march marches on

the rain

the wind

the love you

rescind

anaerobic ponds

once clouds 

reflect 

and march 

marches on

without 

you

#katyamills

march 29

we were young 

the wilderness was calling 

ice broke up on the river 

startling the eyes the stars 

the skies       

#katyamills

journal # march turns away

march was turnin april and i made all my mistakes and i knew it. screw it. im decidedly optimistic with a chosen ascension. left that old reel spinning light down the aisle. click-click-click ridin rails with the tape. broke down that wall of denial.   - katya

ten. indivisible

i breakdown, too. useless, not unlike a chevy silverado, nothin in the tank. if there's no coffee in me by 6am, make a lawn ornament outta me. so i start early, crackin those beans through the grind, by hand sometimes, yawnin bedhead and all, spring winter summer and fall, gotta keep myself runnin and runnin along, so i can be luscious good and vitamin k for you, my love, roarin my middle age burnin fuel with that special manner makes all the millenials turn their heads, double take, slap their faces to wonder where the hell i came from? yes, i am my own sensation, out in the wild west of this great nation, one being, guarded, sentient, indivisible, under god, and irreverent to the core. last week against all odds ran my first ever ultra, just ran and ran eight hours long like a lunatic, up and down quarry road through the american river canyon, drawing poison oak for the second time in three months, so sore for three days i could hardly walk and find me thrilled through the pain... just now i saw the county job i applied for has hit processing stage, so juicy like a quarter orange shall i climb out of my navel and squeeze on to the commodity, precious life, dear god, and hopefully get around my self center and finalize my time, this life, on the carrying about in service to those less fortunate, county state country corner, with a beating heart and a backpack and a rushing spirit glancing off the darkness like light does. that's all i want, anyway.

Journal .000696 rpms

Everything is lined up perfectly for our success. Yours. Mine. 
The horse is in the barn. The squirrels are in the trees. The mendicants on their knees. 

The world is rotating at .000696 rpms. 
The perfect exposure to the sun, for consciousness to bloom.
Warning to self. Do not let this day slip away! 
As the world turns, let the fat burn. 
Sizzle! 

Give it all away again. 

When the mind's exhaust casts its mist over you, obscuring the perception in pings of many deadly thoughts, be sure to stop where you are and challenge those thoughts. 

Who are you to be envious of another? 
Who are you to be full of anger?
Who are you to wish harm?
Who are you?

Those instincts which once kept us alive, will always haunt us. 
They were burned into our grooves. 

Journal # 03.02.15

I wish I will live in self-forgotten. For now I look into the fog. Then turn on the space heater. My kittens all curled up in different rooms. They need the heat more than I do. One is topping a wicker basket of clothes. Another is curled upon the bed. The third, the lone wolf, on the belly of the armchair in my kitchen. I sit at my desk and wonder how life got its limits, so endless the moment it seems. I dare not look into the future. When all my kittens are gone. When perhaps I am here, at this same desk, with new kittens. Traitor! With new poems on my tongue. New paperbacks to my name. Ebooks on kindle. Traitor! I have forgiven myself already. For life trudging on. Forgive myself, towards self-forgotten. And once I forget myself complete? It will be left for someone else to remember who I was.

MLK. 1929-1968

All i knew was what i saw and what people told me,
because it all happened before i was born. The horrifying
image of a man lying dead at the feet of his friends,
at a motel somewhere in Memphis. The many fingers
pointing firmly towards space.

All i knew was what i heard, which was unlike anything
 i ever heard before! Perhaps the greatest orator since
Winston Churchill. Deep compassion and confidence.
Rhythm and music. Love for  country. Demanding change.
Appealing to us and God. Certain in his vision for the
future. Certain of a personal and collective overcoming
of great and tangible darkness and suffering. Offering
hope for change. Prayers. Marches. Practicing the principles he
preached. Forgiveness. Starting a critical dialogue. Confronting
the enemy on enemy turf. Demanding we come together in
new and nonviolent ways.


A great tragedy, overshadowed now by unified cultural love
in memoriam for a great and selfless man. A decided day
to remember. To honor one who sacrificed himself for his
people and social justice, in the end. Shaking up and
waking up a culture embedded in fear and racism. Making the
unconscious, conscious. Bringing light into darkness.

