Royal #9.14.1998

Not trying to be anything other than you was beautiful the same way silence was. When I dropped the fear of precursory judgments it was easier dealing with situations in general: strangers and transactions, getting measured up to standards. I was in my mid-twenties and on my own in the world when i figured this out after so many fails. They saw right through you out there, the ones who were surviving out there by staying alert. They tested me less once I made it. Coming off capable if not fearless, not so awkward and green. You can feel it when you have entered this dragon. You are the city in its many expressions and the streets are within you. My eyes turned asphalt and my body to clay under a soft rush hour rain.

by #katyamills

memory of a friend who did not make it out

we were living out of motel rooms back then and only a couple of people we could trust. pumping air into bike tires and patching them up, so for some freedom out on the streets. you had to be able to get out of a tight spot fast. someone was always having a breakdown or a meltdown except for the lifers who kept calm and had an eye for any advantageous situation. swoop down like a buzzard and pick apart the meat and leave the bones to sink into the earth. socioeconomics pushed a nasty current downtown and hung a red tide. they marked up for resale whatever they could not themselves consume. the players threw a party to look unselfish. many swam off into eddies and lost touch with reality for days, then, when it hit, let's hope you could hit the ground running to make up for all that lost time. kids were kids and lost time lost money for every adult who had no fixed income or paycheck. outside of the clear specifications of sanctioned work or disability in a capitalist society, lay the gray zone. lots of marginalized people in the mix. try to discover what you had of value then stir up some demand. could be a skill. could be a quality you carried yourself. you had to get creative and put yourself out there. try not to resort to the least common denominator. plenty of good boy and good girl gone bad scenarios. some who could not recover from loss or trauma. god! i'm so fortunate i got out of there. i wish you had, too.

another loss - v

the sun was edging into view and we were beginning to wake up to the reality of the world and our meagre places in it, the year twenty ten and family nowhere to be found, nobody's fault but yours, nobody's fault but mine. i was on the move again and it was your last night staying there, too. i began helping you pick up your place, between runs i made to Magnolia with my own belongings. check out time was noon and the landlords were no nonsense; there was a security detail they would call to kick people out. you see, something you understood about me and i related back to you was, on any given day, having no place to call home. all we had was our friends and our music and our journals, back then, and maybe a storage unit with our name to it. and out into a new day in the city, intense and unpredictable, helping one another a little bit when there's no one else you can trust, hoping to survive...

m x memory -vii

The leaders of the silent majority were, in this case, unrecognized; the best intel found them having just departed around the time you wondered aloud where they were. This brought tears to the loyalists eyes, although it may have been the preponderance of onions. You knew they had been there by the discarded skins rustling around your feet... everyone deserves a moment with those who wrote the principles they chose to live by - 4 seconds of fame - such an act of devotion impels unity and the kinda nonlocal intimacy comes of hearts and minds in alignment.

K after a 20-mile race!

Yet the antagonists are always gathering like clouds and forcing the separations - an end to to the aforementioned sunshine - and the fading vibrations become absorbed in rugs beaten over handrails in city streets and back alleyways. Rugs are beaten publicly, of course, as they are well known to be taken out upon, in these lands.

Journal # 06.17.16

i may not be a geometry star, but i know how to leave the seven ball behind the eight and take your money on the nine, i might have lost our debate, but i can talk you out of getting behind the wheel, drowned in imperial pints as we are, together at last side by side in some pub, living outta memory, under overcast skies, looking in your eyes. i may not vote this time around, but that don't mean i don't know my rights, kid, in no swing state and we are colored blue and shaped like an ass, too. and i vote for you. i have been broken-hearted a hundred times over, but we will get her rolling again just takes a little tender love and care, ima mechanic of love, wavin' white towel flags to your window, you see, look up in your eyes, those wild and overcast skies, you stare down at me all wonderin' am i dangerous? will you fall for me again, will i charm you somehow from the outside in, and a bottle of gin, i might not hold a steady job, but see me beside you sunrise to sunset, holdin on to us yet, down calm like the charm, any unfortunate scenario, say, four or five alarm, seven ball behind the eight, and hopeful to disarm all that old unchallenged hate got you heavy, deep in the past where it's buried, someone who hurt you, and so you need help, you need love, you need someone you can trust. will i be the fortunate one? can i be careful and gentle with you? acknowledge every tear fallin off your face, pushed out on to the streets hand in hand for all tomorrows, or maybe just right now. dangerous now, come here. dangerous now, me and you and there's no other way.

