odyssey

the valerate was not numerically stable in the blood. the doctors fumbled for a baseline while they prepared themselves for the odyssey. they wondered what the wars would look like six months out and would they still be around? it gave them the kick the urgency they needed  #katyamills

even steven

they don't really know what they
are doing


forgot all the things you said
to help them understand

the sun will shine again
your honey will love you
through anything

and when you put on your uniform
and go to work

all will even out
like cream stirred into
coffee

#katyamills

like a control freak losing control

like a control freak who lost
control you could not
hold on

you had to
let go

scared you are
guarded

you see things you
never before
saw

breathe

it's better
this way

the temples

I wasn't on anything, I was just on . 
I was circumstantial.

You told me and you told me again and you told me one more time, and sure I heard you but why would that change anything? I was still gonna hit the streets late at night and up to no good. Your social was not my social, even if we both had ice cream. I cannot even relate, and you think just cause we are related I ought to, like it was good form, I oughta conform to your standard. The whole attitude was circumstantial. And the circumstance was the influence you had over me, waving it like a badge in my face, demanding, demanding!

Laughter.
Clasping of hands behind head.
Pulling elbows in tight against the ears.
The temples.

And if you were to hit the streets with me, what would that be like? Can I imagine it, or will you come into my thoughts with a big fat roll of duct tape and mark my internal off like a crime scene? I don't care if you consider all my lifestyle, irrelevant. What am I gonna tell you, anyway, as you lean upon your own misunderstanding? What I care about, is whether you care how I feel when you cast away all I have become and am becoming...

With a letter
with a look
with a social media
snub.

Hey you! I can dream for us, can't I? I can dream we can meet on equal terms on soft ground some day. Over easy at the diner in nobody's home town. WIth no control over the music in the atmosphere. They might be playing dubstep in 20 years. No more Sinatra. You might need a cane to walk. Ageism tossed in there with the hash browns. But will you stay closed off at the end of a smoke? Not in my dream. In my dream

I will be holding
you tight. Rubbing your
 temples to
sleep.

Journal # 03.31.15

I am happy to see some of the houses in my neighborhood are derelict. They have not been razed. They are accepted. If a community has no neglected homes, you can only imagine what it does to its people. My load of laundry is large and soft. It breaks against my hip. The strap is tight against my shoulder. The birds are rather excited about the Spring. The mercury climbs and the heat is so unlike the winter weather I have been accustomed to. The wooden planks that make the stairwell to my home are cranky. Shifty. They throw off their paint and nails. I look around me for signs of someone I do not need to see. They are nowhere to be seen. Not for some hours. I do not like having satellites. I prefer to be a singular planet, sometimes. Maybe with a dissolving ring. Or a solid one of ice that slices through space. But it seems I have no choice. Some will gravitate toward me. Will they wanna hurt me? Break through my atmosphere? I must not let paranoia rule the day. I wanna believe I attract things that wanna be near to me, maybe dear to me. But not offensive or harmful. Fact: I do not control the universe.

Journal. Something about writing.

I think I am a mood perfectionist, when it comes to writing. Yes, I am learning to just sit down and write and not worry about setting the mood just so. I have to if I wanna be prolific, if I hope to publish many books. The process is in motion. It starts with noticing how I interact with my environment.

Now I have written in the blood-soaked rooms of a boarding house full of junkies, on a laptop so beat up I had to tie the screen back with zipties and twists, with a keyboard whose keys I had to superglue back on. With a boyfriend and junkie whose paranoia could turn on me in a second. With a habit of my own, boy and girl, serious enough it would undoubtedly kill me if it entered my bloodstream now. Clean as I finally am. Now I have written despite real and imagined voices on the other side of the walls. Now I have written under threat of being momentarily evicted. Now I have written with the sun in my face and heavy metal in my ears. Now I have written in a bar. In a car, in the cloud of someone's cigar. Now I have written for my life. Now I have written to death. I have written out the curses from under my goddamn breath.

But being sunshiney clean, I have to deal with myself and my moods. I can no longer control them, manipulate them, force them into submission. But the cool thing about living without all those old toxins pulsing through my blood, yes, the cool thing about it is there is no artifice. No manufactured moods.

The uncool thing is, I have to be a badass bitch with myself and keep myself doing something creative and not just talking about doing something. Use it or lose it. The mood perfectionism sometimes arrests me. I have my cup of coffee and my attitude to match. I have the light just write, coming through fabric cross the window. I have my Pandora One. Or silence. Ceiling fan on low. Doors locked. Phone muted. I sit down behind my desk, in a corner of my room. I open the chromebook and take a deep breath.

Then, well, it's a bit of a turkey shoot with my mind. I either get to writing, one word at a time. Or the tornado of my mood dislodges me from my setup, for any one of a million possible reasons, and I fight and fight and forget to write. I gotta let go, to go on.