Today in the USA, racism hides mostly behind closed
doors. Or so I thought. Recent events across the USA
have suggested otherwise. If Doctor King was here,
what would he say? What would he do? All i know is
he would show courage and ask others to stand behind
what they believe in. He would not be scared to speak
truth to power. We would listen and learn. Some of us
would get involved; try and speak truth to
power, ourselves. Despite immediate consequence.
Having the courage to stand behind our beliefs and speak
freely.

In honor of Doctor King, I tell myself today:

Do not accept or protect the ISMS. Speak TRUTH to POWER.
Support nonviolent movements toward social justice.
Get out there and get involved, whenever possible!
Practice loving kindness towards ALL sentient beings.
Express gratitude. Pray. Dream large! Meditate. Forgive.
Inspire hope toward a NEW PARADIGM WORLDVIEW!

I love to listen to Dr. King's charismatic speeches,
whenever possible. Thank God we have these recordings.

Change comes over culture like a slow, pacific wave,
washing us clean of our troubled and divided history,
and offering us a chance toward UNITY.

praying to god on a curb

i must get up
pull this aching forty
and a single
year and a single
month and a couple rocky days
bashing my peace
of mind into jagged
images
      colors
         sounds
             feelings

shine, shine
into the madness of march!
then contract
into its ides

the idle of a two thousand model
corvette i can taste
the sound
yum

the american made
heartbeat
rumbles

all my infinite
imprint exhales into exhaust

skipping and scotch
hopping 2 well-won
thread bare
motor oil cycle of
give into
gravity

fuck my broken down
Volkswagen Gone
                   To
                  Indigo

i can taste her colors
turning chrome somewhere
blue

along with me
synchronized
behind my blue green
algae eyes

turning my wallet inside out
as i shell out atleast all
of my hard-earned money
waiting

stranded in Alameda
praying to god
on a curb

turning me around
myself until i
let go

talking up strangers
on a triple shot latte
experiential trip

unpack me
and fuck my
fear
  like so

coffeehouse puffs my sails
creams my soul
leaving memorable waves
comet tails

Trina she's a chemist
waiting 4 a bus
tells me where cortisol derives
tumbling naturopathic gymnastics
makes me smile
in an artifice of
world

then i expand again
in your expansiveness
engine rumbles and fires up

then i gotta go
contract for safety
with some devil preserving
lifeless serving
portioned out
cultural misfire

please will you cosign
my BS? anyone asks
be subservient to my march
madness? tags of hash

####no takers
##no fakers

we push out on guatemalan
fumes in hopeful
works of faith
you and me
god makes
three

do not dare resist
the persistent
nature

of you

Stowaway taken toward Miss Engine #9

The train depot was popping this spring. The crew assigned this year was a helluva crew, boy! Sure makes a whole lotta difference, from the painted colors of the depot herself, fresh and glossy and thick! to the presence of a henhouse and therefore the wonderful signing into dawn through the roosters' cocky lament. Coins exchanged for sodapop were even polished, alike the shoes, and clearly the eminent steel powerhouses pulling dining cars and sleepers stole the hearts and minds of dreamers and adventurers come to travel.

He found himself in contemplation much of the time, on engine nine. He was a stowaway unless someone somehow mistook him somewhere along the number nine line, for someone else. In which case he was a stowaway impersonating a traveler. This was neither here nor there for him. He would have paid, could he have afforded it. And he would be someone another fashioned him to be, if it brought them pleasure and helped pass the time along sometimes. If he ever got a bad hit or feeling off of someone, he made sure to walk away from any potential affair as soon as practical. But this was not often.

Hat Red striped by K

Mostly he caught the cars closest to the engine herself, so he could catch her in a new way, a new style, an evolution of her wonderful yet unadorned simple force and magnitude. He caught something new every time, it seemed, which brought him untold happiness. One can hardly ever guess how any one man's heart may conduct itself when coaxed out of hiding. On this day, he was lost in the physical, and his mind was weary. But once he had coffee and breakfast, the day lay before him to explore another aspect.

The shadows which held the screen of the apron of the engine so to protect it, shone like light, like glossy black finish over the stones the crew had trucked in from east coast shoreline jersey tidepools. Such a tangible and sharp angled kind of darkness was nowhere else to be found! He marvelled at these otherwise romantic sorts of notions. Then he marvelled at himself marvelling! Then had to laugh for having marvelled at himself marvelling.