chloe the pthalo cyanine blue

This would be her signature, chloe, a touch of pthalo cyanine blue. i saw a photograph of me and you. it made me sad. the tears i cried were turpentine they washed the memory from my mind. skated gainst a one way street, 5am, in the shirt you gave me. i was sad about me and you - oh - the trouble we got into! ridin the back of a dubstep beat, it's too small for me now looking up; balanced on the tracks of a Canada rail, cyanine blue (and she) come by air mail. can we wash it one more time? liquid dreams and turpentine, wash it all away and leave her empty, pthalo blue, deeper than the sky and the chalk on the cue. side pocket holdin the chain you left me, and change. can i stop by an give you a kiss? for the flower you shown its color in the sun. pthalo cyanine blue, the signature touch, cause you loved me and i miss you so much.

solar storm strike

Soon it will be as though I never existed. I did the dishes and swept the floors and vacuumed the carpets and dusted the shelves and made the bed and paid the bills and put out the trash and wiped the counters and bleached the tub and sink and soon it will be as though I never was here. Inside the pillow the down is on the rebound, for I have left for work. The kittens are chasing shadows, inattentive to the faraway sound of classical music in the faraway light from the closet. A guitar neck edges up from a dark corner. Silent. The glass is cooling off fingerprints. Spiders are waiting for someone to open the door, will someone ever come open the door? Our houses and possessions, what will they do without us? How will the things inside continue to live? Someone will come. And then the gods of destitution, financial and economic futility. I find myself back in that different life, like a dream now - was it real - helpless and hustling ...  mixed in with the street level decay, perhaps unappealing to the eye, a vibrant if desperate life demanding all of one's innate qualities be brought to forefront without notice! The very same things gone dormant for hours upon hours behind locked doors at home, behind books, behind screens, behind bars. Comfort was comfortable for a moment before it murdered you in a stifling blanket party. I urge myself out of bed, off the couch, urgently I urge away from the television, the movie, the dinner table, the concert, the opportunities to hide and plant myself and vegetate. The clinging vine of pharmaceutical quality anything, uncut mental and emotional, physical and psychic vacation, the headphones, the lottery, eye candy, ear candy, the hailstones get bigger and pummel us down and pound us into the ground, fragments of brain lying in shards of glass and ice. The trees weep for us. I urge myself away, back into the self-generating energies, and always what I left behind me comes back again like a solar storm strike. My glasses have been shattered. I grope across the keyboard how to say it. My heart is frozen in my chest, and I nudge it toward a thaw, urgent for a season, decidedly optimistic in the atheistic static. All the gods slap my face with all their many hands, and I wake up out of blue and into time to thank you. I make myself a solar-powered sail, a foil, a blackness to absorb, a whiteness to reflect, I reshape my fucking attitude into a redemptive puffy cloud heaving water, then I rise above it all floating, singing the screams, vomiting terror, rubbing confusion into my eyes, then looking blind into space. Thank you. I hate you life full of suffering. I love you life come and go. I will not forget or regret you made the most of me. Use me. Abuse me. Love me like you do. For I am you.

eyes

my eyes were once innocent
now they are hard 
full of what they saw
on these city streets

my eyes were once innocent
then full of confusion

my eyes were confused
angry and young
and scared

my eyes
they were scared
now they are hard
like these city streets

my eyes
they are hard
but they soften
my eyes

my eyes
  they soften
    around truth

concrete black and blue

concrete black
concrete blue
i scraped my knee
lost my shoe

while skate
boarding streets
to find you

now i'm scanning
the sidewalk
for glass

concrete blue
concrete black
my sister
she got
my back

young man
on a stoop
smoking rolly
in the loop
saw my blood
drawn down
to the ankle

he looked at me
laughed
and inhaled

concrete black
concrete blue
i am lost
what to do?
out here in our red
white and
blue

blasted
between high rises
by fragrant deli
monoxide winds and
the sins of
a glowering
sun

her colors
so real
the city
her sounds
wraps me
warm in
her tresses and
locks

i'm braided and tied
at the end

concrete black
concrete blue
by god
my angels
and you

may i find
my way
concrete black
through the streets
and back

the pained eyes
behind a shake
and fries
keep me honest
sincere
concrete blue
made true

and you
and by you
my life is full
life is filled
replete with my fate
accompli

lost i was
found
gave my blood
to the ground
looked up
came around to
alive

in this urban
chiaroscuro
delight

exhaling her sounds
inhaling the heat
shorn of my shoes

concrete black
concrete blue
descended
into
the mouth
of the subway
on the balls of
my feet

back to you