a thousand one liners

they was not asked around 

folks bein focused on the arts and crafts 

of survival they was not missed 

a thousand one liners later one young gun 

she lit a candle and prayed for them 

with implicit permission by god they

took a holiday from the street 

to tweet

#katyamills

twenty thirteen

when fentanyl hit the spleen
overdose became mainstream you lost 

friends and legends and the sun still rises

the light wakes you under 

your angel hair cabbage you formulate 

a mission you play with memory you

love and live on

and on

and on

and on

#katyamills

zoom 40

in the heart of the pandemic 

within six feet social distance of 

an asymptomatic friend you 

contracted death 

surreptitiously 

faced mortality and

survived

 

you planned a great feast

of endless gratitude

table of forty 4

the holidays

by zoom 

#katyamills

so you cannot agree so what

you wanna share something make your life richer, you feel like the wealthiest one alive, really, and you wanna share it with someone who love you, they say they love you, they don't need to say they love you because they raised you, they gave birth to you, you would not have arisen from the dust without them, no, and now you grown and you wanna tell them what makes your heart beat, and you hope they will listen, and you finally get the courage to write it out in a letter and you send it, and it's okay, it's okay you say to yourself, knowing full well it's like playing the lottery, you ain't never gonna know exactly how it's coming back, could be venom, could be spit, could be vitriol, or something kinder, and this time, this time it happens to come back softer or kinder than before, maybe, and definitely better than silence, pure dead silence, so you are grateful for that at least, and no, they will not abide by your request, no way, but they want you to know they may be happy if you happy, yes, everyone deserves to be happy. you call them the next day just to say hi. there won't be any rehashing what was written. you want them to know it's okay. so you cannot agree. so what.

true two

i reinvented myself in motion yet stillness was my hallmark. i used to stare into the eyes of hurricanes until they closed. now i am underneath them, plotting a course for open ocean. still they settle into land by choice and suicide.

i wonder how i survive the oppositions. chaos wants me for my calm. the depressions look to me for uplift. they both know i have survived them. i have survived my self. know me for family. for i have lived there, too.

angels in portland

I have many angels they come in many forms. One time I was in Portland and they followed me there and saw I was in a weak state, susceptible to influence and likely to walk into danger. I had many an adventure over the course of several days, there, and met hardened criminals who I spoke with plainly. And I exuded an emotional honesty. I was smoking lots of cigarettes. I was in a lot of pain then, having survived a sequence of nightmarish events. I was in between worlds. I did not always realize right away I was in danger, but when I did I had enough time and conviction and skill to maneuver my way out of it. I believe I remained unharmed because of god, intuition, family, and my angels. I have become the kind of person who is more modest than proud, more intuitive than smart, more compassionate than driven, and more conscious of others than I am of myself. And someone whom anyone would be less willing to harm, maybe, more willing to get their needs met by asking me first, knowing I would be inclined to give whatever I can to you, freely.

projection of poor memory

You taught me how to survive. I taught you how to thrive. The tables before were turned, and I experienced a deep despair like the world no longer could care...even someone who feels forgotten will be remembered by someone they may have overlooked. I wonder if the feeling of forgotten is a projection of poor memory? 

super

Super was the moon and animate the trees; the winter winds arose and bled right through my clothes. I was dodging in and out a moment right before your eyes, yet you were tracking down to daydream. Be very kind and stay alert. This is how we may survive.

the telling

Those who survived terrific and terrifying scenes of yesterday, survived simply in some cases today and tomorrow by not telling. Like authority or ego outgrowing itself -- the truth was irrevocably exposed, and one could feel so out of place. Not making sense, all sense falls away...no grammar, no ruler, no rules. no meticulous edit. no beta.need.care.anymore. without any closure you-they-it has and have found recourse to-from...above-below...this. the very end. the beauty in live-to-tell was not in the telling. it was in not telling. or. surviving and not needing to tell. for now, you and all you have been through are known if not cherished.

