#Navalny

This post dedicated to a rare man to sacrifice his own life to show the world that you must stand up against those who wish to silence you. "Founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, leader of the Russia of the Future party". my love to your family and children. who will hold Putin accountable for the death of the champion of the people? karma? fate? though your life has been snuffed your spirit can never be silenced. the spirit lives on. rest now, dearest Alexey.   #katyamills

Daniela

dispossessed
provocative

her disenfranchised hair chopped

draft copy

the lens
through which she
saw was
rose

wraps of scarves
continuity of thought

in those unlucky lost days
we enjoyed a vodka and maybe a smoke
or ten or never enough

traveled by jeep
through tunnels

the light 

what was left of it

collected
sustained
the fabric
my friend
myself
and
threaded
the dawn

#katyamills

DIDION

i often pedal down your street 

the home where you grew up 

by the Sacramento Bee 

you can taste the print coming off the papers

cross-pollinating

not unlike how your words 

and your life indelible 

touched us    #katyamills

sarah

mineral green her eyes

the color of the river

Nile. over middle earth 

to the sea she moved 

the world in sultry 

malachite

#katyamills

shelby

they told you your heart

gonna fail fucked up felt like 

blackmail. you wrenched cars 

with remington kept an eye 

on le mans built cobras to

strike. a half century later

doing donuts in a prototype

giving thanks like we may 

today for a true American 

hero

#katyamills

harvey: god of the sea

we took some shots you 

caught me in transition on 

a silver disc. years later we 

met for dinner. i was lost

a cat back up hurt and poor 

you gave a royal fanfare i 

found out you're gone by 

internet. i will never forget you

my god of the sea and

to the sea you return

#katyamills

emo.z

yesterday i got lost
on gen z emo
rap and cried about the lean
the purple the blue
they turned
before their time
came due

thank god
the music lives
on

what was

the future arrived
yesterday
maybe a loved one
 or two
you and me because
we knew
what was


#katyamills

con.jure

the ghosts of poets

arise from the marshes they
trudge to their post

abandoned cabins moored to the foggy
coast

portraits peel off
the walls. unread books crestfallen
to the bare floor

how much life was lost

here? to honor the word

may i conjure you now
at your most glorious
to speak?

to help fight this

useless feeling

hk is special

the west and east have always been mirrors. one
sees its autonomy and corruption by the
other. sees its purity and constriction
by the other. sees its integration
in the rare and magical city
where reflections dissolve
and berlin may be
envious

hk. hong
kong

in memoriam - Jennifer M.

You were my friend. You had reached out to me in January of this year, randomly, and I was so glad to hear from you, I don't know why I did not follow the way to see if we could hook up for a moment in this life, one last time? Life gets chaotic and there's nothing much you can do. Suddenly starts, suddenly ends, and gradually you realize you never know when. We can try, though, and that's exactly what I forgot to do, about you. Jennifer Mendiola aka Alana Kane. I will miss your enduring smile. I cried very hard tonight when I discovered you sailed out on a Ghost Ship and never to return. The clock struck midnight and you and your lover, you were dancing, you were gone. I remember back in 2009 when I met you South of Market, San Francisco. We were counselors at a painful place. Sixteen beds for sixteen lost and homeless souls. I brought my desire to help. You brought your presence and your smile. We got along easily, though the work we had to do was hard and brutal. Just outside those double locked doors in this sanctuary city, people were driven to desperate intoxication and suicidal panic, and all the time. I could not believe you at first, I wondered how could you smile all day long like that? From dawn to 3pm when we got out. There were times I thought you must be faking it, I confess. All the methadone nods of sixteen souls all around us? The cutting scars and track marks? The lonely vacant stares, up and down the carpet stairs. But we knew we could make a small difference in a semi-safe space. Listen to them tell us their stories. Hold them if they cried. Teach them simple skills if they wanted to learn. Laugh like we were family, and for a time we were. Everything about it could be cold, day by day. Yet you smiled. I guess you had just recently been married around then, I didn't really know or maybe I forgot. All I know is we worked well together and kept the place running, which was the best we could do with phones ringing, doors buzzing, and sixteen souls in need of something all the time. I really admired you. I knew I could trust you, you worked real hard and really cared. If I walked in the door and saw you, those early foggy San Francisco mornings, some of that tension, that burden a social worker experiences inside, fell off of me immediately. I could take my earbuds out, warm my hands with breath, take a deep breath and look to you. Talk to you. Get willing with you toward the day ahead of us. I will miss you my friend. I will think upon you when the work gets brutal, and try and smile through.

