no.20

like a secret 

in the nucleus 

of the yolk

of the eye

we defy analytics

science

religion

sharpened by 

the guarantee of 

annihilation

unwilling 

to be dulled

by screens

technology or

tradition

#katyamills

potion

dyscolored
in the foamy froth
so recently drained
boiled off

the scientists stand
fatigued
admiring

language lost
in a crowd of
the avowed

two clicks and a book

I do not write mysteries. Writing is the mystery and a book, a puzzle piece, a small part of being solved. I am wondering if I have what I need to do what I wish to now do? The magic number, I make it fourteen. Two weeks, to get back to you. To immerse myself in the colorful cove of creative process, and finish what I started a little over a year ago. There is a battle on our screens, online, for our eyes, our attention, our desires. When we are tired, they win. I go to do something creative and if I make one mistake, chasing down an email or a tweet - any packet of information - I may be sucked to the bottom of a sloping hill of mud, two clicks away, marching my way up and back to reclaim my sacred land... but always two clicks away. I wonder if I have what it takes to stand my ground? I have all my rations, all my munitions, and all my comrades around me. I have my health and my family, and my faith. I can easily recall when the world came over me, a long shadow before a setting sun. I plodded my way through the deepest night. Lost, I surrendered; and they had mercy on me. I don't know how or why. I was a pitiful starved creature, lunatic raving and howling, chained to an iron post on a cracked island of asphalt. I was the one who broke dumb from the pack. Now they saw I was no threat and marched me through a wasted land of drought. I focused on the stars of windless night until I was one, too, the smallest and farthest away. And brighter grew. I stretched for the sun out of a cold, dark place only I inhabited. Not at first, but soon I was touched. I found something there I cannot describe. In the poverty of speech one may call it 'god' - if only to relate. The thing which keeps me bright. This thing which can keep me up all night. That which helps me shine through darkness. Immerses me in sacred process, helps me hold my ground. In fourteen days or not, two clicks away and shot, from the bottoms ever climbing... I wonder will I find my way, and back to you? Otherwise, this book may live a lonely life in my heart.

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great book. Very sad that Stieg Larsson did not survive to see the success of his Millenium series. Apparently he had a heart attack after climbing 7 flights of stairs when the lift was broken down at his office. This was not long after he had submitted his manuscripts to his publisher. Conspiracy? Bad luck? It feels natural to wanna question everything after reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is a story about a missing girl and a magazine editor hired by a wealthy industrialist to look into her disappearance. Digging into the family crates will be complicated and dangerous. He hires the title character, the girl, to help him hack computers and keep him loving company on an island where he is housed to do his research in the 'back and beyond' of rural Sweden. Generations of the family he is hired to investigate live there with their long established animosities, in-fighting and secrets. Meanwhile our stud journalists beds almost every woman he encounters (the only part I thought to be slightly less believable and a little annoying) with ease. The title character has her own secrets and a painful personal history, but she is quite wonderful and lovable in her antisocial and eccentric ways; at one point in the narrative he suggests she is a high functioning autistic (aka Aspergers). Her story intertwines with the main narrative, and recaptured my attention whenever the story became a bit dull (which was rare) or oversaturated with the intricacies of high finance (it helps if you have an understanding of business when reading this story, but it's not necessary). The writing is clear and easy reading for the most part. I found there was great action, a compelling plot and characters. Big business is mostly the enemy, in irresponsible hands. I was rooting for the journalist and the hacker the whole time, particularly the girl. Fascinating character. I liked this book enough to have it while I sat in the dentist chair getting my teeth drilled. I was given a few minutes between sessions while waiting for the novocaine to kick in, to read the final 80 pages. One last thing: the author apparently witnessed a gang-rape of a young girl by some other kids when he was a boy, and, according to his girlfriend (who has been fighting his estranged family for years for the rights to his literary empire) this colored his worldview because he always regretted not intervening. She says he was a feminist. This would explain the statistics he wrote below the chapter titles which relate to sexual crimes against women in his homeland. And be prepared to experience graphic representations of such violence within the text. Great book! I may very well go on to the next, but I would also be content to stop here, because the book stands well on its own. Great ending!