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...

transcend. journal 14 july

the great force i sometimes seek to embellish or highlight my mundanity, is located in the heart of the stillness of the chaos. somehow every day i manage to pick myself up (and coffee helps) and put my old self together and step out into the responsibility i feel to live a full if not helpful life in the chaos of old earth. i have a little ocd compulsion while driving the midtown streets whereby i check back to a purple inked textbook i rely on professionally, which sits in the center of the backseat catching light beneath the canopy, my only passenger, and bring my eyes back to the curve of the chipped windshield and my path before me, and i will reach an arm back and press the heel of my hand against the glossy finish, too. i don't know why i do this but it grounds me. life is fucked up. we ought to be good to ourselves, be caring.

bastille day 2017

i wanna be helpful to anyone i can, when i am at my best. in the heart of the stillness of the chaos, is located the great spirit i seek to sustain me. somehow i manage every day. i realize more and more there is nothing we cannot overcome now. we were born to be here and handle this. we can transcend any challenge no matter how large, simply by having the guts to face it. show up, confront it, walk through it. we were born to love and be loved.

get used to it

Get used to it....
you may not have a choice

Get used to indifference to your causes. Only a few will care about you, so get down on your knees and show them some deference. Take them to coffee if your knees have bummed out. Get used to relocating, if your bank accounts aren't impenetrable. If you have enough money for food and shelter, you can still survive. Relocate your spirit toward adventure. Nesting is for the birds! Get used to tornadoes or find a stronger vine and hang on for dear life. Some of us like to spin around for dear life! Unless our homes are anchored, man, we gotta keep flapping our wings and be ready. Get used to extremity. A good way to start is in the shower. Turn hot to cold and back to hot. This is good for your chakras. This is good, the shock. Get used to it.

a coverboys covergirls world

when we supposedly die, of the living only the closest to us remember us for very long and some of them keep to themselves, going to work coming home and maybe thinking aloud sometimes in a language the cats and dogs cannot decode, so only a trace of us remain, supposedly, and the witch hazel closes the roads and leaves us separate somewhere beneath the moisturizer beneath the foundation of a cover boy's Covergirl world... only those closest to the ones who remembered us remember someone remembering us, whomever we are, in black and white or monochromatic, sepia seeping slow into the imaginations of someone else's great grandchildren, who wear the looks of believers on buses to schools, and play on the playgrounds in old-fashioned ways, under timeless suns sucking up light and commonplace clouds through their straws, easily, atmospheres removed from the old pressures we once shared, before we learned our division, mettlesome in the worlds we changed and changed us, brought us up and down back when,  gave us the resilient half smiles we wore for one another, and shared with the world sometimes, filling them out for the ones closest to us, supposedly, as we laughed recreating other faces from the outside in, in a purportedly powerful way, carrying beyond anyone's wildest dreams across time and place and various things, young and mettlesome just like always, and never dying at all, anyway

we fall (recollection. november 2010)

Has been
she was. she was a has been
looking quite seductive
attracting our energy
i remember with sadness
we remember collectively
the witches
the sufis
 the mystics
the number people
those who lived and died by the numbers
and still do
scratched rolled
got high kick adrenaline off numbers
got lowdown dirt broke
laid over numbers
by the tracks
across them

A double cross then
on this one night
three times heated over
some petty useless argument
murderers murder over
(needed an excuse that's all
they cannot kill without reason)
no real reason
just lost
double crossed
fumblin to get wide of my skinny jeans
on the beach
last night
tonight tommorrow
night

Some kinda player he fashions himself
me some kinda someone
he plays
well i was not gonna
open up for no singular double crosser
guess what
guess what if you're guessing
(throw my sandy blonde hair back
over my eyes so not to give away
whats behind them)

Betrayal
the colors were changing my iris
cobalt blue turning royal
i am crossed in this setup
its painful. his means to my end

Just so
just so used to violence
always im touched. made to feel like giving up
you must be violent with the world
violent with self
violent with me and
i got the patch can you not see i
got the goddam medal
ya. still. you would get into it with me
the cannot be spoken and not even here
understood

Come here with your weak game to this ball of resistance
 this wall. my existence
come here to my softness
and soft may i be
yet bold with flavor like
english breakfast tea

i won't need a receipt
i will walk away before you chance to raise your eyelids
you never even caught me half mad out the door

Half mad
half out
half lost by
the door
half mad
half out
half empty
half sad
none innocent

Double cross
and raise you twenty
the poverty adds up
to make us poor

You your solemn sorry self
just trying to score
thought i was on the take when i wasn't
Had you seen yourself going down
you could have would have saved your self
again recounting the drama the day drove into
your lungs when what you call a heart
is unknown to you