Journal # 06.26.2016

Tonight I seem to have lost a year but it doesn't matter, time is fluid showers over us, slanting down shoulder blades, slips between fingers, in and out of endless divots the fabric of pores, circles the drain and away, guided by threads and spinning. Tonight I am petulant, a tenured professor, setting myself up against impossible deadlines, racking my brains and then breaking. Tonight I am quiet going about my weekend, on the steps of the back porch platformed above the backyard below sky, listening to catfights, a solo calling bird, waiting for dawn and the burgeoning rush of highways, the streaming of sound, faraway, trying to trust, outdoors. Tonight I could be any old brick of clay, unformed and pulled from plastic, rather drab and uniform yet gleaming somehow from the inside out, on a table of hardwood in the center of a studio... with so much promise I could only walk away from myself disturbed, hands suffering and unoccupied, clasping one another in desperation. Tonight I am insatiable as moving water, thirsty as a life behind bars, free from all resentment not worrying about the future, schizophrenic, I could dive into the fabric and bury us there. This early morning time exposure of lightening, geese in arrows across the sky, ducks regimented walking to water. Find me disoriented as usual, unable to fall in line, unwilling to surrender, drumming up another battle, steeled against this order... this morning I make my own cadence, lucky as hell, restless like Cassius Clay, on my toes, laced up, face down in this adventure, counting seams, watching the canvas of the earth receive and genuflect, feeling the sensuous tension, riveted into play, feeling the sweat bead up and draw watermarks... dropping my head back to see stars. and god it was bright i saw stars.  -KatYa

cold. the purple rain

Cold, cold, the rain when you got a million fans and you're gettin older and life is painful, seems it always hurts as god is your witness. Cold, cold the rain as you set your jet on target for the sun. I saw you there, once, dressed in black and white. Caught in the electrical storm, can-not-rise-a-bove-the-pur-ple-rain. The pills make it a little easier and won't take you down, no, nothing can. Nobody can tell you what to do, your music heralded all around the world and god has blessed you, we held you here on high. Cold, cold the rain and you gave away the umbrella. You always liked it raw. Any stage any auditorium any stadium, the people they lined up for you. Cold, cold the rain falls in Minnesota. You gave us hope and power and free-dom-to-cre-ate-our-loving-selves. You gave me power and hope. Cold, cold the rain, the purple rain, tonight it falls for you.     - 2 Prince. love KatYa