As though it were living black. Or dark matter that made itself evident to the naked human eye. These days he travelled by rail more for nostalgia than any clear necessity. But the trips became much more memorable and important. although often in recalling a trip soon thereafter in his mind, He had eyes for only one, Miss  #9, rain or shine. Even your average train hoppin' moonshine runnin' babyfaced red, sunspotted, suffering marked for the road and no goin' back home except to die maybe, if he is lucky, livin' in the shadow of the forties and the bennies and the beats and the new american streets pushing out to sweet somnolence of suburbs. Some could but especially he believed in himself, that he could appreciate the way the nina bellowed out her distinct muffled coal storm call way a faraway, miles between them when he attuned to it. Still, the train would be traveling fast, so he knew he must check his ties on the sleeping bag and belongings.

She demands double knots across just about everything coming across her bow. After the first lemon squeeze city of a ride, he abided her limits and demands. Over the years he began to admire her strength and composure. She stood the test of time well. Her wood wainscotting was clearly cut from hardwoods and the carpentry was evidently master in craftwork, uncracked mostly as it was wherever possible continued off any one slab of wood versus demarcated cut and pasting that came apart over time.

Nina she got edged out by most other ladies in her class, Lost many an critical gunny sack he did, lost bread, booze, tools, workclothes in the past trying to get up to speed  at the very coordinates he got handed down from a friend of Burroughs and Kerouac who was coaxed to hop on out of Chicago down toward Kentucky and the gulf mouthing off beneath it all, Mississippi, Louisiana, you know, like he does (the gulf) after a big old redfish sandwhich which where grits get tastier and bodies lie seven feet above that six foot under condition got standardized across the earth the blessed earth who gives when you work her a little, touch her, rake your metal fingernails down her spine to the small of her back, some knoll rising up above red clay lowgrounds and ive oak is.

Well he would not linger anywhere near six feet down and one foot up, you bet all his five fingers got crossed in concern over it. For a day most likely. Until either he shared how it troubled him (unlikely), or someone who caught the bad end of that energetic response might reach out to him to see how he was. Highly unlikely! he knew.

Pounds fall off of him in liquid salt as he catches his breath on the flat car he timed and marked for his landing right from the coordinates some so-called friend of Kerouac, yeah right, some buddy of Burroughs proffered comme handmedown to the woe begotten known for nothings who continue to live off the land and kindness of strangers. He  took them almost begrudgingly.

 The dude saw the look on his face and was confused, and would have to remain that way, unfortunate as it was. A long trip to have something not clearly understood between strangers, and without the desire to pursue it to its conclusion. Or, within the framework of desire-in-check it was too much effort to express without seeming ungrateful the way his offer sent a pulse shot of devaluation into the hot Irish sourced blood of the man, like he did not simply exude the talent the skill developed behind years and years of trial and tribulation;
 left in the dust half the time in his twenties hungover, one bottle of wine too heavy to reach the velocity needed to catch that bitch! Good old number 9! Her edges shone in the sun exposed prairies and steel flashed like a streak of cobalt lightning passed deep deep pushing into the Dakotas and beyond and flirting sometimes with the border, dreaming of gettin' off her own rails jumping her tracks to catch sweet pasture serenity of Canada, Oh Canada.

Well that kinda pulse pushes him on to greater accomplishments, you know, steamin' hot in seconds the way the fire gets caught in the jetstream and sets upon the hot dry stunned and sunned skin of trees and husk of corn.
Dragon breath! a man who he knew first as the boyfriend of a babysitter -- then later as his dad. If he were to be trusted. Which he may not have been, but for reasons unknown. Something about his style, his delivery, his message, and the way he looked at you like he wanted to believe his own utterances so badly,  which was kinda pathetic in a factual kinda way.
 If that man really was who he said he was...? Didn't look none like him. Didn't act like someone who claimed blood ties. No loyalty. No favor. No ritual but drinking and working and cursing and fucking. And these he picked up more by osmosis than anything else. He followed the man and spied on the man out of curiosity, but desperately avoided most contact, as he feared the man more than anyone before or after....nah, couldn't be! These brief words were somehow enough now to get him into a state of mind that was tolerable, bearable. And so he intended to go on living. And did.

His love affair with Engine #9 continued. He washed himself in her sights and sounds, smells, and the many diverse feelings which their path together up and down mountainsides and into tunnels, then winding around bucolic mesmerizing untouched pine and deciduous groves.