You who made the world ache
in the eighties what with
 your prosperous nonsense you're
 unnecessary

You gave when giving itself was on the take
 jake

    a snake
          a snake
 reptilian counters your smooth wanna-moves

No one
not even that younger girl you had
down by the small towns the
small lake
a quiet night it was
 and that's what gave you away. too late
too late too late for her anyway
(she's the kinda one im here to remind you of. hello)

If not myself
not myself
whom you clearly forgot
behind your made upedness
I would be
i was
worn out
my make up
well. just fell

Fallen down in cream mineral bare
essential straight loss
i gave up on you
and your double cross
you see. i crossed too. i had to

got prepared
had an agenda
planned it out
(what a cost)

Ya I wore the long boots skinny jeans
you saw. you knew
(you wanted it, too)
damn
i feel cursed
i feel cursed just like you
just so

Made up me and you the monsters
in this creature double cross feature
this sordid rendez-vous

Made me a star
i got the feeling awash over me like a little kid. i did.
whose feelings come like waves roll out like petals
to the song of the sun every day
opened up. in this state
were it blissful
were we pensive
houston
were we texas

No, no. no, i never been there. will you take me someone
i'm a star, remember
the star
i'm some star. right. and stars shine
they do. remember
they dont go
they dont go just where you ask them

Dont listen. stars. do they
(always gotta get some action)
You know by what you get...
what you got when you
ask them

Royal blue drained to cobalt
i hid this from you
you did not exist for me then
nor did i for you
goddam
you kill me
a little more every time

I'm tired. i'm tired thats why i'm talking to you
 about you
because
to you
about you
for you... one nation of you (under you)...
fuck you

See
we fall down
it's fall
and we fall
falling together
fallen down


over one
over all
we fall
we fall

Review: Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party

Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party by George R. Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Stewart focuses on forming an accurate logistical picture of the travels and trials of 87 members of the Donner Party against a harsh environment, whose wagon train came together around July 1846 near the Great Salt Lake and headed to California over a newly inspired yet little tested route over a dangerously steep pass in the Sierra Nevadas, which the trusted and well-traveled Hastings recommended they try in order to save 300 miles had they taken the known (and therefore safer) emigration trail around the mountains. Unfortunately the going is rough in Utah and Nevada, and they are doomed to hunker down and camp beside what is now known as Donner Lake. This tale of tragedy and triumph ends in April 1847, after several relief parties (often comprised of family members of the original caravan) made successful rescues over the course of the long and brutal winter featuring several devastating storms packing snow 30+ feet in some parts. Amazingly, 42 of the 87 characters (many of whom are painted in thin brushstrokes by the author, but just enough to begin caring about them) make it out of the mountains and down to Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, a lush valley ripe for settling, and the promised land which was the basis for most of the families making the trip in the first place. Many, including the Donners, had been farmers in the midwest, and envisioned taking a grand adventure in a well-orchestrated way (books and goods and kitchen utensils and blankets all packed into wagons driven by teams of oxen with cattle and pack animals behind) providing comfort for the many women and children, some as young as one year old. The families were mainly of Irish and German and English descent, and we get a glimpse into the different and resourceful ways they survive, as the elements ultimately cause each family to fall back on itself for support. As a city dweller in the 21st century, I could only marvel at the kind of grit and determination displayed by these pioneering folk 200 years ago. As the winter progressed, the snowbanks rose far above the chimney tops of the cabins they built lakeside. Game was scarce. Only timber and religion were of endless supply to them. The ones who were snowed in at the camps had mostly to combat slow starvation and cramped conditions. They lived off of rawhide before resorting to cannibalism as a last resort on the well-preserved bodies of the dead in the snow. Some went mad. The ones who ventured out from time to time in last ditch efforts to cross the towering pass to the 100 mile or so stretch of canyons and valleys which lay on the other side to take them down to Sacramento, showed incredible tenacity and spirit. Others were selfish and cowardly, and abandoned all scruples in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Such was the kind of language the author used to recount the stories. A bit old-fashioned but powerful nevertheless, and kept me reading well past my bedtime!

