guru 1

what is honesty really? 

they asked 

in a world full of lies

guru answered

stop asking questions 

do the good work 

#katyamills

9.5

the nine to five to nine 

with escapism was perfectly

in line. they got plenty of bread

never went home or let it get

to the head

#katyamills

avantage

dear god may i rise may i

fly from these illest confines

captured from below by your lens

an honest verse composing

flanked by puffy clouds and

friends dear god true

friends   #katyamills

HOW

whatever you are doing
be willing to give your utmost
no matter how petty
or trivial

give a damn
when you are doing
this

fully
honestly
intentionally
with all your heart and mind and spirit

cultivate this practice
and no one can ever
fault you

kill it with truth

the ring has gone i lost it and did not know. then i worried about you and had anything happened. touch up auto paint covered my fingernails the pumice could not kill. and how had we died. you killed me with kindness and i. killed you with truth

oath of allegiance ina bath of silence

maybe i read too much shakespeare in high school. maybe i drank too much coke. i kept to myself with a few close friends. i made a pilgrimage to faulkner. i kept writing and writing though it seemed pointless at times, as there was no internet to share. i read my work in bars and cafes, in chicago and tampa in the late nineties, behind a highball whisky. maybe i smoked too much pot. i carried a leatherbound journal wherever i went. now i have a cell phone and press words in there. life is the same, although it changes. i may be getting older but i'm still young. maybe i watched too much tv. i will always love to ride trains, even subways. i take a bath of silence every morning. and an oath of allegiance to my creative process. i am very well, the way i live. but i went about things so poorly for so long, it still hurts. i blame myself for the blunders i made. i am also unwell. mostly for having hurt you. i hurt myself badly, too.

well wishes. 2017

new  years  i wish you

new friends 

"knitted toques"

fresh laughs

stunners

forgivenesses

colors

doing the work you love 

triumphs

family

good books 

(the kind with pages between covers)

eurekas

records on vinyl

honesty

companionship 

deep breathing in wild forests

fresh visions

clean linens

ATTITUDE

starched shirts

gratitude

loyal pets

fanatics

blizzards

warm memories

warm blankets

rejuvenations

enduring friendships

courage

solitude

resilience

(and above all)

- spirit -

chalk it off as existential slowburn -i

An old letter i wrote to someone i was in love with ...


PART I

i guess i have been thinking about this honest expression you wrote to me last night
and really worried that i might not be up to addressing it, responding in to it, even reading
it all the way through - which i finally did just now. not so many hours ago you wrote it, and
not so many hours later i read the beginning and purposefully sped through it so the feelings
would not arise. the tough ones. the ones that are the simplest proof (to me) of my love 4 you.

you really opened your eyes and stared at it, didnt you? i mean the relationship, as is, as has
evolved, what has become. i can tell. my question is rhetoric. and its very fucking discouraging,
traumatic and sad, if i look at it one way. the way i see it all when you show me no mercy and
i, in return, show you none back. why? like the argument by the bathroom that must have had
to happen (even though it sucked royally) so that we could be forced to talk about the things
that you very tellingly reminded me we have been brushing over or forgiving or letting slip out of
mind in a patterned way... to be continued

Journal #

Think about life as a creative opportunity and you may get excited, I mean, work can become playful.

Taking on all you can and challenging yourself is healthy, owning your space in a way that suits you, making it over time a reflection, more and more, of who you are.

Sometimes we tell ourselves lies and believe them.

Write a story so simple there are no names. Not confused or overwhelmed by detail and bias. Then...

Place yourself inside it
Discover who you are

Book Review: Tropic Of Cancer

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Henry Miller is a force. The narratives roll like thunder, approaching you slowly from a distance like a storm with a great and building anticipation, the clouds filling with sexual innuendo and class eveners and antisocial asides, readying to sit atop your head and dropkick any inhibitions out of you, lightning to split any moral codes in half.

The plot mostly involves the spontaneous adventures of a man in the city. Gaining interest in someone who caught the narrator's eye for a moment, perhaps the wife of a friend of a friend, often someone whose not completely satisfied by their ordinarly life or companion (whom the narrator may have a very honest and blunted despise toward, and whose personality and interpersonal dealings he often describes in a wonderfully take-no-prisoners manner, evoking deep belly laughs in the reader), and whom becomes a budding love interest demanding consummation.

The narrator (whom we may presume to be the author himself) takes his sharp falcon's eye and passes judgment securely over all within range, including himself.