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Review: I Heard That Song Before

I Heard That Song Before by Mary Higgins Clark
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I need to start by saying I have been reading MH Clark's books since I was a teenager way back in the eighties, when computers were the size of small houses, Ronald Reagan was president, electric typewriters were fashionable, and photographs had to be developed to be seen (unless you had a slide projecter or viewfinder...uhh... S.O.S... what the hell is she talking about)? Anyway, libraries were still libraries and books were still books, then, and I read a lot of them in my alligator tee shirts drinking grape koolaid with a Canadian penny zippered inside the pocket on my sneakers. And all of her books I read were gripping, suspenseful, amazing!

Then I found this one a quarter century later, part of a Reader's Digest collection of four, while watching my clothes spin in the dryer at the laundromat down the street. They have books lined up on a ledge which runs along the washers, and it's give-a-book, take-a-book. So I took it and devoured it in a few days. Sadly the plot and characters and everything felt very rushed, almost like it was an outline for a much larger and longer work she didn't have time to write.

The setup was interesting, all the players moving in and around an old mansion which had been taken apart stone by stone and transported to New Jersey from Wales and re-assembled on 50 acres just a few miles from Manhattan. And the haunting memory of someone who disappeared there. Someone who died there. And someone else who disappeared. Intriguing! Old money, New York City. Ambassadors, landscape artists, drunks, addicts, art thieves, and shady personal attendants fill the pages.

Sadly the book did not live up to its potential.
Ironic it was a stone's throw from my spin cycle.

I know MH Clark has so much talent and I cannot end there, on a sour note, after having picked her up again. I decided I am gonna go back to her first bestseller she wrote in 1975 and read that one. I probably read it already, back when a trash compactor was your foot inside the bag, when Coleco and Atari were the gamer's games, but I want that old feeling back, when I was gripped by suspense and she had me, amazed.



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agnostic

I am agnostic because though I believe in gods, all is a mystery and I remain questioning. I don't care what you could unearth somewhere in the mid-East. I don't care whose item of clothing or imprint you wave like a flag in front of my face. I don't care how high your temple rises. I don't care how far back your scrolls recount. I don't care how long your flowing robes, nor who testifies upon your word. No one has witnessed the coming of faith into my heart. No one was there in my time of dying,  except god. And my god wears no colors of any world religion, my god is not gang-affiliated. I am agnostic for I am regaled in the mysteries of creation.

a voice from the locked away place never to be accessed again. collected like ink into my pen

 i am now like a universe, elliptical and spinning, knocking over furniture, ending and beginning, smoking and sinning... i died to become only more who i am, i really died so i could be somebody, like a reduction of a simmer off a pan, buried with a spade, they threw flowers down upon me, above me where i layed, they left flowers on my stone, teardrops by my grave... and i still am, if only they knew i am alive now like a universe, elliptical and spinning, knocking over tombstones, ending and beginning, smoking and sinning... here comes the dawn, all i ever was to you is gone, and it's sad in different ways, we are going through the phases manifold, younger now i'm old and doing what i'm told and it's tiresome getting weary i will have to move along, sing another song, try to hit the high note and hold it very long... my sadness is unlike yours but it's sorrow just the same, and i love who i am and that will never change, i love the hell outta you, out of the cocoon so we can look up to the moon and see things clearly once again, when we were best friends... dear god the memory, if i linger it will kill me, kill me where i stand, on a high rise, rising, in Shanghai or Hong Kong or Dubai or Chicago or Mumbai or LA or NYC or Vancouver or Helsinki or Madrid or Firenze or Berlin or Amsterdam or London or Hamburg or Paris or Brussels or Vienna or Rome or Athens or Moscow or Prague or Warsaw or Dublin or Saigon or Toronto or Monte Carlo or Santiago or Copenhagen or Port au Prince.

may we never suffer the way we suffered then

all the experience has collected like ink into my pen, i can work it out on the pages, you and me, my friend, while the pot of oats now boils over, cascading down the sides, puts the fire out, and now in darkness hides. then we give it to someone who needs it. i hope you feel the same. fumbling with the keys to unlock the deepest mystery... never again. abstract and untouchable. that's okay. you are a little more like me. in fact i know you are, because of what we went through you are always with me, i am more like you, thank you for the lonely nights, gone! searching for something and finding something else. and loving that, too. now we know what we needed was not what we thought, not what we wanted! we may not have a key. let's leave it there, locked away forever. i think so. i think so... i am now like a universe, elliptical and spinning, knocking over furniture, ending and beginning, smoking and sinning. i think so.

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