Sandra

my dearest cousin. i am calling after you. your form ghostly and lithe against the depths of the forest. i run after you in this dream. creatures breaking through branches on either side of us. fearful i am chasing the memories. fifteen years since we lost you.  #katyamills

farewell to a peaceful day

it started so well. a cool morning after a hot day in the valley. my love came to see me and we read the newspaper together on the balcony. like any couple on any sunday morning going back a hundred years. the prime minister of Japan had been assassinated. i went to prepare coffee and discovered one of the cats was missing. somehow the front door had been left open. my heart sank. we searched and searched. i called and whistled and called before falling into an emotional flatland. i went online to distract myself from the shock. one of my old friends whom i survived addiction with  - initials DC -  had been homeless on the streets for many months now. farewell to a peaceful sunday.   #katyamills

cross current

news of the conception 

of your second child fights for celebration 

against the prevailing tide

the very day she died

#katyamills

tbh #7

to be honest this

can happen to anyone the loss 

of direction sometimes you

gotta pray for guidance

believe in yourself!

there's nothing you cannot 

overcome

#katyamills

memory of a friend who did not make it out

we were living out of motel rooms back then and only a couple of people we could trust. pumping air into bike tires and patching them up, so for some freedom out on the streets. you had to be able to get out of a tight spot fast. someone was always having a breakdown or a meltdown except for the lifers who kept calm and had an eye for any advantageous situation. swoop down like a buzzard and pick apart the meat and leave the bones to sink into the earth. socioeconomics pushed a nasty current downtown and hung a red tide. they marked up for resale whatever they could not themselves consume. the players threw a party to look unselfish. many swam off into eddies and lost touch with reality for days, then, when it hit, let's hope you could hit the ground running to make up for all that lost time. kids were kids and lost time lost money for every adult who had no fixed income or paycheck. outside of the clear specifications of sanctioned work or disability in a capitalist society, lay the gray zone. lots of marginalized people in the mix. try to discover what you had of value then stir up some demand. could be a skill. could be a quality you carried yourself. you had to get creative and put yourself out there. try not to resort to the least common denominator. plenty of good boy and good girl gone bad scenarios. some who could not recover from loss or trauma. god! i'm so fortunate i got out of there. i wish you had, too.

adrienne

she was my friend
Adrienne
now she's gone and
i wish i had been
longer by her
side

killer -v

We are right to remember the lives with such promise that were lost. We are right to focus on the survivors and the families that must move on though no longer whole. We are right to care about our kids and our schools and how to protect them so they can feel safe and trustful and go and keep learning and growing. And if we care this much, we must also care enough to understand a culture that contributes to a violent disposition.

confidante in context

If you decided to confine half your life to a tiny cube where you were walled in and given security in the form of money, health insurance, a predictable daily routine, comfort, artificial light, food, a title to define yourself by; would it result in sanity, health, happiness? If you lost someone you love under mysterious conditions and devoted your every waking moment to searching for them, would it make you crazy? Nobody can tell you how to live! You wear your own contextual skin. I prefer to be by myself from time to time, brew a pot of coffee, and listen. Inevitably I will confide in myself, and the day will then be won. 

lost ina video

He was an older man, single and retired and replete with cash, dating a woman he knew through her employment at a casino he frequented. He was forever dysconnected to a timeless place of artificial light and sound. He committed an atrocity, an even several hundred yards detached from the crime scene. He was once flesh and blood but got lost ina video poker game that never ended, and whatever connect he had to reality if any, was severed. Nobody can understand how this can happen to a man, and few will ever forgive him. His father was a known criminal and he was born into a family on the run. This cannot account for his psychotic break. He left behind him a timeless place of artificial light and sound. And thousands upon hundred thousands of broken hearts.