The way HM captures a personality over a few pages (often in free-ranging passages with minimal dialogue or punctuation to hold him back) is really a phemomenon. Like a coarse blueprint. He finds a target and dives down headlong for the take. Spares no expense in wringing out any character defects. Usually displays his victims as prisoners of themselves, in carefully constructed worlds they have created, often trapping their companions (again, usually the love interest of the narrator) in their webs. So when these worlds are suddenly exposed in the act of 'having unexpected company', delicious madness ensues.

Tropic of Cancer is a wonderfully orchestrated design by HM. The writing style is unique and unabashed, very honest, and no doubt a great atrraction to the Beat Poets in their heyday, many of whom held HM to the sky and often visited him in his home, when he was an old man. I recommend it highly, though not for the faint or romantic at heart. Then again, in the spirit of amnesty, if you have an open mind/heart, this may be exactly what you need to read!

A special recommend to writers and authors, as Henry Miller can teach you alot about writing, and was certainly a mentor to me as I forged my own writing style, towards writing my book, 'Girl Without Borders', which involves an unrequited love triangle, and is available now on Amazon.com.

Thanks for reading my review! -Katya
View all my reviews on Goodreads.com

Heart Holds A Vacancy

(penned in darker times, 2011)

the Sea
her depths grow out from green
from green to royal blue
Where
all our lies get hot
get salty
Liquidate
into butter
Congeal
into residue
residual
of which


Constitutes the laundry list
of lies
uncommon
picked for
pulled for


Juice
Energy
Extraction


By decree of part-sentients
(part-not)
sworn to secrecy


Whose vows have been
exacted
spoken
logged
attributed
catalogued




the precise configurement
figured
configured
drawn off the slight balance of
good will
accounted

for


then left
here in this courtyard
where touched
touched by the elements

Produce a serum
bottled
capped
guarded
two men to a vial


There a discordance
a shaking of foundations
if the color hits the litmus test
and meets other requirements unknown
(you can tell by the sound)


a hollow tone


The amplification
of which
discards
shucks
throws off
any and all
antagonist untruths


(left brown and dyscolored in the foamy froth)


The purified potion
then drained
hits a shade resembles
goth


The scientists stand
satiate
fatigued
admiring
edge of tide pool...


Truth!
Taken from the scene
from the light
double encrypted
left inaccessible
walled off


Truth!
Like pores
touched by witch hazel
locked behind skin
sealed from the world
and her sin


Truth!
Language is lost
in the crowd
of the avowed



Truth!
Eyes tell of suffering
naked like ankles
bit by geese
scraped on thorns
bleeding until clotted
sometimes

Truth!
found
retrieved then
hidden
until she may be
cloned
replicated



For now
we are left with the same old
same old
caked makeup
meet low-grade rubber


wall ball material
circa '79


smoke trails and
salvage yards

highways
bits of plastic
bits of plaster


just another
man-made disaster


For now
we are left with our scars
on water
steady boiling
until poached


For now


A double-breasted
back-stabbing
On Front Street
by the boardwalk


The perp
vanishes
in a fog of Chat
Room
Twitter

The forensics team drinks coffee
the coffee
sure is bitter


For now
the lies proliferate
canvass our nation


gas consumption fever!
TV vacation!


What once was compromise
now has
no promise


each for his own
all or none
mentality


Long island teas comped
on a corporate spread
for the so-called VIPS
for the pros


Young runaways
expose thighs
to highball bids
much too low...


Is this not enough
exploitation
and suffering?
to pry open
the safe
where collective truths
are stashed?


Until then I will hold
for all the good
people


a vacancy
in my heart
unparalleled...


a love enduring
unequalled
uncommon
and
true


from me
to you

tonight is written old or new

Tonight is written: eat whole orange. Avoid the tv the friends of yours, ignore the light box with all its darkness.  try not to hold your resentments. any longer. Soulgrabber nature of some situations, morbid as they are, must be understood in cold impersonal terms. There is no other way. To understand them. Try not to rest there too long. Sing a song. Let emotional mind channel into heart and hands. Let mind rest, if mind gets caliente hot. Catch internal preoccupations as they arise. Like butterflies scattering up from the net. watch them jet. Catch and release. Approaching winter...get down there in the basement and locate fleece. Down of geese. The kind your parents loved. When you thought they loved you too. And when they did. Remember them for a sec. Just a sec.

Just a sec or collapse a wreck. Blankets offer sensual warmth and lovely false security. Take it! Grab it to ya! Close your eyes & smile wide. Turn your body from side to side. Dance with yourself, goodness for your health. Thank goodness. Acknowledge evil. what is no good in the world. What exists and does harm. Shadow form. Against the mild winter rains of northern california territories.

