weather pattern #2

inspiration arrives 

with hurricane 

beleaguered by insecurity 

churning morning 

moods

#katyamills

mood elevator

thursday. pm

starin
at some reflective floor
some polished hall

waitin
4 the doors
to meet

a light
a chime
a bounce

the bottom
falls out

i rolled in
all atomic
uncontained
energy

now ima
hydraulic
haul ina
box

a simple
toe turn to
taxicab flag
hell

friday. am

going up?
ya             (im down)

bouncin
friendly
coffee sloshin
mornings

suspended in
definite
frenzy

the mood

only sleep
can break it
 up

ORION

Orion and I was tryin to love you but it was hard. We cannot always be sure of ourselves in every way, and when I broke out (in anger) the words hurling and curling their way lugubrious in the chill of autumn air,  and you there; I seemed unable to stop myself so righteous and defiant for a five minute drive home from dinner.  God it was the worst of me. Of course I took to rest by the sounds of postseason baseball curious to the darker mood. I wanted the electricity back. But we all sometimes short circuit. I woke with an apology on my lips and typed it into a text. You were calling, calling me, but in these early hours of the morning on my free days the only one i talk to is in my slippers out on the back porch with the long hooded sweater woven black and white around me staring up to the heavens missing the moon, I mean Orion.

Journal # 05.26.15

I wore a purple shirt and blue jeans. I used black mascara and brown eyeliner. My foundation was liquid and closer to pale than ever before. My mood was fly, like a butterfly could not be captured. Everything about the day was quite fresh other than my faithful if predictable following of schedule. I could watch the sun go up and down a thousand times and still know there was more rebirth going on than dying. Dying was merely a trick of the eye, and god a great magician. One might even take death out of the equation altogether, were it not for the seduction of blood and taste for theatre.

GUEST BLOG

Here is the Guest Blog I did for Jen Winters 

Guest blogger: Katya Mills On Mood Manufacturing
by Jen Winters


I am a mood perfectionist, which has put me into business in mood manufacturing. Yes, it is a confession. I cannot often just sit down and write, and not worry about setting my mood just so. I grew up in the eighties, and my parents bought me an original Mac Plus for school. This computer was the coolest. I taught myself how to type. I realized I could open a Word document and stare at a white screen. The ‘tabula rasa’: Latin for ‘blank slate’. Which is what every artist faces, almost every day. I remember staring at the screen and feeling something in my heart which yearned to be expressed, but how to put that in words? The little cursor was blinking, just counting the seconds, endlessly waiting for me.

Self-publishing today is a luxury, just as computers were luxurious back then. My appreciation of both comes from having been born in a world without either. A world without the internet. Thank God for all the hackers in their garages who dreamed of this day, and worked toward their dreams! What a gift. In the eighties you could never reach a wide audience so quickly. Readers in China, Russia, Germany, Romania? Forget about it! I would be lucky to get my next door neighbor interested.

Today everything is in place for the indie authors of the world to succeed. Once you have your story the way you want it, complete and intact, you can follow in the footsteps of successful writers. Cookie-cutter. Only the creative process remains enigmatic. To me, the creative process must trump everything else. Which means I need to find the ideal conditions (for me) to write. A very personal process. It starts with noticing how I interact with my environment.

Now I have written in a boarding house full of noise, on a laptop so beat up I had to tie the screen back with zipties and twists, with a keyboard whose keys I had to superglue back on. I have written in a room with an (ex) boyfriend whose paranoia and jealousy could turn on me in a second. I have written despite real and imagined voices on the other sides of walls. I have written under threat of being momentarily evicted. I have written with the sun in my face and heavy metal in my ears, and no money in my pocket. I have written in a bar, in a car, in the cloud of someone’s cigar.

I came to realize how external conditions never defeated me. My problem was really internal! My moods are like weather patterns in the Jetstream. Unpredictable. So I developed my mood manufacturing industry. I thought I could figure out ways and means to boil my moods down into a mind-state conducive to writing the next bestseller.

I will spare you the details, except to say that this business failed! I struggled and struggled, trying to control my mind. A real turkey shoot! Many suns set without my having pulled the screen up, at all. Today, I am back to the basics. Focusing on the practice of writing. Get to writing, one word at a time.

What I realized in the end, was I gotta let go. Have some faith in the process. Stop trying to control things and manufacture the perfect mood. I gotta surrender. Trust. I have to sit myself down, every day, and do it. I have to be kind and encouraging to myself. I have to remember why I write, and the rewards of the creative life. The self-insight. Getting in touch with my feelings. Expressing myself deeply. Healing.

In the end, I write for my life.

VLOG - (something different)

I have been experimenting with VLOG (video blog)
because it's spontaneous and it's the real ME versus
the typical pre-composed works of fiction and poetry
which come your way. Although you can find all my
videos (music, spoken word, and vlog) on my youtube
channel, occasionally i like to post a video here where
I have a much larger following. If you like it and want
more, be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel.
Thanks and especially to those who have been so
encouraging to me in the different ways I try and express
myself! -K

Journal. mood manufacturing

Notes from the mood manufacturing plant...