Here are some vivid images circling my mind still, well portrayed by the author. A man wrapped in blankets propped up against a snowbank beside a campfire, smoking the last of tobacco after saying goodbye and courageously telling the hikers to go on without him, and left behind to die alone in the mountains. Five women who made it over the pass on snowshoes, coming into an Indian camp looking like skeletons on broken frostbitten feet and half-clothed, being taken into warming huts and given acorns to break the starvation. A father returning two months after leaving his children in the camp, on a relief mission funded by the rudimentary California-Mexican government, and finding his 8 year old daughter sitting on the edge of the roof of the cabin he built for them, her feet scraping the receding snowbanks. In the time he was absent, he had survived war, flood, fire, starvation, cold, and thirst. Unlike the others, his entire family would survive the ordeal and live to tell. Another image of a group of nine hikers, long starved, mostly young children, holding on for dear life in the midst of a snowstorm in the mountains, 30 feet down in a hollow made by a campfire which grew and ultimately sunk down into the snow by the heat, and made a space large enough for all of them to climb down into, to stay warm until days later when they were found. One who had died there had their liver and heart taken for boiling for sustenance of the remainder. Solitary men and women at Sutter's Fort, finally arrived, gazing back to the foothills every day, wishing and wondering whether their loved ones were still alive on the other side.

View all my reviews

number 4

I thought i was pretty damn cool and i didnt have a cigarette hanging off my lip and i hadnt died by 27 like all the rock stars, no, the stars are bright the stars are light the stars come out tonight and its fresh after the rains and i think im pretty cool but i don't rock the latest iphone or anything, i don't even broadcast on Instagram, the night is here and these quiet hours are mine all mine, cause im feeling pretty righteous but i dont subscribe to no religion, no, i got my own apartment and im an independent woman and an independent author, i think im pretty cool but im not on any bestseller lists, i think im pretty sweet but you wouldnt wanna cross me, no, i dont own any guns im no Hunter S. Thompson but i do believe in civil rights, ya, i dont drink or carry a medical maryjane card, i light up pumpkin candles and let my cats run free, but ive learned im only as capable as i believe i can be,  ya, you and me can only make it if we give it our all, dripping wet with paint off the canvas in the hall, i think im pretty cool, but not because of anything i have or anybody you think i am, no, i like to keep my blood pumping and circulating through the web, call it an obsession and it might be in my head, but if the motivation is to shine a light for anyone in the darkness, the hope, and these long early hours of quiet and calm so the life i have lived which has by no means been nice can channel through me to the distant lands where life is something terrible and senseless, and someone needs some help or to know you're not alone, to find you and discover your story of survival- of dreaming- of reality- of you and me together through the thick layers of media glaze that keeps us groping in the haze, our heads held high, uncool, unfashionable, looking like losers getting old, feeling like freaks, impoverished on the streets sometimes, depressed for fuckin weeks, without a friend in the world, burnin through bridges and pages and pages, ceaseless in our inquiry, agnostic to the core, fighting for the mystery, in love with number 4.

k by k selfie at home

live a better life!

I made a video yesterday in which I talk in an optimistic way about one of my favorite topics, personal empowerment, including: how to locate your choices and make them, how to 'survive yourself', personal responsibility, 'Radical Acceptance' concept (a term i borrowed from my study of DBT or Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a modality developed by Marsha Linehan to treat Borderline Personality Disorder), writing practice, socioeconomics, and mindfulness.

Big Fish Little Fish

The little fish was not eating much
maybe a half a sea cucumber a day
the big fish was eating most of his friends all the time
the big bad fish ran out of little fish

there was plenty of sea cucumber around

the big fish got tired and drifted slowly about
on a heavy stomach of little fish friends
he could not catch the last of the little fish

the little fish was quick and light
and darted behind the coral
the big fish could not even close
his big mouth

the little fish stopped on a fin

the big fish saw his color go by but that was all
a silvery flash of translucent orange

the big fish coughed up air bubbles
the little fish missed his friends
he saw the big fish needed help and food
if he were to survive
his own appetite

the little fish could not laugh
but would have, watching
him die

k reading -- 'tumbleweeds'

Here is me reading the poem i wrote a while back

called Tumbleweeds

and you can find the words

by clicking on the word.


- K (aspiring to be a velveteen rabbit)

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