b you b true

we fight the urge to be reclusive 

and elusive and we 

steady the emotional storm 

beam our sign 

irreverent into the heart 

of American darkness 

persuasive? i could give a fuck 

we are true we are real and 

pervasive

#katyamills

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

thought. at feeling street

the sun left the sky

violet and orange 

the paint faded fast

under this skin

i touched universe

at last

i meandered inward 

inspired by a beat

and hit the thoughts

at feeling street

#katyamills

seconds

you had to fumble for a little hope in the darkest places and thread it and stitch fragments together. the absence of hope made you care about it more. there were other ways to feel and not to feel and i wanted to know them all. #katyamills

s.j.w

morning

flower essence

washed down the throat

in a capsule 

thunderbolt 

face the truth 

grow

#katyamills

Ukraine

seeing the vision in the Ukrainians

the volunteers the photojournalists 

hope is restored. a country fights

for the values by which it came to exist!

that's sacred. still. it's war and

hope is also decimated

 #katyamills

2.22.22

i was on the couch with milk green tea. a book resting its wings on my chest. my nerves were playing hard after one of those days you wanna forget. what was left of the light, deflected off the silver ring you gave me, and found a home in the flowers. they say when a planet gets too close to the sun, its atmosphere begins to burn off and leaves a smoky trail in outer space. after countless years it is stripped down to a scorched rock. culture. dedicated to breakdown and cracked in the teeth. well well, i thought, earth still got its atmosphere and i got one, too. i don't give a damn what they say when they don't know what they're talking about! the thought of this calmed me and i drifted into peaceful sleep.  #katyamills

where

the sun rose and

hopelessness wisped

away. you once had it all i 

wonder where

you are

maybe 

there's hope for you

too

#katyamills

lip.stick

the shade of lipstick

made from poison 

berry matches your eyes

fierce yet optimistic

#katyamills

hope ina hopeless time

back to the liquor store

for another scratcher you
poured a cup of coffee at the gas
station walked out
of town on the train
tracks you recited in your head
the smile the cashier gave you
the balanced smile


all the hope you
ever had ina hopeless
time



#katyamills

may 20 2020

dawn

the birds

gave my heart

some hope

ina song 

for the 

summer

exist.ential

I've been writing this piece called Trouble '99 since late spring of last year. I read it in its entirety a couple weeks ago and found it several shades darker than i expected. Which corresponds to one of my three beta readers' critique. Writing is not unlike painting. You add layers until you find an image that best represents what you wish to portray. Yet with fiction you wanna let it be its own honest creation, which is often outside what you intended. Mixing conscious and unconscious elements. Let it be what it is. My characters may have fallen into a hopeless situation as they walk through the pages, but there is always hope. I think my work is often threatened by an existential mood. I have wrestled in my heart with this since I was a child, one day in the backyard when the limit on life first struck me. So words naturally come out of me that reflect that disappointment. Implicit in my sadness, is how much i love life and all its intricacies. How badly I wish to live on!

27.20

i had to learn how to live all over again, after the trauma. i didn’t completely lose my ability to write or speak or communicate, but it did something to my nervous system, and i could not think clearly. my thought process was fragmented and tangential. my moods stood me up and walked me into altercations. my thoughts put on a show, racing recklessly into the night. i lived this way for several years. 7 years later i am doing well. i am calm and charged and can talk to anyone and look you in the eye. i am not easily triggered into fight or flight or freeze. i give thanks. i dedicate my life to communicating some hope to those who feel hopeless in the world. with love, from me to you.

found a friend

i found a friend who was out there ever since i met him when i moved to Sacramento almost 7 years ago. He has entered a program at the VA and has found recovery. i am thrilled to know he's makin his way out. every time i visited his profile i worried he would be deceased. appears to have hit that spiritual rock bottom place i know so well, where your life is so low there's no further place to descend to. gosh i can relate. one day the pain is so excruciating there is an opening. an honesty. and a willingness to do whatever it takes to recreate ourselves and heal. hopefully to walk again with a purpose and become useful and able to love ourselves and our communities. i told him, i can only wish this for you as i have experienced it myself. and you remind me of myself. remembering the past. thinking of you. wishing you well.

Katya Mills
20 November 2011

Posted 2011 [a FB memory hit my timeline]: "Though the circles of my acquaintances and even friends is full of the bad, the ugly, even wickedness among us... i find a dialectic, a contradiction in it, for these same people are capable of love and sweetness beyond measure and I am at times grateful. For there are glimpses of the compassionate! crazy! empathic! sensitive! and sometimes even mature and responsible. the locus of overlap may be small.... yes! we are immigrants passing through your mainstream ! fyi....our intelligence runs deep. intentions pure."

hk. we love you

i cannot turn my eyes from an honorable cause
collective awareness forever half-whole

 the internet
a consciousness blender. unevolved practices
pulled to the surface

we cannot turn our eyes we
get up at dawn to see
unsavory brutal old things hiding inside the
lobster traps while the hull rises and falls off the swells
like a breath
the waistcoat of mature regimes sweating the heart
suffering the people to a punishing
high blood pressure and panic in the
streets

hk. never give in. never
give up
our hearts beat alongside
yours

tra.nce join.t

no right no wrong simply colorful everything simply
all night long

roll tight trance joints 4 the crowd
2 feel

no. the future's not cold
computer. still

clouds pressured by
fronts to tears are
 driven
woven and rolling are feeling and warm
are driven are crying and living
are dying and rolling
are woven into
the life

expiration date. sadness

one day you woke up feeling lighter. this was different. this was hope. it made no sense and could not be denied. the following day it was gone. the light was shining and the birds were singing but all you saw and heard was dead again.

still what stood out for you now was the recollection of yesterday's hope. wanting another taste of that.

so you got out of bed a little earlier. you saw the slightest smile at the edges of your lips in the mirror. you were able to sing some morose song by the Cure in your head.

- Katya Mills, 2019

si se puede

Tears in your eyes spoke to the disappointment; how union gains ultimately fell back upon the common laborers exploited on American farms. you tell me nothing's changed. i'm not sure how to feel. i wash some carrots down with water. somebody picked these vegetables and cut and peeled them, or ran a big machine out there, over the earth. someone with a family and maybe all alone. i remember Dolores shouting  si se puede! si se puede! si se puede! she brought a smile to the workers and some hope. maybe that's all that matters. tired from the day, i lay me down to sleep. tomorrow i will revisit the law at it pertains to my chosen profession, and watch the first of the leaves fall.

china. usa. bodhi

If china and the usa can meet for tea
 in the south china sea
what a dream this
    would be

then will i know my chinese brother
who wears the knitted hat
like me

given us by our nephews
to keep warm
in the mountains

in the valleys
in the winter

a dream is only worth
making real. like the two silver hearts
i wear around my neck
on a silver chain

as my sister. in china
given us by our young nieces
replacing our hearts
from their scattered
pieces across the world

jasmine tea
in the south china sea
you and me

i give you my cup
you give me yours
and fire up our ceramics
 against any twitter
polemics

arms locked at the elbows
we drink slowly

drink up. you and me
from the sunset west
looking east where she
shall rise again

red. blue and white
in the south china
sea

lighting the single candle
given us by an elder. in faith

by the bodhi
tree

deep space. 10

in our world of small attention spans
i promise you life improves by exploration
hold on and follow the field of focus
past a point of routine

find the curiosity
rewarded by
deep space
ten