the child

O wide awake in America, big sky highway hollowing out the ears predawn, cut me like a cookie and may i taste good too, share myself with you and you and you, sweet sugar has me processed in dreams and tumbled out a foamy bed into my own personal despair, sliding down the inner sanctuary of a question mark to collect and drop whole you made of me, sweet sugary period, plastic in my blood, pharmaceuticals in my water, disaster strikes and i lick my lips like you and smile, but no one smiles like we do, upside down or kinda flat, tethered to the mobile phones we kill by our deep sleep, counting ringtones like sheep, shearing and swiping the hell out of an alphabet, on a jazz or classical base as the temperature begins to rise with the sun, another day washing dishes and dusting and cutting boxes the perfect size to ship my ass away to some infernal packaging depot to be fitted with my personal bar code, my very own, which is linear and bold, impervious to black mould, scanned or so I'm told, taped then situated in some draughty unremarkable corner in the cellar of a warehouse to grow old. All i know is no one can erase me even if they try, I am forever etched into your hard drive, America, no matter how the cleaners cleanse, efforts to coat me over bleach me out only leave my prominent lines bubbling up from the cracks and surfacing again with all the gasses, grilling the faces of the masses ordering me around, yet still i stay aloft in my dissociated safe place way up high, finding me in a cut up creatively commoned place looking down, streaming on your horizon, only the light protects us now in our projections. Back out where I belong, some ionic bond, trashing your paint job with my spraypainted flare, exposing your destination to the going nowhere, breaking out the bars when i decode the code, fingering you with my fingerprint, America, until you see your own stars and go black and white again, from Birmingham to Ferguson, up the checker board and Martin Luther King you at the end, redoubled on a chance, green felt absorbs your glance in a healthy tribal casino where all the bad blood is blue, you see, the karmic knot we work it out, massage it real well, strike it with needles until you finally falter, sweet vulnerable America shedding your suit, crying and opening like that before the seamstress. And my lines are out of order, spinning into circular pools fallen stars, and the many shades of blue wash over me and you, when the world forgives and finds a place in the heart for a renewable source, because somehow you were always meant to be pleasant on the eyes, America, and generous though talkative and combative perhaps, you wear out your welcome in a superfluous way, and everyone has a good laugh and pats you on the head, for you are the child and loved just the same. Back to bed now with prayers, and we will see you in the morning, the rubbing of eyes, tumbling down stairs in your nightgown, little one, big sky highway musculature, heavy with some imagined purpose, dreams of carbon and oxygen and coffee churning blue to black in post industrial aftermath, shining oily head to toe, shedding another skin, inspiring us with your renewals. I will be there, my love, somewhere in the corners of your eyes, sucking on Maybelline, about to exit the glistening curve and drop unseen into your wilderness... where i have always belonged.

MLK. 1929-1968

All i knew was what i saw and what people told me,
because it all happened before i was born. The horrifying
image of a man lying dead at the feet of his friends,
at a motel somewhere in Memphis. The many fingers
pointing firmly towards space.

All i knew was what i heard, which was unlike anything
 i ever heard before! Perhaps the greatest orator since
Winston Churchill. Deep compassion and confidence.
Rhythm and music. Love for  country. Demanding change.
Appealing to us and God. Certain in his vision for the
future. Certain of a personal and collective overcoming
of great and tangible darkness and suffering. Offering
hope for change. Prayers. Marches. Practicing the principles he
preached. Forgiveness. Starting a critical dialogue. Confronting
the enemy on enemy turf. Demanding we come together in
new and nonviolent ways.


A great tragedy, overshadowed now by unified cultural love
in memoriam for a great and selfless man. A decided day
to remember. To honor one who sacrificed himself for his
people and social justice, in the end. Shaking up and
waking up a culture embedded in fear and racism. Making the
unconscious, conscious. Bringing light into darkness.

Today in the USA, racism hides mostly behind closed
doors. Or so I thought. Recent events across the USA
have suggested otherwise. If Doctor King was here,
what would he say? What would he do? All i know is
he would show courage and ask others to stand behind
what they believe in. He would not be scared to speak
truth to power. We would listen and learn. Some of us
would get involved; try and speak truth to
power, ourselves. Despite immediate consequence.
Having the courage to stand behind our beliefs and speak
freely.

In honor of Doctor King, I tell myself today:

Do not accept or protect the ISMS. Speak TRUTH to POWER.
Support nonviolent movements toward social justice.
Get out there and get involved, whenever possible!
Practice loving kindness towards ALL sentient beings.
Express gratitude. Pray. Dream large! Meditate. Forgive.
Inspire hope toward a NEW PARADIGM WORLDVIEW!

I love to listen to Dr. King's charismatic speeches,
whenever possible. Thank God we have these recordings.

