egolessness

had to die a hundred times

all within a single day

for what i thought had happened to me

was nothing 

was okay

#katyamills

dec.ade

 ten years before

on the brink of madness

they slept rarely and up all night

emotions swallowed them 

there was nowhere in the world

they knew to be safe 

ten years on

they would never forget

the terror of the past

and each and every new sunrise 

they was inside and out

radiant

#katyamills

Journal # 12.17.15

I wanna hold on to that little bit of joy that comes over me like a mist on a foggy morning, I am wet with it, a taste of clarity of wholeness as if all my past is right here with me and I could take you through my eyes to any given moment, yes, come after a really good night's sleep so rare, or maybe if I run a few miles really hard and fast as I can, I can get that special feeling like all is well, the future has no stake in it, when in the empire the interest rates begin climbing, from the base of Denali after stasis, after a decade of descent... what does it matter for my heart also ascends up Mount St. Elias and into my head for a second, tethered to a wild pack of neurotransmitters in the Cortex ravine by well placed stakes and caribeners, awaiting the next big storm will send me in a rush flying to another death, my adrenaline  drizzled over the top of Mount Foraker only to get hit by the sun a couple days later and reborn, over Endocrine valley where the estrogen in me highlights the tips in the alpine meadow, under a cobalt blue, and my spirit summits Mount Blackburn for to see all the way to Canada and to you, our memories collide for past lives, within a life, covering all 16,237 feet of Mount Sanford, yes, and I want to cry then but my joy prevents me, and you gotta believe I wanna hold on to this feeling, I wanna stay here cause I like to believe it was a lot of work to get here to where the vision rewards me, atop Mount Fairweather I can see you and me so clearly and maybe not picturesque but we know where we stand. Sure maybe I don't know you anymore and can honestly ask you who the hell are you anymore? even if it hurts I just have to ask. Because beyond all the wonder I felt in meeting you in this world in this life, well, we are past that now, aren't we? I sure as hell wish you were here with me again, to feel it too... the life of love survives beyond the love affair and into a stirring night alone into a dawn on the side of any mountain carry me away.

Journal # 03.03.15

Life tends to surprise with its falling apart. The clothes I was dressed in, down the lengths of my arms to the cuffs, down my legs to the ankles, holding tight to my heart now  fall off me. I am exposed again. A wise man once told me the 'oil' of life is relationship. My oil got heated and then burned, turned black again. + + +  I wouldn't have believed you if you told me how difficult it is to make and keep true friends. I think I will never stop trying. But I cannot hold our friendship over your head. There is no leverage. Only family has any leverage, in the end. Only blood. I am gonna do whatever I want, and you will do the same. + + + The cost of the freedom looks like the many paths of gunpowder shot out of a canister, touched to the flame for a great detonation. Lifestyle is explosive. When you realize you have a chance and you go for it, you're a bat out of hell. Relocations. Rearrangements. Rebirths. Repatterning. By the end of your course across the sky, you may find your oil is burned. + + + I still have my freedom and I am happy this way. But to drift the way I have, East to West over time, across the States, has had a great cost. I have suffered losses of fragments of myself burned and fallen off, a real moulting of snakeskin or plumage or traits of personality. + + + Those bygone lovers and friends, every one of them so critical in my becoming who I am, are mostly memories, and the loss of them, with or without a proper adieu, hurt so bad as the oil, gone black, and paper trails of self like colored confetti tumbling in the wake of us, flipping over and over and spreading out with the sun rays across the infinite sea, logged by water at the surface... then falling, falling deep down into the dark and maybe never to be retrieved. 

for once

for once
i was there!
in the middle
of my life

see before
i was brewed
i was pressed
after roasting
undressed

dirty rice
nothing nice
tousled hair
tousled life

i did not care
then. cause to care
would have flung me
headlong!

to death
by feelings

along the tattered road
of life i trudged alone
banking on fast food
and handouts

being in the mud is
not the end my
friend

the earth has
risen to ice cream creations
pounded out amorphous on the block

all the children's
glittering eyes
upon us now!

there may be
magic

what was solid
frozen in fear?
finds its way sometimes
burgeoning!
up to the air!

no need to fly
just sit on the tarmac
the blue carpet of sky
and cry

give up
like clouds
perceptibly slow

then begin to sparkle with
 all the other
shiny things
been disposed

mashed and rounded out
in the pavement

a city
bereavement
turned to glistening

reflections
all of us!
of the sun

i just wanna
get by i once
 said and
now i am here
at the center
of my life

self-helpless was i

I saw you before you were born. The interview went well. You were optimistic towards the opportunity ahead. Although all the suffering baked into this cake was unappealing, wholeness of being beckoned.
Despite western ways to be forced on an eastern soul, despite aggravated assault in the capitalist moshpit, despite countless insipid efforts towards persona redux, and begging martyrs of grave emotional toxicity, you would not resist the call.

You bravely went under the spell of your god, and i watched on edge as they cleared your cache and robbed your memory bank, ritual washing you. Then they dressed you in snow white linens as your affect went flat. Baby powder, and the shaving of head. You will do well in America, they told you. You looked at them blank. Confused, but so willing. 

Tears suddenly welled up my eyes and placed you safely inside one saltwater drop. After you left me, my love, I carefully swept up your off-color locks. With my hands. Tearful, I took up the salt and pepper remnants of my one true love of this life. On my knees now. Sweeping.

Weeping. I held you soft in my hands there, and ritually cursed the insipid god who i believed at that moment, responsible for this.

Our unchained tragedy.
My uprooted life.
Unmoored heart.
Broken.
Again.

let me warm your heart some

© Katya Mills

i died on a bus in a ditch on a mountain
my blood compelled to the ground
in a fountain

i came back
determined

i died when an eagle
plucked me up
in Alaska
and fed me to
children

i came back
defeated

i lived in a cave with a guardian
dragon. passing time
in liquid mineral

i died when a child fell asleep
in your arms. my fairy tale
ending

shut into darkness
placed back between bookends

i came back full of
vengeance

and bled out the nostrils
and eyes. a virus

how else could i live?
you tell me survival
i do what i
must

i know
i'm a nameless
burning atrocity
i know
how i die
on your lips
every day

i come back haunted
undaunted

i died with the death
of the quarantined
child

i died on the breath
of some irrigated
lung

i won't live again!
i swore on your life
we died in a car crash
you and your wife


now crystalline amber poison condensate
i drip from the radiator steam
in the fluttering light
of a dream

awaiting the bloodlines of unknown
future origin. particulate
matter

16th near J. photo by K

i splatter
my art on these walls
like its nothing

as darkest intention
disingenious
crawls
down the
spine like a vine

i died in the heart of a freshly made
widow. fomenting
my next evolution

i come back a cancer
the kind we all live with

i come back a sonic dionysian
boom
watch as i soak up the carpet
your room

then carefully will my way back
into your pores
cut down to half
the half daughters of
whores

taking your fancy
picking your pocket
Sid Vicious and Nancy

i came back the tormented life
i was given. the rain and
the cattle

driven and
driven

i died on a hill. overlooking a pasture
monet with his paintbrush
impressions to capture

i died on a gurgling mute
strangulation
my death living on
sycophant
indignation

i died with no purpose
no heart
and no soul

so that you could live
on just so you
know