the lesser known

The sky turned red from blue
we saw the sun and knew
sanity had flown

what followed was the lesser known

as the darkness grew

#katyamills

14

whenever they thought they was

struggling they felt back

to when they really

was

no money

no home no real

friends around

anymore

isolated by they world

the chaos in they

head

the hard water

softens when super

aware

#katyamills

fiches

laserfiching with blueprints 

they mapped out grand plans

thanking all gods

they was trans

#katyamills

moons on wax

unable to get what you 

want when you wanted it your 

eyelids fell over two waxed 

moons thankful for all 

you have

#katyamills

ii cokes

ii cokes (published by k on wordpress)

i bought two cokes one for

me one for you. some lady came in and barked do you have this? 

do you have that? no we do not

people can be so demanding

a kid in the backseat of a car hung out his head along

with the dog in his arms both of them

smiling panting happy to be alive

some pop song driven twisted through the lot

drinking malt liquor on a saturday

afternoon. i’m sure thankful

it’s not me

the big F you

ONE used to hear the big F you
outta me. i took the F from
my diet. removed the middle beam

and affixed it to the rooftop

now the first touch
of gratitude

THANK YOU

Katya 2020

against the shadow of trauma

when i was younger it was easy to be welcoming to strangers, not having had too many awful experiences. today safe shared spaces may be harder to come by. you never know who’s packing heat. so long as we are all able to respect one another, not judge and condemn, powerful things can happen. when people are willing to listen, speak, and challenge without devaluing one another, it’s like the sunlight carried in and turned out of someone’s pocket! i still believe in being welcoming. i try to foster willingness in my heart to let my shoebox apartment, despite the risk you find my home shoddy or small or wonder why i’m not able to afford better. it is an honorable thing to do against the shadow of our collective trauma. i can offer a spirited smile and prepare a nice dish. i am grateful for those who have done the same.

i stayed away

all the way back to ancient history, i mean my personal teenage daydream, i stayed away from the opportunities the crosswalks the celebrations the teachers the smiling faces. i could see them but i could not approach them. they were there waiting for me all those years but i harbored social anxiety and a strong feeling i did not deserve anything good in my life. so it was personal justice i exacted on myself, the better part of my twenties. then i hit the thirties and got a taste of freedom from my vices and moved to california. then the question of owning my identity arose. this would require courage and resolve. i could not conjure it up. i needed a plan and i got online and got with community and developed one.

i put together a career move that fit my strengths and values. i was working so hard full-time school and job with a serious commute two hours each way. i still hadn't put it all together, i mean, anxiety and depression and dysphoria were my lot. i had a few friends but mostly isolative. the pressures grew and i got heavy inside my head and i slipped up. you feel like all is lost. it can turn you against yourself. i was lucky to survive. i made it. i finally got it together. prayer and meditation. running and writing and self-publishing. finding my queer community. social work and therapy. giving and receiving. family. friends. owning all the narratives of my identity. reaching out to help others. dialing into my life again feels so great. i thank god.

birds mia

one day
when all our birds are drones
may we remember what we are
grateful for

thanksgiving

i give thanks to god for all what makes my day to day more than okay. my love. my health. my cats. my work. my family. coffee. tea. my friends. the california sun. the moon. the freedom to express myself in any small way.

life is mostly wonderful

i wanna say how grateful i am. what a wonderful life. today is gonna see rain in a dry land. what could be more welcome than tears to a hardened, willful visage?

life

i am so lucky to even live
so many in my circles they
passed on

may the thankfulness
live forever. if nothing
else

survive and cast shadow (white metal rabbit)

There's no world of all smiles, unless invented. In the real world we have rabbits we grab by the ears and make lucky feet for a keychain. We stuff them in hats and make them of chocolate. The white ones we want for a symbol of purity, and photograph them next to an egg.

Some of us tune our instruments to metal, find the harmonics, amplify them and get bent. I wanted to be one of those, but I didn't have an amplifier or an instrument or a room or a friend. I prayed to god for a fireplace where I could burn for you. I would. I had become inflexible like the white metal rabbits and within the realm of being bent out of shape.

I was far from worn thin with love. I followed ideas tangentially to distant and unrelated ends... my younger self had grown old and retired. Typically far from inspired. I must have committed some literary felony, for soon I could no longer read. I had a curious relationship with speed. It's a crime to torture a soul with words made from sounds of a cacophonous hole.

The ground I laid where I buried myself, the part of myself that was offensive. Myself who had been distasteful, rebellious, irreverent, and smart. My shadow now missing, a lack in the heart. The part that was human and fell down a lot. The part that refused to connect all the dots.

This is what i offer you, I told myself, dying. The black sheep's fleece. To warm you like Kentucky's finest. The past? no worries, shes fallen behind us. I urge you get waxy, let flow... the degenerate benevolence of liquid smooth language. One spirit, survived anguish so deep it near killed you.

I languished well near obscurity, until i found a little peace in letting go, to take with me down that long hall back home, the one without shadows or light. Water, laughter, a kind word, awaited me. Even prayer would be welcome there. These words ahead of me are here to be written. To describe all our likeness in ways and intangibles, to know with a knowing that cannot be described.