It is Friday here at the mood manufacturing plant, and all whistles are singing your praises in an emotive appeal. The ventilators are venting all moods colored red. The transducers moving them straight from the head. Come see our blue room for a good cry. An assembly line of grief counselors reconstructing the tears. We fill up the clouds and send them up and away. To irrigate your dried out and rational demeanor. If we mix the reds and the blues, for a slightly larger sum, we can brew up a real nasty storm - and then some. Manufacture some drama, it  certainly won't be the norm. What would you like? Some celebrated success? A moulten euphoria? Your pride, undressed? A smoking hot aura? See here! We canned vulnerability in brine. The saline of premium salts off the vine. Wholesale we offer three episodic moments to the penny. All those memories could be refreshed, like old songs in your ears. It costs almost nothing, come now,  reduce yourself to tears.

Journal. Something about writing.

I think I am a mood perfectionist, when it comes to writing. Yes, I am learning to just sit down and write and not worry about setting the mood just so. I have to if I wanna be prolific, if I hope to publish many books. The process is in motion. It starts with noticing how I interact with my environment.

Now I have written in the blood-soaked rooms of a boarding house full of junkies, on a laptop so beat up I had to tie the screen back with zipties and twists, with a keyboard whose keys I had to superglue back on. With a boyfriend and junkie whose paranoia could turn on me in a second. With a habit of my own, boy and girl, serious enough it would undoubtedly kill me if it entered my bloodstream now. Clean as I finally am. Now I have written despite real and imagined voices on the other side of the walls. Now I have written under threat of being momentarily evicted. Now I have written with the sun in my face and heavy metal in my ears. Now I have written in a bar. In a car, in the cloud of someone's cigar. Now I have written for my life. Now I have written to death. I have written out the curses from under my goddamn breath.

But being sunshiney clean, I have to deal with myself and my moods. I can no longer control them, manipulate them, force them into submission. But the cool thing about living without all those old toxins pulsing through my blood, yes, the cool thing about it is there is no artifice. No manufactured moods.

The uncool thing is, I have to be a badass bitch with myself and keep myself doing something creative and not just talking about doing something. Use it or lose it. The mood perfectionism sometimes arrests me. I have my cup of coffee and my attitude to match. I have the light just write, coming through fabric cross the window. I have my Pandora One. Or silence. Ceiling fan on low. Doors locked. Phone muted. I sit down behind my desk, in a corner of my room. I open the chromebook and take a deep breath.

Then, well, it's a bit of a turkey shoot with my mind. I either get to writing, one word at a time. Or the tornado of my mood dislodges me from my setup, for any one of a million possible reasons, and I fight and fight and forget to write. I gotta let go, to go on.

PURIFIED

i wanna be someone. of circumstance. 

i wanna be me. 

a form. with a formula. 

neither for nor against the world.

i am spinning retrograde. with mercury. 

we are having a blast at the planetary dance. 

running interference on iPhones.

i wanna be alone. 

having to catch squirrels and dig roots to survive.

i wanna ton of friends. none of whom i ever met. 

all who might love me. on demand.

i wanna dream. come true. 

a hole. a head. some space. to tread. 

my mood. blood red.

i wanna be told. what to do. 

my mood. sad blue. 

reflective of you.

a lake. a storm. 

thawing an ice age. 

melting my formula. 

my life. into a basin.

when the children come home 

from the forest where they play, 

they may wash their dirty hands in me 

and

both of us…

purified

mental -iii

So i was rolling with this sweet as saccharine pretty young latin thang, on an real affective high, joining in the bipolar unilateral uncompromised brilliance of the new day, treading on an adidas insole grip, feeling like a princess for a change when suddenly she stopped and turned me around to look at this ugly street scene. She said something about getting a french roast at one of those less than average corporate coffee outfits, maybe Seattle's Best or Starfux or something. I really cannot pay attention on purpose.

Hey hey hey hey now, I said, making mad circles with the palms of my hands facing her, like I was painting a Starry Night. What did you say? 

She told me again with great controlled precision, almost irritable-like. Were she not so saccharine sticky sweet like with her unfrosted platinum blonde wig all situated like real hair on her dome, I would have been audi 5000 on the bitch. I gave her my full attention, and my pressure cooker started heating up a bit. Not a good feelingstate for my mental. I tried to channel it out of my shoulders with a roll and a couple of shrugs. But it got locked up inbetween the blades and started bouncing around in there, my chi, like a video game gone beserk. Damn. I wanted to slap the bitch already but it was just a thought.

So we went and she got her gingerbread shot or whatever, and I sat impatiently on a cold dry laminated redwood waiting. I always wondered how I got into this kinda mess. Some double-blind study was I. Blinded first by her beauty, then by my own future idyllic daydream of what life could be in the presence of said beauty. Never once did my mental suggest sitting on a plank in central yuppie, california, while holier-than-thou got a gingerbread.

Reality crept up on me and backhanded my chi out of tilt!