march marches on

the rain

the wind

the love you

rescind

anaerobic ponds

once clouds 

reflect 

and march 

marches on

without 

you

#katyamills

cyclone

on a windy night 

in Sacramento

a massive tree fell and took down the power lines

several blocks are out

now we light the candles and listen

to our heartbeats and the storm

and the rain

#katyamills

like colors we run

we dodged the skin of palms

morning after the storm we

never made it to work. like

strays in the park like 

colors like dreams 

they cannot hold us 

we run free     #katyamills

borderline

borderline felt fenced in again and jumped from side to side. she took the bridge to nowhere and climaxed beyond 100 in her ride. finally she could breathe. the tears got blown off the side into gray sky and fell to darker waters. the contrast was kindness to her eyes. guns was on the radio. a kiss from axl rose to make it better. she found a wild flower on the river bank and wove it into locks. kicked some rocks and walked back to her car. the radiator fan still blowing out the heat. when the rains began to hit the pavement, well, she liked to believe she started all that storm.

ULTRA

I have a race on saturday. Let's call it what it really is, a crawl! Up in Auburn at the Way Too Cool 50k trail run, forecast now shows a giant storm expected to land tomorrow and turning the trail into a mess of mud, rain, wind, and snow!

Yesterday when I saw, I felt terrified! I called and whimpered about it to several friends and my family. Today? I am thrilled! 

polyester cotton and the modern rain

the rains came and i began sleepin really sleepin...

when i awoke it was not over, all the walls and windows gone drenched, and warm my skin contoured by polyester cottons, i pulled the useless glass from my eyes and looked around me...

                                              we were all alike

k. summer'17

trespass. in a storm

There was a storm last night. The wind and rain assaulted the trees and many limbs were lost. A palm frond fell on my head as I was leaving my apartment and I forgot my name and yours. I broke into a car with keys I found in my pocket, to find shelter from falling stars. They tend to be much bigger and more dangerous in person. I noticed a warm light stretching out from an apartment in an adjacent building, so I opened the gate and entered the yard and walked cautiously up the stairs, which were littered with stardust, the skin of trees and wet leaves. I knocked on the open door and called into the light. Nobody came. That's when I felt the tickle on my neck and realized my head was bleeding. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone inside. How strange and fortunate to find pictures of myself and my family on a desk and table; I no longer felt so bad about my trespass! Clearly this stalker of me had great taste in art and food and music, I thought, as I snacked on their Blue Diamond sea-salted almonds and sweet peanut-butter coated granola bars while listening to the Jimi Hendrix Experience in stereo on vinyl. They even had my favorite hot sauce and moonrocks, and brown eggs, too. Then some baby tigers approached me and looked to me like I was their leader. I offered them coleslaw but they weren't interested - not until I drew a puddle of sweet cream across a saucer for them.

Nobody ever came home, so I made the place mine with very little rearranging necessary. I even answered the phones with a catchy name I made up which was well-received, and all of the magical passwords which came to mind automatically, opened me into their systems so I could learn exactly who I was supposed to be, in one week time, and all my new clothes fit perfectly. How fortunate I cracked my head open on that singular stormy evening! Otherwise I might still have nothing and be nobody, and that was no way to be. Damn. Now I'm gonna have to consider paying taxes.

Journal # ten four

The theatre was replaced by a store, on the street dead-ended at an r.v. park and a crown jewel, on calendar day ten and four. the grasses there were brown as the ground of an aftermath island by a category storm, planks of wood in a dance as they logged the water and dove by drift and distances great, colored settling on ocean floors for schools of fish. we painted on better days that shook a palm tree head of gloom. and so you stood a-looking mournfully out to the deserted street by the window of my room. the dust was swept up and circulated off of the street in the midsummer heat, damselflies at the mercy of cats and lizard wind. you turned to me with a look asked for help. i could not but inexplicably mirror your distress, and in a moment was i your mistress.

spark

the rains came

and i began sleeping

really sleeping

when i awoke 

the storm was not over

thankfully

does the storm ever
end and if it did would
we be happier
then

the soul is

a steady

 rain

kids

we were kids we carried book bags we threw rocks at each other for fun we drank milk and ate cookies and laughed crumbs and stamped them out with our kicks with our boots with our sneaks with our heels with our might, we cried and we raged and we kissed -- harmlessly -- and if the winters storms had blustered and the snow had fallen and melted and then frozen overnight well it would break loose when we thundered down on it and you could hear the earth cracking under us and we laughed fearless, convinced we would never ever never ever never ever ever ever, die

painful good

The rains came and washed us all away, and it was painful good. The sheets were in the streets and offline. The beats were pushing out your feet as you walked to work and back, the rhythms had to find their way into the greater sound. The image of what we once were working toward dematerialized again, and it was painful good.

Will you lunge at me all the while and try to fade me to your shade, boy oh boy, can I stand there and stand this. Let's reduce the whole equation to a single interaction and then may I stretch and remark how my bones are brittle and my tendons torn apart and, boy oh boy, let me politely tell you how it feels, so painful good. Can we scream secondary to the silent psychosis ripping down the spinal cord?

