immediacy

you twisted the storyline. it was a lesbian memoir from the year 2000. must you? I got turned off by this thing that turned you on. Imagining me with other men and women. We were at quite an impasse. a little hopeless. I looked you in the eyes. we both started laughing.

  #katyamills

s.j.w

morning

flower essence

washed down the throat

in a capsule 

thunderbolt 

face the truth 

grow

#katyamills

London. past life

the london fog made us
less visible and i liked it

sort of 

like the end of 

a past life

an organ was crashing

voices whispering 

will you wish to stay on earth? 

tell us

tell us

i had no fear

and yet 

because of the fog

i could not then

speak

#katyamills

3.11.22

the collie lunged at me 

she barely kept it back by the leash

my heartbeat quickened

i ran 5 miles for a personal

best. thank you fear

#katyamills

august 1

an oversupply of fear and angst 

crawlin these streets...

came with the gift of life

i used 2 shake em off belly up @ the bar

now its heave ho @ the landfill  

#katyamills

june 8

the antidote to fear is and will always be courage

sacramento city

take a train to nowhere

a tidal wave of fear
i don't have the energy for it
i watched you
carried away

i could not save you so i
ate a banana
went for a walk
listened to the wind

rattle around the heads of palm
and took a train
to nowhere

rest

you can get all the rest you want but you still need to find your rhythm in the world. if you lost yours, it can be a real bitch to get it back. you may need to stab your fears in the heart with a dagger and bleed out the yellow poison. then do those things that scare you, inject yourself back into the bloodstream and let go. feed your faith and starve your fear to death. i promise you an adventure like no other!

yet

I was on the yet and thinking of you before we even met, and you let me down when I met you. Beware of bold imagination, I promised myself, before meeting me where I was, the only place I could be, many years after a lifeless rehearsal of life.

the life of halloween

curiosity can amplify
a drained spirit
add glowstix
a wicked costume
a strange expression
add darkness
packs of children
hollowed pumpkins
candles and wind to
animate all inanimate
creatures so scared it
kickstarts the breath
and now i'm thrilled
you see we're truly
living

journal 10 october

do not be afraid. be terrified.

fear and the medulla

Back in the desperate place the mind likes to take me, where the thoughts are all discouraging and fear walks unaccosted across the oblongata, tamping the vessels until blood pressure rises, I see that I am troubled and finally say a prayer, as my breathing heads for the shallows where the shore has disappeared...       

from King's 'The Dead Zone

what saved me, this time, was drawing the Dead Zone, the paperback, up to my face, my nose tucked in towards the spine, and closing my eyes and inhaling deeply the scent of the pulp, which transported me body and soul into a lovely forest, some forgotten place and time,  from which this pulp was hewn. 

the ides of march upon us, here is my wish...

may we overcome all our fear, live long and prosper

- KatYa, 2017

murder by memory - part iii

The way you remembered it was not the way I remembered it, and everyone else had already forgotten.  The NRA was not a weak lobby in DC. Many financiers and real estate magnates and movie stars and pro athletes and paranoids and phobics wanted to keep a .44 in their glove compartment,  and worked the legal system hard to find the highest caliber argument. But soon there would be no head to put a gun to. Only a heart which held the lantern of truth up to an establishment which held stake in a lesser truth, perhaps an eco-friendly low watt lightbulb. This was no revolution but there were two sides and both believing they were bonafide fighting the forces of darkness. Everyone else was confused as hell or too busy to bother. What were we trying to accomplish? The way you remembered it was not the way I remembered it, and everyone else had already forgotten. But collective forgetfulness tended to take the creases out of faces erasing lines had been drawn, like twilight, like darkness; so long as you could not see them the crashing waves were not so frightful, and might even lull you to sleep.

a star obsolete

I am so sad and there's nothing I can do, well that's not true, I can do my nails and take a shower, I can get dressed and go to work, I can glue myself together and hope that it will hold, yet, sometimes I feel I am headed for a break, like just the other day when my world had turned grey and I fought back the tears and so misunderstood, it took all that I could not to go back and fight, but to give up on the chance to make things all right... yes, it was right around then as I pulled to the curb, slow-cooked my head and sat there disturbed, as the breeze off the delta came whipping around, that I said to myself in a scared voice asking god, is it gunning for me, my psychotic break? Will I sink to the bottom of this salt water lake? I could feel my heart was not into the commitment of losing my mind to starfish and brine, I could feel that my heart preferred to stay sad maybe shocked after my spirit got clocked and devastated so quickly, after such a good run before sands got so shifty.

The only big difference I saw from the past, the last time a friend dropped me hard on my ass, was my own situation how far I have come, 'cause back then I was full of nonsense and chewing gum, unable to work and basically done, no longer young, cold-spirited idle and sometimes suicidal. And the friend and ex-lover whom I lost at that time, carries all those qualities still so I can see through her how I have changed, how that is no longer me. But I don't need to look back anymore or compare, I don't need to be faced with a mirror and stare, to know how I have stretched for my dreams to this place, it's written in my eyes, it's visible in my face, but more essentially woven into my whole character, and though I may fall back upon self-treacherous times, in a moment subdued by a flashback or heartache, and go into madness and anger and venom, and say things I long since stopped saying, and panic and fear and confusion can enter the room... I am essentially goodness and warmth and white light, by noon I will have come out of the darkest of night, and back to my senses and self and clarity, the departure of all fear, weakness and irregularity, where in the cool silence of my study I see, my journey is there, patiently waiting for me...this may not be so, but I hope so to dream of a chance to shine if only to be a lighthouse standing tall, for all the ships out there heading straight for disaster, may I at very least be a star obsolete to guide you, an aster.