what you were you were without adornment and adornment was nothing without you

when you left, you left your belongings behind. i thought you had forgotten them and gathered them up to return to you. there were drawings and jewelry and clothes and papers. what was missing was you. that's when i realized these things, all this stuff, had no meaning without you. i left messages for you that you would never return. you go where you go and you take yourself with you. you would never return for your stuff. and without you it has no meaning, it can only be given away to someone in need. and we are left needing you. and i am left without you. and i miss you.

type.writer -xi

they stared at you
they stared at me
get lost! i thought
you said it

i wrote it
i typed it up

one day
i got up off a bar stool
liquid courage
and read it

in 1998
i believed
in you and you
in me

i moved
thousands of miles away
in 2003

i'm not broke
i realized
i'm broken

oxygen starved
the urban air

i don't smoke
i thought
i'm choking...

doesn't mean
i didn't
care

another loss - fin

in your early thirties and too young, you left behind a family and so many friends. you were reckless, we all were, yet you were good for your word, and six years ago you saw and spoke of a future for yourself, creative. i dream that it manifests on some non-material plane. it does not matter how we left one another the day after the last time i saw you, on disconnected and fractured terms, for the six foot tall skinny boy i knew, whose face i saw behind glasses sometimes at the corner of 28th and telegraph, any day any season, always had a hug and wide devious smile for me, and some stories to share. and i know, had we come across one another since, it wouldn't have been any different.

i remember us in the late afternoon sun. we had met our mutual friends on 28th by the laundromat and kicked it on the street that day, fixing bikes and listening to music. i had a brief shout-it-out with my ex-boyfriend of the hour,  nothing unusual about that. everyone knows i've been breaking up since sixth grade. by the time the sun began to edge out and the sky turning colors, I had to go and you were already gone. You had told me not to worry, you would come by the next day to pick up your bike.

the following morning I was still crashed out and making up sleep from several days end-to-end insomnia and stress of the move. when you came i missed you, and several calls you made. the messages you left were far from friendly. you thought i had made off with your bike, when it was just sitting in the backyard waiting for you. i couldn't get ahold of you after that, your phone had died and you hadn't paid the bill. i was good for my word, just like you. i kept your bike for you, for weeks.

I will always remember you well, and so sad for your child and your family and friends. it's really tragic we never got to see you shine. i wish you the best on the nonmaterial plane and hope to see you and embrace you, in the next. see that tall boy with the bowler hat and the wide and devious smile. kick back like we did, trading EDM tracks and war stories. how does that sound? sweet dreams, my friend, you are loved.

in memoriam -- JR Lindberg

KatYa

another loss - vii

it's been over five years since I saw you, my friend, and I heard that you died this july. i don't know if you ever really got clean, but i heard that you tried and that's more than we could of said about us back then, when we were full tilt, chaotic. the new life in me cries for you, my friend, the old embers in my eyes glow in remembrance, i mean, i have forged a path in recovery and life has new wonders to share. i only wish you could have made it through, too. i relocated north of there, not long after the night we shared with music and laughter and our common bond. the signs had accumulated for some time, flashes of gunfire and madness and theft, and the trails and traces of my chemical romance had ended in black smoke signals, severely. my angels were there looking out for me, they saw me into my despairing, then gave me a chance and reason to change, and i implored God and let go and reached out and took up a new and renewable source, and brandished my pen once again. each and every day i can thank my loves for letting me live, and i wonder where were yours, where were yours? your star would have risen and lit up a world, and your daughter would have felt loved once again, and for her and for you and the world i am sad...

another loss -iv

i borrowed your bike because mine was already locked up in my future home, this cool and windless morning, and after passing through De Fremery Park,  i found my key under a stone and let myself into the ranch on Magnolia surrounded by high and gapless fence. after catching my breath, i switched out yours for mine, as my Motobecane was twice ten speed and yours BMX. i determined it too dangerous to travel slow through West Oakland at dawn. the lady of the house, an attorney corrupted by law, was dead asleep ina sheet ona couch in the living room. i held my new key close to my heart, and walked down the hall to see the project i had recently completed. two new coats of eggshell paint covered four walls, ready to receive the light and warm a heart or two. all the cat dander raised up in the disturbance, in my lungs now,  soon to wake me with fits of asthma overnight. once i would be lucky, with my dear Kali at my side in the cot, fourth of july, to help with pressure points and rifle through my many backpacks for my inhaler , to rescue me without breath.