She really might never know what it feels like to be together, he suddenly thought one day after a lunch of tuna fish and pretzels, reflecting one time on the great divide and horrilbe partition between a steam engine and a human made of flesh and bone. How had he neglected this earlier? Such a critically important topic, it so suddenly seemed! Panic fell upon him, once anxiety let him up. A horrible mantra began to recite itself on the inner walls of his mind. This mantra was one better left alone and not repeated. And so he kept it to himself until it died an unremarkable death.
Silence took over, wonderfully so.
When this particular adventure on Nina came to completion, he walked away feeling broken-hearted yet unable to know what to do with the persisting nature of the persecutory feeling that the love could never survive and was a hopeless kinda love, after all.

Superficial seems the best way to cross the river Lethe. Or so he decided. He had read about that river in his parents church when he was a boy. Lethe. This was the river, the one of forgetfulness. How could anyone forget that much?

Man Under Table Under Light by K

Anyway, he knew what mostly worked for him. So he followed his own advice some more. He changed his life around to match his private thoughts and understandings. Thus he became one of those who frequented tenement buildings. Not at first to reside, for he needed to procure that job at the magazine store. Then he got the job and all things became possible. Minimum wage + a little on top. And nothing at all was possible after that. He dreamt that all things within reach, all things he could safely afford to possess for a matter of time. All things could be kept civil and fair and respectful among men and women, and noise could be nothing other than passion or fatigue or the sound of the television or radio talking over us all. But he ceased to dream, nights, and as a result there was little fruit harvested from his sleep nor his analysis of his lifelong situation...when he tried to daydream about those wonderful rides on Miss Engine #9, his visions stalled out or got flooded and voices came to intimidate, not intimate, secrets. The main secret he kept and would not dare repeat to no one, was the one that hollered: not a chance! better chance for a snowball in hell! 

J stowaway by K

If only he could remember how they always slept nights, him a stowaway lying on some bale of hay or coat or cushion or body...the easy gentle swaying like it was growing up to be a rattle some day, side to side sway, when she was working hard as she was. Wasn't she? He could not picture her or his life then, or see himself from outside himself like he used to.

Life moved on past, and still he tried to find her in his dreams but often ended up frustrated or lost...Down the tracks they came. The trains. He revisited worlds that felt slightly different, not enough the same to get his heart beating like that or even close. Slightly new. More Like the thick coat of paint on the depot walls, or the sifted and rinsed white, gray and beige-colored stones from jersey shore, what about them?
What formerly he romanticized to be such a grande labor of love, had now become simply men on work duty as legal repentance, court-ordered to haul rocks.

The trains kept coming to him like crazy, but only to confuse him more. Here now, its twenty eleven! Catch it before it pass you by! Whoops there she goes, Miss Twenty-Eleven, not so thrilled I suspect. Thrashing about as though to break free, on the steady back of Dear Jetstream number 7.

Everything deteriorated as she slipped further from his mind. Replaced with flooded rivers. The unmoored houses, sagging under the weight of alcohol-soaked baby boomer american livers. Worst flooding in Vermont in decades upon decades. The covered bridges almost had their covers blown. Vanilla and chocolate tears escaped tongues and dripped down to the base of ice cream cones. Summer jaws just dropped. All the flippers in the pinball machine -- flopped.

What did he expect? Carbon footprints leave deep imprints in the self-contained atmosphere. Scarring can be seen in the clouds on an otherwise blue sky scan. Earth is on waitlist for a new dome, mandated a month ago by the milky way galactic court on high. No one knows how. No one knows why?

He was losing his reason. But this was less painful this way. He gave it all over to the sky, his love and loss...to the stars, to the gods ands goddesses,  and to the first electric guitar. Cause he saw that there were far more deserving candidates in the system than he. Why should love be returned to him, exactly? why? He had done nothing so great in his life, never ever, no never, never ever at all.

Were Pluto still a planet, she would tell them all what happened next...his question echoed off the tails of shooting stars in the hall. Then started a stir in the astrological order. Mercury tried to filibuster to delay the clock. Greenwich Standard Time got elected Universal Time. And now it was a lock.

The next thing that happened, really happened, they say. She came back to our stowaway, Miss Engine #9. She rolled through the heavens on some Galaxy Rail. And the whole system seemed to fold down at her feet. To honor the love between them, so celebrated for so long by the stowaway, yet forgotten. But they say her approach got him feeling again, recollecting the rhythm, the heartbeat. Some say he was scared and dead tired. But still he got on his feet!