Without saying anything, can i stand letting you miss me entirely? In your all caps demeanor. Your bold face. Project jaw. Maybe we have been online too much, can we waterproof the devices and take them in the shower? I wanna exfoliate your facebook. Into another decade. A dimension floated out upon an ocean shelf. Waiting for the tectonic plate shift. Fuck all and painful good.

Should I forgive the foggy weed, too much tar baby tar, sheets of white snow blanketing your septum. You could have showered more and shaved. I see you in the star wars. The acid razed the ego. I took the kids by their little hands, the orphans hung out their shingles in a palm. Then we all stuffed in there, creaking chairs in the dark, buttered popcorn and wrinkling plastic chipped off the corners by a fingernail, straws drawn like bows across the plastic. Waiting for what.

Make them hum again. Some easy screen in some hood, and painful good. Predictable lazy guesswork again and again and again.  Firestorm; the white light is infected. I went to suck the foam off my latte and got puss. I had to retreat to google plus. They might love me there, I thought. They would love you, too. So little did we know. The painful good in all of it, all.

Journal # 05.02.15

 Some old paradigm element had us skimming across the Keys all the way to Key West. It was fantasy. You just don't do that. The islands are long and a long ways apart. They may be connected by bridge and culture and climate, yet each is an entity unto itself. If you stand next to someone in line for bread and water, are you family? The journey would be long from one to another. Harleys trailing exhaust for miles, coughing in clear cracks over the aqua blue magnitude. The fantasy might find redemption in a storm. Red sky in morning. The air shifting and accelerating until few birds could fly. Old nests would be blown out like paper. By afternoon, people stop and stare at the amazement of clouds. Hold onto your bloody mary. American flags begin to whip at the whitewash on the poles. The sky turns many colors with the sun reduced to a narrow band of grey-white above horizon. The clouds would compete with the sea. Pull your outdoor furniture inside. Find your pets. Businesses taped the glass. Lizards darted into porous ground. An ocean above and below. The fantasy lived in the storm. The fishermen took in the catch. The boats being secured all evening long, then the rains came. Only then could our splayed Keys reach and touch one another, falling together on the ring as the winds picked up to shore. All became monotone and inaudible. The sky, the sea. The earth. The mind. And from there we might finally, after too many cocktails and smoke and dissension, come together and unlock all the truth. A moment of clarity. In the morning, it was gone. It was fantasy.

Journal # 04.08.15

I was thinking about a friend, today, when thunder gave us a taste of the sky. Frozen water burst upon impact. The fragments bouncing around my feet on the porch. I stood at the threshold. Lightning gave me a sense of the sky. Torrents of rain. God was it sacred! I was thinking about a lost friend of mine. The storm soon passed overhead, and I lay myself down and cried. Softly to sleep with my little black and gold tigers sprawled out on the blanket around me. How come we lose our way with one another? I was not careful was I?

                                                  Look what damage was done. The clouds made magnificent drawn across the sky. The depth. You and me - we sounded so good once! Now we are haunted like a train whistle you hear far away, and you get excited thinking it's coming... but really is passing away.

Oh how we become lost to one another, when we are not careful with each other. I can see us all across the years. I cannot touch you or bring us close. The space between us - vast as the rolling thunder. The aperture getting smaller. The portal closing in. The emotional upheaval still swirling somewhere like a phantom. The hail as hard as rocks, pelting us now. God it hurts. There is nowhere to hide out there. My tears turn blue. Flashes of light spaced further apart in a darkened day. The streets are empty.

                             Would we patch it all together through these flashes of light? Seen and in an instant gone? How does that kinda love survive? Oh look! What damage was done. How we become ghosts, when we are not careful.

K reads 'Snowed In'

An original Vitamin K concoction

excerpt stolen from K by K
exacted with an exacto-knife
pure-filtered and underprocessed
refurbished for mass consumption

K IS SILENT @ WORDPRESS.COM
from 'snowed in and data-mined -iii)'

 


Being snowed in had a magical quality. The sun hit the snow and reflected light to warm the air. The icicles formed in and around the rain gutters as the snow melted off the roof. Some large enough to knock you out. I remember kids trying to lure other kids they didn’t like below these large icicles. Keep them there with some sweet, long-winded filibuster of a story. Wendy Davis style.

I often wished for the larger stormfronts to come over us those winters. I loved the early morning moments when my brother and I hung by the alarm clock radio, listening to the announcements of school cancellations. Waiting. Holding our breath. And the incredible feeling when our school was announced.

A blizzard can be a joyous occasion. You feel protected. Insulated. You don’t really know what’s going on around you, and you don’t care. Neither does anyone else. Sure, after a few days like this, you might get a little stir crazy, like Jack Nicholson‘s character in the Shining. The blizzard of ’78 was one such opportunity. I was too young to remember much, but where I lived the snow banks surged to eight feet high. School and work were all called off with a one-liner over the radio. All recreational events, suspended. Excepting procreation. The zoo was closed. Or just confined to your own home.