another loss -iii

I was in
      between pages
a book without
binding

You let me stay
with you
one night
a moment's notice

we were friends
our lives derelict
 unusual

the music
the midnight
oil

      bands like us
cannot make it
no more

 traded street level
 stories

         left out
again. in the sunlight
 soon to be
exposed

 before dawn

 you were kicking
back. i was several back
packs deep to and from
Magnolia street

several unsavory characters
wanted a piece
of me they
could not catch
me

       thank god
 for this
       bicycle...

another loss -i

You let me stay one night in your room, many years ago,  i was in between places and spaces and a kick in the gut had landed me in Oakland with nowhere to go. Brown-outs were my life back then, and nobody can tell you what your psychosis is gonna look like or how it will feel, because they aren't buried behind your eyes. Electronic Dance Music was one thing we had in common that night, and we had what was left of my battered laptop to trade tracks that touched us...

peaches. subsumed

all the rest
made me only more tired

so i stopped sleepin

now im

trackin shadows
cross the wall 

while my ice cubes

wave water trails

into ginger ale

rattlin the cubes

against the glass

to remember you

the man above me 

looks off the wall into space
dreaming of life
with someone real

i am sunk into a couch

like buried treasure

all the gouramis gape at me

silent kissing

an air bubble
tough feelings to feel inside
more than i can handle 

i

rattle the cubes 

to remember you

another character
jumps off a page

into my heart

i wonder bout the man 

the life in two 

dimensions. how safe not having

a back to watch

not being real

how safe

how dry
how terrible

you cannot
lend a friend 

a hand or take a stand

brushed off 

like you are. canvassed

for meaning

pretty rendition

come into my heart!

lemme hold you there

make you real

i rattle the glass

and remember you

wax inwards

street sweep the cottons
real estate gets pricey
along the ear canal

listen
i need an extension 

of gratitude
outward. my ideals are almost met

almost

there is

there is
still time yet

eyelids fallen like my guard - cut #3

I suffer headaches

Tension too thick to mention

You know. I know. We all know. 

I know we all know what is 

about to happen

sentiments left touching

 thin air

original

 firm

 comforting handshake

 they had

time trails into some 

second hand see ya

 later 

lead into some 

cold

   late

    lonely night pin cushion

 never to 

return


you, too, would have left it that way...

like i had to... 

let it go...

like i
did

you would have had me

 leave it like up and

    walk away would 

not you

before you
found and held
and loved the fuckin
hell out of 

me

mercilessly

to the expense
of my breath
of my lungs
pressing me

pressing in on me
pressing me out all whole again
in the end

goddam i miss you
goddam

we are young

The days run away and I cannot do anything about this, I do not understand my age. I suppose we are all very young, even the very old, and this appeases the cruel god who comes out from time to time to command us away, life changes and we are not welcome anymore...
                                                                                                                  you are done with me and i am done with you and all our messy nonsense of two thousand three hundred forty-five yesterdays. I cannot say what came over me but i remember crying when i knew i was no longer gonna be protected or saved. I was to be blooded and charged with my Appetite For Destruction and to carry all the old Lies again, in rare form; they coulda made a fine killer of me, at the academy...
                                                                                                                                                            what I want to say is, losing you, this was one of the saddest of neverending losses, what i wanna say is sorry. and you have no need to forgive me unless it helps you -- please -- i think i forgave myself but i wonder -- when i hurt -- thinking of all the times you told me fuck off  

before i finally did

some friend

some friends
you cast out for them

too small

they have to be tossed back
to the sea