Candles will be needed. Candles yes. Incense yes. for purpose of atmosphere regeneration, in any one room home. where one lived with one raccoon. Once upon a time. Once. Wait! Of this you will never know. It cannot be bought, cannot be shared. Intranslatable. Love insatiable. Raccoon and then there was silence. Felt like a great great weight, felt like violence.  Tjen turned to rain. Felt like sleep. And never the same. Became and became... and became.

Break out lottery ticket!This the ticket? Intuition lights up still. Waiting but somehow knowing. the megamillions 5 picks on the random tix. You feel an oncoming fix to your account...Cash cow comes alive and kix. No longer infected, antibiotically corrected.  like you played games for years. Following the stars through your fears.

Went like second nature to the liquor store. Asked for five seven nine seven four in some prearranged or preordained string theory kite store. Numbers you visualized then released to clerk in an unassuming way, like it was your ritual to play. Clerk gave you your stub with matte finish eyes to meet. You take it and tuck it away. Sugar sweet. Two toned orange with numbers printed in a blackish grey. A silk yellow pouch showed up in your mail.  Devastating return without end, without fail. And all that came to you when you came to? when the cash came through, all that came to you?

was treating your friends true. in this day and age. simple in the complications. thoughtfulness conveyed across the thousand thoughtless stations. When you gave doubt away, No one doubted you any more, not you not them, not any other nor. just naturally lined up behind you like the lines in cords. Taoism studies made this progression so clear, sort of going with the river, like an extension of tears.

We need expedient travel over water. I don’t know why. I dont know why my raccoon died?  I did not know why I gathered the people i did all around me, I hardly knew what to say. the falling tree fell not 100 yards away.  began our conversations. could have killed one of us probably. Pine needles given as reparations. bereavement followed the machinations.

material situation (earth) you find yourself in. Sweating on the bart train, morning commute. Have come to enjoy work. or life with work in it.  a fortunate motherfucker so long have u been! Conscious of this and conscious of sin. of sanity. of gin. powerful lucky indeed.  More conscious maybe. More painful, baby!  Eyes open. Red sometimes. Air pollution. Sadness...Up all night? no solution.

Badness. Rubbing eyes a pastime. Now in the past. Keep bringing it back, the mind. body. spirit. Altogether now. Dust it off. Polish it to shine. Stay right in the moment where they say all will be fine. But thats the future, no? where All is fine? finely attuned and anticipated? pour to drink, some old table wine. forget the future, the past. Align!

Right now in the moment. The train station. This is where we receive them, the signals and signs. We may misread them. Then dropped into the past, where conscious life gets trashed. Communication breaks down. Which is insignificant. Just a fact scribbled on the wall of your mind somewhere, and maybe yours. maybe not. Like a French cave drawing, outdated, carbon faded. Fact. Union represented. Permanently belated, never on time. Watch on the hand is purely for design, minute and second hands mated.

Today you are out of bounds, no self no lines no borders to cross! the moment, you start to like her! She holds your only evidence. witness to her makes you free to cleanse your soul and rinse. no cavities! The drip dry of your self esteem, leaves you light like linen fresh.  The harbor where the moment stays?  refuge for expressiveness. the choices you have right now? are all the choices needed. The little choices you make each second? really big! need not be repeated... to underline your life you live, this may be quite imperative!! You operate against advice,  eat exotic rice, so choose to move on when u wish, put thought on ice.

You  help yourself to frozen confections-- paleta guy has some selection. Just watch out for the central raisin.  terrible to taste. eat around it, so none goes to waste. of my horchata (pudding flavor yum!) today plan to get you some. The other plan is to work. But not too hard to stress u out. U want it even to fill your spirit. Then Connect for sure with someone who owns a gun. Like H.S. Thompson, gonzo in the mountains, ballistics just for fun. change. maybe give up an opening or light, in the dark dark day. Sun is up, but anyway. Unconscious shadow lurks in corners. Mirrors may be used to dispel bad aura. Read your Tarot cards for more information. Not your own, find someone silly. or just do it alone. Or with the psychic who wants your money really.

Honey its true! to make a living thats what they do. Give you what you want but not what you need. You give you. Ultimately it was your choice that planted that seed. Honestly we  need honesty, just like everyone else. With you, honest with you, you, and with them, them too. The lies may taste good, but so bad bad for the health.