fear. south carolina

They could kill you at a book study. Pull a gun out of a fanny pack. They could kill all your friends, and leave you alive. After reading with you for an hour. After getting second thoughts, they could go back to the first. They could do it anyway. They could not care. They could be so afraid of you, they think they would be better off if you were not here, anymore. They could express remorse yet still stand by their actions. Killing you at a book study. They could.

free

cemetery angel by k

 Run away with your love, run across the open sand and into the breakers, run with your dreams, run away with the mind and let it surprise you, arise with the sun and come into your light! We were little boys and girls. We were scared but now we are courage, we are faith, we are tough! The trolls can stomp stomp stomp around and always be trolls. Your daughter tugs your shirt and says Look, Mommy, a troll! We do not stop, no, on we go! Take to the streets with yourself and leave your fingerprints all over, show us who you are and let us hold your hand, you little sunflower, or sunflower seed, with your alternating current kinda creed. Give us some of that, and we will then be able to give back! Some day soon you will see me give the world a book for free.

response to an image

Eyes opened ten at a time at the temple. Bodies became same color as the sky, on their way to new freedoms of mind. Others would turn the same color when suffocated. The shades were hardly discernable in the sun. Same eyes might return to sameness, soon after they found themselves on the other side of the arch between the walls around the temple. Life in the village would not open like eyes. Hope was in harvest, not in the work. But those who made it to the temple had curious minds and wanted more than their lot. They would return through the arch frequently, for each had offered a stone from their home into it's design. The god dressed in gold awaited them inside, and promised an easy vitality. Some would mistake it for fertility, in copycat poses. Brotherhood came out of the experience. Arms raised above the head, fingers clasped symbolically, just so. There might be danger in personal intepretation. But no more or less danger than personal interpretation of anything other than scripture. Vitality and comradery among men was something to fear, and would make the cities which lately overshadowed the village.

Journal #03.22.15

I am not even close. I must be still healing. Please forgive me. The static waves of radio fill my head. Tonight I work in silence. I wonder about this fleeting sense of power, the delusion of self. I do not mind it anymore. Worry and anger and fear get us nowhere. Pain and the effort to feel and transform it. These are my tasks. Forgive my always anti-social media. I would that we were closer. I see you in my mind. Smiles. Meaningful connection. The ones who ignore me tell me as much about myself as those who meet my gaze. Purple frosty haze and lemon peel. To feel those feelings I would not feel. I searched the swirling seas for you. Through volumes and volumes thrashing. The truth would not lie still. I wanted to believe in what you said. In your words, in those books I read. I began to move and be moved. The mountains entertained the sun, one slope at a time. We raced our minds and won. Solitaire was King. Derrieres did swing. The hydraulics in the bus felt good under us, and the windshield wipers washed away everything. The nose was born to bleed. The harvest came of seed. The dogs and cats at best were friends, the mice we did not need. Times were rough of an industrial age. We raced the clock and lost. Turn the page. Come now to middle age. Cellular floors kept clean by the slaving macrophage. My work begins today, in middle earth. Accompanied by an orchestrated abandonment of fear, worry, and anger. I am getting closer now. I must be still healing. Please forgive me. The static waves of radio fill my head. I will always be grateful for you. Endless life.

Journal # 03.06.15

We suffer the same as they suffered before us.  As we suffered before us. We are of the same. What I see in the eyes of the century preceding, I see in the eyes walking the streets tonight. Under another full moon. My eyes see the same they saw in the night. The way we relate, they relate. Arthritis in the joints. Dancing just the same. Minds plagued by worry and fear. Delighted by children at play. Fascinated by technology. Frightened by industry. Dreaming just the same. Lighting a taper. Lighting a stove. Samovar for tea with you. And me. Knowing no more and no less of a God.

the author at home. madness. 2015

 If time folded back on itself, and I found myself there, I would look into your eyes and you mine, and sashay on up to the guillotine we would,  the Place de la Concorde, where we pop popcorn and toast almonds and smoke our fags in the clear, together over wooden shoes, fin de siecle, talk of the American Revolution n'est-ce pas? Just the same. And then a collective pause and a gasp and a shout.  I turn my head into your shirt, when off with the head of Louis XVI. We will not sleep tonight! None of us. Everything has changed, just the same. Life. An amazement.

damn it feels good to be a monster

The monster was no longer under the bed. Or in the closet. The kid had invited it out to play, one day, and the monster cautiously approached, a bashful look on its face. They played cards and the monster excelled at Old Maid. The monster remembered its home in hell, where its parents used to play rummy and bridge at a small card table nestled in an eddy beside the Great River of Blood. The monster missed all the other monsters. He came from a large monster family. 

The kid looked straight at him and was not scared. He asked him all sorts of questions a kid might ask a monster, if he could stop screaming. A really nice kid for a human. Exceptional. Rare. The kid felt the same about the monster. The monster did not even have to change into a human or something less monstrous. He could show his true feelings and remain a monster. They could suck on bomb pops and jump off the garage into giant piles of leaves. He would teach the boy Scaring 101. Damn it felt good to be a monster.