no love for history revisionists

denying you did something you did when one witness to it describes how deeply it affected them hurt them is fucked up and as hurtful if not greater than the original offense

#katyamills

century HK

as a kid in Germany

he tangled with hitler youth

in 1938 got out alive

enlisted in WWII with the Allies

got a gold star tracking down gestapo in his homeland

went on a sociopolitical 

lean. advisor to every US administration imaginable!

2022 kicks back in New England

working on a century

recorded by the 

BBC

#katyamills

blanco y

grew up white ina world 

where nobody hurt you like 

you hurt yourself where if you

got any color and spirit you 

got beat down now how can it be 

any wonder in the world 

today white is unpopular 

distrusted despised? 

#katyamills

hi.story

they never stopped 

scrubbing one could see 

their reflection in the silver

 nothing else. imagine centuries  

passing that off 4 

reality

#katyamills

the river. with family

The river came to us and met us at her banks, midday and summer hot, we had only to approach her like disciples with our faith in her and find our place (which seemed designed for us, divined for us) where she came flush with the land, a mossy patch of soil leveling there with the freshwaters. we laid a thin blanket down and had submarines for lunch with cuts of avocado and alfalfa and cream cheese on bread. we used the sub wrappings as plates and we talked. there was my older brother, m&m (my niece), Skipper the dog, and me. they were on their way to Tahoe from the Bay, and thought of me and stopped by for lunch. i decided on the river cause i had not seen my niece in so long, and i wanted us to have a peaceful place to reconnect. besides a few river rats around us (i mean locals who were mostly friendly albeit boisterous), we were all enfolded there into the pastoral scene as if we had been painted in by a master, in oils and acrylics on canvas. nothing here could or would speak to the frenetic city behind us or the insane politics of the world. we had shade from the heat and a chance to show one another the kindnesses of a decade ago. i cannot believe i lost her for so long, the greater part of which I can attribute to life's path, problems and poor choices i made. while they were trying to raise a family in the twenty-first century, i was literally falling and climbing and slipping and reinventing myself and trying to manage in a world which i didn't think really wanted me. i seemed to have marginalized myself, but it wasn't all my fault. it was just my life. and nobody was really blaming anyone, but the river between us could not be forded back then.

now we found ourselves on the same banks, reunited, and i had my lucky break after several years of remedying the mischief of my life and lifestyle, involved in many decent and useful causes these days, full of purpose these days. i got the chance to speak my truth, and m&m got hers, and i had a wonderful listen while my brother her father sat between us and the dog at our feet, panting in the heat. my brother and sister (in-law) have done a fine job parenting as anyone could do. i am grateful to them, not having made that commitment myself. anyway i can be a part of the family, is good enough for me, anyway i can help. today it means not being demanding or complaining or selfish, just staying open to any opportunity may come along, for i love them and that's all i know. i was not so attentive to my family in my twenties or even in my thirties, so overwhelmed was i by my own life. and unhappy or depressed some of the time. vices and habits and poor choices in company. you know the story. i may be at fault for many things, but not for becoming who i am today.

so here we are, the past behind us, making what we can of our moment together. i didn't seem to think we had much in common anymore, me and my family. but i learned in truth, by my experience (such is truth) that when you have blood in common, that alone is the mark which oughta draw you together; blood alone oughta bring out the best in us. to be there for family no matter how incongruent your aims, how varied your pursuits, how rocky the terrain of your individual temperaments. you show yourself (when welcome) and give of yourself as only you can. i may not be any great success of any kind, yet i have survived a sometimes cold and callous world, city life, and the effects of an often misguided sense of my place in it all. so i am blessed to reach out and be received. we had a nice lunch. we had a nice talk. we saw a sea creature surfacing every half minute for air, as it plodded upriver. it was unusual and mysterious. My brother and niece were both worried that it needed salt water to survive. Skipper the dog met a friend. the river rats began splashing about just down from us. the sun reached the top of the sky and looked down. it could not quite find us. we packed up to go. i believe this is as good a new beginning as any. my niece she seemed unsure at first, and i was a bit anxious, but walking back to the car beside her i felt the good feeling with them, knowing we are blood, we have good history, and there's hope - the sun has found us now - and nothing means more to me than this.

Exeter NH

November came in with storms and I began to think of you again. I went out on the back porch with my coffee and the sun felt so good after the rain. The lemons turnin yellow on the lemon tree. Everything was gettin recycled even thoughts. I guess I could do somethin about us again, even if I hadn't seen you in ages. Did we have any kids together, and where are they? Probably without shoes somewhere cursin the memory. With hazelnut eyes and germanic steel wills. A century ago they'd be in Exeter, NH, underage workin in the mills. I would collect the pay and put it in a can. And hide it from the man. If we had any energy to spare, you would take me down the river aways and somewhere all alone, make love to me on a slab of granite stone.

Atlantis. Times Three.

Poetry from K IS SILENT
written and performed by Katya Mills

Atlantis, times three


i am trying to find myself

between commercials

apparently

i am located

somewhere deeper

than that

Atlantis

times three

i remember almost dying

the weight

was too great

i got

stepped on

like flagstones

I saw you there

we could touch

almost

through our

imperial pints

of tears

drowning

Atlantis

times three

i got stripped

like a stripper

but without

so much

a choice

off the walls

in the paint

in the darkness

the memory

faint

gracefully

i laced up

to give them

something

2 remember

gracefully

i tried then

2 forget

sometimes

i grabbed the knives

in the kitchen

and turned

toward them

screaming

its real painful

to look

i could drown

in it

Atlantis

times three

i found me

by looking

baptized

by watercolor

bled down

in the city

bled out

to the valley

sweet canvas

of colors

shelters me now

the painted walls

i like to

leave them

this way

i am different

i am young

my spirit

touched by

the sound

of the colors

dripping down

Atlantis

times three

is where

i am found

cold steel got love like us -i-

cold steel got love like us
by katya mills 


I remember I once had her...I remember this well. The blue steel. In the eyes, reflected off the glass of bottles and bottlecaps which had been rolled smooth into the street. The saddle brown leather was matte, in opposition to the glossy deep sky blue. The kinda deep blue you rarely see in city skies anymore.

Ya, I once had her. Around the time shit got crazy for us, the whole web of us, maybe a core of ten or twenty, interconnected and related intrinsically to a surrounding second tier group of maybe fifty or sixty. I had her at the start, when I knew very little of what was to come. She kept her single tone metallic gold finish, when it all started.

She showed me in somehow, though i never knew the likes of her before. What was foreign to me became so intimately familiar. What a shock. Then I felt something special had arrived. So of course I showed her off.

This felt quite natural, our coinciding, however unbelievable. We would not settle for less. She would not. I would not. Sometimes Hollywood comes out of anywhere, thin air like. Hollywood is Hollywood. Often the simple task proceeding from such a discovery, is to arrange the travel itinerary, from wherever to California.

We were already California. I just had to show her off. She just had to let me, and she did! She really did! No need to acquire the funds, the permissions, then pack up and bid au revoir to the extended or nuclear family. There was not and should not have been any dissent. When you see this, you know this. Real end of the rainbow shit. Storybook status. Like we already made history, before we made history...