Imagine, no contact with the outside world. Power lines down. Incommunicado. You lit candles off gas stoves to get around your house. All was so quiet, inside and out. Introverts threw a party and no one came. Everything stood in stark contrast to the usual. We built fires. Watched the light and shadow play. Rituals were fresh and wonderful, except shoveling snow. Alot of people who had become plants over time in their homes (planted by the television), lost their lives trying to shovel their way out of their homes during blizzards. Heart attack city.

With television disabled, loving, mindful family interaction was again possible. For some. Hateful families got to go back to hating. Stress often took a back seat to more significant feelings. What could you do? Nothing. You were snowed in. You had to feel. You got an opportunity to feel. This could last for days! I must admit that, after a while, I wanted the old thing back.

K reads... 'like thunder' (original non-fiction)

'like thunder'

posted on K IS SILENT

July, 2013

All my world had puffed up like a blowfish around me, then blew a massive hole in the ocean. Like those bastards, BP. I came out like Jonah from the belly of the whale. I had found those goddamn roadflares from my truck. The ones I never had when I needed them, stranded with my hazards on halfway down an exit ramp off the great highway. Well, I took advantage of my luck. The moment the clouds gave way to the sky. I struck a match off the heel of my boot, and lit those mothers. Without hesitation. That’s when the whole thing blew wide open. Pretty close to the time the world was supposed to end, again. The impact left ink trails falling all around you and me. Poisoning my ecosystem and yours, too, for a little while. Until the great ocean diluted and detoxified, and cleaned up my mess. So life could go on again, uninterrupted. I’m sorry. I can tell you I am sorry today and I mean it. I thought about it for a long while. Days upon days, actually. There was hardly nothing to do. I had taken my usefulness out of me. Fell asleep on the couch in the dead heat of the day. My kittens stretched out wishing their fur away. The television was on. The television was off. My hold on reality was tenuous. I lost a cat out there. Just like I lost one a decade earlier. I lost alot more, backsliding and sliding. Everything I tried to communicate seemed to come out all encrypted. The more I plugged in passwords and master passwords, the less safe I felt. Probably no one but my ex-boyfriend really truly wanted me dead. But I guarded what was left of me, with all that I could. The nightmares cascaded, if I fell asleep in the silence. Only the ceiling fan spinning far above us. The Tibetan bell I hung off the light fixture was ringing ever so softly beside me and my broken ankle bracelet hanging off of me. 

When I could breathe again. When I could read again. When I could look you in the eyes again. That’s when I noticed. When I no longer wanted light, but got lit anyway. I picked up the kittens and kissed them many times. Their bodies hung limp from the palms of my hands. They trusted me so well, they could drip off my arms and melt into the air. My heart melted inside me, over this. The trust, I mean. What a fucking gift. I carried them and myself down the hall to the bedroom. Many times, every day. My eyes half burned out from so many moons and full suns. I can feel my age. The surface temperature of my skin seems to have elevated, substantially. My head aches, and my belly grows. The infertility is juxtaposed. My imagination was seen as a dove by a merchant marine long out at sea. Coming home. My spirit is the delta. The heat of the day seems to linger all night there. My kittens cannot stand to drape over me for too long. They want to. But my body, their fur, well, it’s all much too warm. All my world had puffed up, you see, an inflammation of my soul. And this wasn’t gonna let up so easy this time. Not this time. I had done alot of damage, now. I had painted over the woodwork. Restoration was a bitch. All those relationships I chose, over the relationship I most needed. Let me tell you, it is good to live alone. I hope to stretch time out into solitude. With a steady stream of social media from which to drink. With a world outside my windows waiting for me, when I cannot think. I lost alot by losing myself all the time like that. This was okay, to be worn out and all. I could remember the past, I could tell you the truth some day. But the conscious bold type is screaming grade A psychotic. Still fresh. I think it only right to be humble and patient, not slough the old skin any faster than it wants to. Not so much, but maybe a little at a time. Maybe a little like now. I am not afraid, but rather listening to my truth all alone like I should. And it’s telling me things. Important things. Nuances. Sometimes painful like hell, sometimes touching me so deep. I am so sensitive. I hurt alot. I suffer, but not always in silence anymore. I cry alot, but without shedding tears. A lot less drama. The explosion was necessary. A spiritual emergency. The difference now is the break. Allowing things to shift a little. So I can safely think. So the ecosystem can take a little ink. So I can go out and buy my rice and pasta and fry up my corn tortillas in olive oil, while the green beans are roasting, Indonesian Sumatra. My life is a blessing. Any way that it goes. My choices fall in succession, in rows after rows . The holy temple of my spirit, was always with me and protected. This was my saving grace. She almost got ground out with my Newports, under my heels. I often tried to extinguish her. But I have so much to offer, like they say. I could open a fucking restaurant and offer all day. Anyway. The moon, she is waxing, and the darkness fills around her. I can see it, feel it, know it, be it. The substance, the system, the whole damn thing rides on spoke balanced wheels. I roll them twelve miles, as I get to know myself again. I roll those wheels and the flame delivers like magic, between my forefinger and thumb. My sweet kittens, four brown eyes, two on either side, watch in wonder. In wonder.My verse drops my spirit, like thunder. Like thunder.