being reduced to a fraction of myself.

2016 K 

This is my confession to you. I know my writings tend to give only a glimpse of who I am and what I have been through. It is only through the greater whole of this website, and through the books that I write (yes, I am a novelist), you may know me more intimately. And you may also see my play and foreplay with the resolute kindness, within and without. I am the filter, and I attempt to surface and demystify the demons, to spin them around like a top and turn them. Turn them into friends and allies, within and without. I consider it some kinda alchemical process going on. I don't create it, I just reflect it. When I am lucky, coal turns to silver and wine, into water. But I want to be honest with the process, and if all that turns up out the topsoil is a demon, well, there you have it, I will share a demon with the world and let the world handle it... I love it more when I can grow the kindness and press it out to you like a flower! This is (and was) my dream in twenty sixteen. And I will exercise a lien on twenty seventeen, and release more of this lovely, tangy stuff to you when i can, so we can share the resolute kindness.

Journal # 09.30.16

i hope i can get through these times okay. i woke up and made my dinner before work. the autumn air was cool through the box fan. i cut my finger on a soup can. the spirit of sacramento sank in the delta and they don't know where the captain went. a missing person was found after two weeks wandering the streets. someone is turning their life around. i got a big old hug this morning from an older lady, after giving her some saltines to settle her stomach. she's nervous about a change, but i know she'll be okay. if someone knows somethin about me i don't know, well... you are in for a big old hug, too.   - KatYa  (on the eve of October)