i.vote

vote for the one who speaks from the heart

who has had hardship

overcome it

who realizes violence and madness

are contextual who did not come out of

nowhere. vote for the one who is

not destructive but

creative




#katyamills

how sorry you are

the rain fell ona slant and i imagined they were all my tears i could not bear to cry. i raised my face to the wind and felt the sheets strike my skin. i stayed outside all morning long with you, reading the paper. we drank coffee without any intention other than to be helpful. lord knows we had once been thoughtless and unkind. you make mistakes. you demand more of people, places and things than you ask of yourselves. now i wanna grab hold and empty life of all its discontents. someone expects an apology outta you, and hunts you down. they may never know how sorry you are. the remainder of life, pushing and pulling those notifications, needled with predicate .coms and .orgs. comradery relocated to social media. if we subscribed it would be too soon... gimme the shelter of the rising sun, full moon. all these things we hope to have eternal, here and gone, then come again... to the faithful, pulled and pushed in the tug-of-war of a life. how sorry you are proclaimed deep space, to the star.

The Crush -- Journal # 06.22.15

Culture can be honest in subtle ways. These days they tell you you are insignificant one moment, and then remind you how special you are the next. I am coming to terms with both. This is what they want from you, to come to terms with both. They want you to want it for yourself, and why? Not because some starched shirts sat around a table and decided. No this is different than any corporate takeover plan. This is the truth hammering down. Culture can be  honest. You could have an emergency and 99 of 100 witnesses to your emergency may have absolutely no interest. You could have a situation where you need help, and one in ten friends may not respond in time. I see it every day. Someone is harrassing someone, and people just watch. Someone is in a car accident, and people drive around. I confess there are times I have been the one watching. But I have also been the one who needed help. Help eventually arrives, but maybe not as quickly or exactly how you wanted it. Culture can be honest in obvious ways. This past weekend a friend of mine saw I needed help, when somebody was harrassing me in a public place. Someone who dislikes me tremendously because I showed no interest in The Crush. Sometimes you feel so insignificant, and then someone shows you how special you are. Your culture, wherever you may be, is a good place to set out to find the truth, or just stand there and let it find you. Culture does not lie.

Journal #05.08.15

The spirits of the deceased could be found all around. There is a child in a bird. Her tailfeathers have horizontal lines, markings, cream-colored. We are looking for her wooden tombstone, the only one left of hundreds now destroyed by the elements and time. A girl who died in 1893. The bird leaves the tree and shows us her tail feathers prominently. The cream lines. Our bird flies in an arc, in a direction, and then back to the tree. We follow our own path to the same destination. Dusty lines. We are spirits. Equals. In the same place and time. We are free in a nonlinear yet static context. Our lives are wooden, not stone. They will decorate these lands and these times. To be part of the great spirit. Creativity is a use it or lose it affair. And still we are creations. And will be destructions. And recreations. The context is there. Gravity holds us to land. The bird has its wings, to put spirits in flight. But there are other forces at work, greater forces beyond any concern of gravity. I wrap the food in napkins and place it in my bag. The sun has decimated my energies. The coffee has worn off and dehydration setting in. A couple of kids dressed in black and purple, bring new life into the cemetery. The wooden tombstone is hiding beneath some rose bushes. This is how it survived all this time. The inscription is impossible to make out. There are greater forces, beyond any need for inscription. Our lives are written across the sky. Death does not exist in this world of static flux. Context can be archived. Paradigms may shift. The earthquakes may help us toward the truth kept in the earth. Tornadoes cleaning skies. I will disappear into the dust. Then see me swimming with four fingers on my left hand. My legs become a fish tail. Dive down with me into our resurrections. One word at a time. The sun feels better, underwater.