run on empathy

drained they was

runnin on empathy alone

clothes tattered

eyes red thoughts 

burned black elbows

an knees nicked 

tummy grumbles throat

gurgles breath wheeze

please don't leave 

me we got all 

night don't we?

#katyamills

see.blue

what can i tell you when i feel discouraged and you feel discouraged, too? all i can tell you is look, we all get down and see blue. all i see in you is you are real with that feeling, you are holding, exuding the pain. this is making you more of who you are. someone i can love. you are real to me. i can see your struggle in your eyes and hear it in your words. the depth of your blues mirrors my own, and you touch me where before i was alone.

the blue corner

i trick myself into believing my special brand of suffering should be cast out for all to nibble on, and then i pull the hook into your lip so you bleed into the ocean like i do. not that misery loves company any more or less than joyfulness. all our feelings love companions. when walking into a coffeehouse sad after some dreadful news, you must be miles away when you greet me with smiles. unlikely i will stop and talk to you, for the convincing would be hard.  i would rather sit at that table in the corner beside the recently widowed. we can emanate blue from there.

Ame & the Tangy Energetic

(a genuine teaser)

I could soak right through her skin, caught in the grip of the city, and live there if she let me, protected and she did, my sister,  going over her lung capacity inhaling, then giving me her lips and taking in the deep river of air. Segue from there. And I began to cry when I first saw through her eyes, okay, the place had been blasted apart and made a clearing, my pupils were pinning and dilating, pulsing as I really got into her, how uncommon the  hopeful pain, starvation and loss for so long, god, Kell, where didya come from? She was right here, beside me, her breasts pressed up against my ribs, our bellies greeting through our clothes, what  hips we had trying to push around, and she started to catch the tears on a fingerprint, getting closer, cupping a hand to my face and though she let me inside, she was not aware how deep I was gonna go, her fingertips she took to her lips and already salt. I would make her thirsty, all feeling her dying and coming back to life and knowing now the interior of addiction and then come clean. I took a simple breath just beyond my lung capacity, made dangerous, then kissed her a hit of my inner madness, and came back to myself with a gasping kind of whistle. She covered her mouth and laughed. There’s a comedian in all of us. I had to crouch down to the floor so blown away by the difference in her and me, and really the influence she had on me, I mean her life, as it came to me in flashbacks, and she crouched down beside me wondering was I gonna be okay. Hiding the smile I gave her, of me. I fell on my knees on the floor and threw my arms around her. God, you are so goddam wonderful. How can you be so wonderful? Looking into the green and wondering reflective pools of her eyes. Like you saw the swamp and survived and it made ya an emerald by its burn, ya, butterflies flew you up and outta that sewer. Catfish gasping for air and feeling for the bottom.  Goddam. A million particles of mulch. The rays of the sun as though caught under ice, bounce around until smothered by the anaerobic. The fish that thrive are all muscle and gray as a country mare. So rubbery they could make for playground balls if you stitched up their mouths. Slippery when dry. All you need to know. Not many survived the swamp, but she did. My Kell. Don’t cross her. I will fuck you up. We cut our teeth on the horns of bulls. Such is why she can go emo and the world will go with her, rainclouds forming and air churning, and a foggy sadness making clarity in your head. 

Journal # 03.15.15

Aquamarine is the color for today. I found it in a meeting room in Sacramento just this morning. You can call it forgiveness. Don't let these resentments burn you up inside, please! You can do something about it. Sometimes it starts with remembering a time when you did something and felt unforgiven. You wished desperately for some way to forgive yourself, and even when you found a way, you still felt unforgiven -  the one you had harmed never spoke to you again. This has happened to everyone, somewhere along the line. From this memory of your own undoing, you have a chance! The chance is aquamarine. I think it is. Something warm and cool at the same time. I talked to someone I had been scared of for a long time now. Then I talked to someone who I had felt resentment toward, for a short time. In both cases, I made myself stay in the other person's presence just long enough to relax a little. Talk to them. Respect them this way. The feeling was aquamarine. The moment was forgiveness.

dawn of a smile

She had this expression

I will never forget

A smile is not
the dawn of pleasure
when you smile
through pain

may
be the birth of true love

do you remember
the adrenaline rush
of a one night
stand?

do you remember
how he got dressed
and left without looking you
in the eye without
speaking?

defeated in
a

rocking chair
dishevelled hair
nobody care

oh
the lonely day
after 

humming the bars
of secession from
self

you wash your
warm cottons

get faded

search for a friend
to come and listen
and love you a little
braid your hair

an upper
level flat
got raided

when no one was home

hard lives made harder
spare moments

collective belief systems
ran through us like
a syndicate

sunrise palm springs

punishing us

she had this expression
i will never forget
cause it saved
me

the smile through pain
when i told her
my troubles

i saw my pain
in her eyes!
in her face!
on her lips!

through her braids
in my hair