If you know what i mean, if you' re grateful like I am, if you've survived and cast shadow...then go ahead and read these words I have trained to be and be still. May they bring you all out like flowers by the sun. I need your devious smile, your shadow, your light. Before the rabbit turns metal, then white.    - KatYa, 2017

thanksgiving

If life has worn you out, be worn out for a while and let yourself surrender. Try and be grateful. For only can you be tired by living if you have truly lived, and it is the living that you did that made you feel the way you feel now. Some don't get the chance to feel beat down by a hard day's work because for some reason they are not living like you are, maybe they are not now capable of really letting themselves go and get carried away. May today be a day to give thanks for the life that beats us up and wears us out, working, raising kids, building something, caring for someone, devotion, fighting for something, loving someone, learning our lessons, taking our licks, falling, getting up, pulling ourselves together, asking for help, succeeding, failing, crying, laughing, running, shouting, breathless, dreaming, getting quiet again... and looking back we would do it all over again.

thank you and i mean you

© KatYa

i am nothing and though this belief
if announced to mom or dad or brother
or aunt or nephew or niece would
get a hurtful or dismissive response
i would imagine for i do not dare
tell them but

i am nothing and when i am nothing
and can feel all my atoms spacing
feel all the roominess in there and
wanna rent it out well

i am nothing what would i do with
money it just collects slowly in my
checking account which i do not
know exists until i swipe a card so
i can get something to eat or to read
or to feed my sprawling head

i am nothing again tonight and only
you only you only you may get it
when it leaves my lips and smile
and touch my clasped hands on the
table between us in the bar in the
library in between all the words we
dare to share

and smile and say
so what do you have for us today
Katya?

Song 2016

Thanks to everyone for visiting my website
and supporting my work all year long!
I am SO grateful.

Here's a song i recorded for you...

lucky kid #2 (companion piece)

Quiet life on softened streets, all the bad news backed away. You lucky kid. I washed my hair with 100,000 molecules. Each one like the full moon tonight, lighting up life in all the right ways. I made it to the site. I could peacefully fold my legs up under me on the couch facing the east,  the house where nobody's home, facing, pinching my slip as I picked it up and let it go hang around freely, pinching myself. You lucky kid you. All the pages were viewed, in a free sweep of eyes (not mine). To be sure they really existed, outside of myself. Not so easily destroyed by water, heat, air, time. Thumbs rubbing the ink to a fade I can no longer describe. Each curve of every letter like the full moon tonight, lighting up life in all the spectacular finishes. Flourishes. You lucky kid. Thinking of a friend, one I haven't even heard of in years, a keystroke away, a daydream, attacking a search engine with a heart on a saturday in America, one truffle at a time, pulling lightly on the ends of twisted plastic until the whole thing rolls over and out, examining the condition of my condition, remembering the ionic bond even if it hurts. Life I love you.



the lucky kid
Posted on December 25, 2015 by KatYa


Softened life on quiet streets today. All the bad news backed into shells and shadows or sank into the mud for a second. I stuck mostly to my routine, after and before I spoke with my family over the phone. Now the past may be the past and the future, the future. But not today. This afternoon I spoke with my family. Then the morning became a golden dawn. Then an evening, alone. A holiday. Coulda been sad I coulda been sorry. Weighed against the afternoon’s words, I was given meaning and washed it through my hair. I smile cause I’ve been made who I am, again, the lucky kid.

Latest Book Review and New Release info

Dear friends and readers,

I want to express my gratitude for all of you who take the time to follow my blog and website. From the silent partners who come by every so often to read a little, to those who leave comments, both critical and encouraging. And to those who read my books. And to those who review my books. Your interest and support help drive this train into the vast wilderness! Together we will explore and try to make sense of the damn thing.

Daughter of Darkness, Book Two, has a title now:  -- MAZE --
I also have a cover designed and ready to go, which I will share with you soon.
My intent is to focus on the love story between Ame and Maze.
I still have a long way to go with editing, but I expect to release by October 2015.

Here is the latest review of Grand Theft Life (DOD, Book 1) from a reader on Goodreads, Meredith  (4/5 stars) ...

"I wasn't sure how I felt about this book for the first ten pages or so. After the eleventh page though, I was hooked. The main character is a girl who was raised by an adopted family. She never fit in at school. She was faster than the boys and acted different than other girls her age. The other kids sensed that Ame wasn't like them. Ame also hears voices in her head telling her that she is special and unique and that one day she will understand who she is and why she is the way she is. The book then skips ahead ten years to Ame having been kidnapped, and driven to Oakland, California, by a man named Freddy who tells her that she is part of his 'people'. The voices have finally stopped talking to her in her head. They have stopped because she is now part of their community in Oakland. The thing that makes her 'people' different from humans is mostly through feelings. Ame fears nothing. She never has. She learns that her people feed off of this Fear that regular human beings feel. She is also connected telepathically to others of her kind. This book was only 75 pages long and can be read in a single sitting as I did. This is the first in a series and I cannot wait to read the second novel to find out what happens to Ame and her new family in Oakland."

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 # 03.04.15

Wednesday. Subtle forms passing through. The migration of shadow figures towards the darker side of the earth. They cannot stand the light. Some were resting in my closet. You might call it hiding, but it was after dark and nothing to hide from. I tend to keep my apartment light enough to see, dark enough to hold a mystery. I was blending some wild blueberries in the kitchen, and accidentally caught some stray entity in my smoothie. This misfortune was allayed by the wonderful taste and texture of subtle form.
 GOODREADS GIVEAWAY! 
I drank the blue potion and watched the shadow play in the closet. I sat down on my couch, took a deep breath and waited for the sound of the water boiling. My hands ran across my denim knees. The steam began to whistle through the spout. My tongue, blueberry blue. A sudden remarkable insight arrived, at the bottom of my wild blueberry potion. I can call on my family for encouragement. For help. I can literally pick up the phone and call my mom or my dad or my brother or my aunt or my cousin, not for anything other than to feel the connection. The blood rights. The raison d'etre. A lucky one, am I...