Yellow Billows by Katya

And the universe got to host this reunion so dear. In a place where the politics are typically driven by fear. Some had been bribed. Eight of nine moons of Jupiter failed to vote for themselves. Rumor has it IO (the leader of the contingent) got T-boned in the green room, by elves. Its even been suggested she had solar flares stuffed down her throat.

But whatever was, let it be! Guess what? I could care!
All i know to remember is that love! True love
represented there. Between a stowaway dreamer
and his railway romance, Miss #9, so fair.

moment

the moment was all. any moment. and moments were delicious and full like apples. or they were not. things were happening, big things, in the moment. alot of folks passed them up or wrote them off as little things when actually they were big things. well, not just big things. only things. because there was nothing else. or those matters categorized in the minds of the masses as big things were not in existence in the moment that was passed up or written off. they were neither big nor small, nor medium. they were not.

so what she began to do or try to do, the intention she set for herself, was to see the moment, to capture the moment and experience it as large. meaning important. or critical. or essential. her life became suddenly more interesting. there were interactions she would typically have neglected or avoided in lieu of what she believed she was doing. she began to see these interactions as critical to her life. not just obstacles to get by on the way to something her mind told her she should be focused on. the mind was creative yet dangerous and notorious for eradicating moments, her many years of experience with her mind informed her.

so there was a train station that connected her to oakland. In the dark ages before she set her intention, she would walk directly to this train station and head home without hesitation after work. no matter what she encountered on the way. her mind had developed her inflexible stance that obliterated the possibility that lay within this ten minute stretch. now that she was able to meet and greet her mind, she became aware of the potential small tragedy. she located a new flexibility within herself to slow her pace and enjoy her walk to the station, heightening the potential of the situation. let it also be known on this day she became a carrier of light.

the empowerment was there for the taking. in each moment. a choice was made by each and every one. and still is. moment by moment. she decided for instance one sunny afternoon after work, that she would skip her normal route to the train station. the weather was just cheerful. she wanted to remain in the sunlight for some time longer. work was over, so the day was hers. she decided to walk to the next train station down so many urban san francisco blocks. she remembered with some melancholy the beautiful days in the past walking home, when choice did not fully exist (due to her own personal compromised awareness). she had been sad on those days because she had not wanted to walk into the dark subway station. she wanted to stay out on the streets and appreciate the light. but she was bound by her invisible mental creed to head home.

many colorful moments occurred for her on her walk down market street to the powell street station. she encountered the shoe store where she recently purchased a retro pair of blue converse walking shoes. she decided to return to the store and purchase a black and red pair of the same shoes, because she had grown to love them in the one week she had been walking them to and from work. while in the store, she had interactions with the employees and discovered that this was a family run business from way back, like 1960s, and there had been a fire and the store had recovered and stayed in business. the strength of family (sometimes) was evidenced to her in the story. and also in her witnessing the interactions of the employees, which was clearly on a knowing level far beyond your average walmart hires. she wished her family was so together, but she did not let her wishing ruin her many colorful moments as they went on.

she saw a protest march on market street with representatives from her very field in the ranks. there were signs in support of institutions that were slotted to close due to budget cuts. most of these institutions were well established in the tenderloin community, yet were to be victims of the economic downturn. a well of feeling rose up in her to see her comrades out on the street, and she waved to many of them and smiled and cheered. then came some anger towards the culture and system whereby the communities with the greatest problems and poverty often seem to see more services cut than those in higher socioeconomic strata. she chose not to join the march, however, for she knew not the destination and the march was heading the same direction from which she came.

she found a circle formed by Powell Street for street performers, young skinny boys who looked like art students. Hip-hop was playing and a crowd was gathering. The body movements to the music were seamless for the most part, like the best of them were gliding across pavement. Some of the kids rolled their bodies around, pulled and pushed their arms and legs into placement at strange angles. The crowd was mostly unenthusiastic if one looked at faces and listened to the absence of applause or cheering. She herself did not feel particularly connected to the art form but found it curious, fascinating. She also felt gratitude to the performers and found them to be wonderfully energetic and courageous, most of them.

The fluidity of the movement was not unlike the fluidity of the moment she left her normal path and intentionally derailed for the greater adventure. both were in some ways so ordinary you could have missed them in the camouflage of daily life. Yet at the same time, something truly light-bearing and momentous took place.