Change comes over culture like a slow, pacific wave,
washing us clean of our troubled and divided history,
and offering us a chance toward UNITY.

she whose temples were rubbed - ii)

she whose temples were rubbed (a series of posts)
by Katya Mills, 2014

27 June 2011 at 01:24

PublicFriendsFriends except acquaintancesOnly meCustomClose FriendsFamilySee all lists...The Sequoia CenterOakland, California AreaNorthwestern UniversityJohn F. Kennedy UniversityAcquaintancesGo Back

Part -i) ::: revisited

Anecdote from the cutting room floor, circa 2009 …  cuts fresh falling off her aura, this girl. Locks of her soft layers of dyed hair flashing in the fluorescent light for the last time, in silence, her silence, the silence of her stylist, of her boots up on the old steel footrest.

She was sickly aware of being one of millions in her country. one of billions in the world. Any megalomania of her youth had been drowned or subsided into a pale ascertain of some kinda amegalomania minority status in the pantheon of petty class passive-aggressive weaker-than-war fare.

She was sick from feeling cold and sick of being stepped on like every footrest in every goddamn hair salon or rickety down home kitchen in the not so deep south where she hailed from. Snailed from. Slow to wake up out that hot and humid daydream.

Part -ii) ::: with tribute to Kurt Cobain, on the 20th anniversary of his young death

She knew she could neither recover the day nor the dream. She knew she would not recover, for she had nothing she wished to hide from herself anymore. What she had uncovered, well, it was all the darkness you could expect to find under an old rock toward the far edge of a garden, revisited after years of neglect.

 

She was a despondent girl.  Our girl. And still people dared to stare back at her silent icy stare. For they knew her as the daughter of disgust and disgrace.
Fuck, she thought, hers was the legend she would carry all her life and to her grave. Hers was the standard by which all could measure, even the lowest of the low, and still be seen as if from below. Her only entitlement for all she was aware, was straight up misery. Not unlike Kurt Cobain. And she wore interesting sweaters over floral button down shirts, not unlike him, beneath her cold hard eyes true. Looking back at you.

So she stared. And she could have cared how you reacted, whether you cared or did not care. Or did not care enough not to care or care. Many if not most were subjected in her presence to having her eyes upon them. The uncomfortable, unwelcome, malevolent glossy glare.

The silence of falling years of color, could not have felt more free on this day however. She sighed in the chair, having untied her hair. By the weight of her breath, one would not have thought freedom. But feeling was the heaviness set forth in the room, bouncing across mirrors.

Rippling earth through the room.

Folks shied away, children started crying. For what sensation she lacked, she made one without effort. A natural audience surfaced from magazines.  A natural uneasiness surfaced from her longstanding psychic wounds and kept people away like the bubbling molten rock volcanic.
It was said that those who ventured too close to her -- well... all anyone might hear was gutteral cries someone lost somewhere in their spleen. No one needed to know anymore.

She had some feelings about feeling. She did. She was not therefore unfeeling.
Who was?
Not to feel might be too plastic.
Whereas feeling was often way too dramatic.
So she strove for some middle path.
Which, despite her fair effort, often led her to static.
Whats wrong with static?

The silence that followed or preceded both her stares and her static...
she considered 
This silence was beautiful, she thought, like her glock automatic.
This was her gun, not a clock, not a toy.
She found it beautiful yet deadly. Two incompatible traits. Incompatible but not impossible.
 Her gun was something she kept neither to use nor enjoy. She found it in the pond by the old shed, where the shallows found coy.
Some spirit had told her she would find it there, and not only that she should or could - truly she had no desire to - but that she must go and retrieve and polish and learn the gun.
She did so reluctantly.
Then sent the spirit away with her stare...         --  to be continued --

retrospectral disinclination

There is nothing like a retrospective to take you out of time
Where do we go, when we go back?
I wanna know, where do we go?
If I leave this place too long,
can I still come back?

Or will I become some
retrospectral
memory of
me

Some sorry pseudo self
and signing out
apocryphally yours

I think
I will
stay

thank you very much
for the invitation
into collective checking out


like Robert Frost
the road less traveled
this moment
is my route