las vegas 2025 impressions

Here in Las Vegas sense can jump out of you the berry of your cigarette burning your lip brings you back feel around your pockets for your wallet (if you even) find it it's empty ... play Keno with the same numbers until you win. you cannot survive fascism if money is everything. if you do not speak up you lose. you cannot see if you are lost on your phone. do something for anyone ... after the rains the desert air is good on the lungs and one holiday morning we are walking between casinos so alive hunting for coffee when an old man in a yellow tracksuit on a scooter slices a path between a man and two women on the sidewalk to a chorus of fuck yous ... hey sky and trace clouds! hey sun! come on up this final Friday of the year played out ... you don't need to struggle anymore. if you can, just be with someone you love and who loves you. have breakfast in bed... take the longest drive home.  

#katyamills

the night before

i cherished it and then it was gone. the night followed. incomplete darkness and incomplete silence. this is Vegas after all. a jagged line of colorful sunrise follows the distant mountain peaks. the changes in the quality of light draws me in. up on the 23rd floor looking down. i have hope edged with anxious thoughts which cannot be controlled. the man who loves me sleeps into daylight. i walk the hotel casino lobby with coffee to swallow medication. song fragments enter my head and exit my lips. working against the grain of the stabbing pain of a hateful mother who told my brother i have gone to the devil. i am not even religious and it’s not even true. it’s a sad way life went with us. we were once so close. i am trying to get by without being upset with her. we went to a comedy show last night and laughed and laughed and laughed. seeing you happy is a thrill. we lost one another on the strip for a couple of hours and it almost broke my heart. we made love after a ten hour drive into the desert. the fountains do a synchronized dance before blasting thirty feet into the air. she is characterologically incapable of being kind once she has made up her mind on someone. my brother is getting it now. i want to help him because i know how it feels to be discarded. we are going to walk to what used to be the International Hotel. this city swallowed Elvis up. i suppose he could be accused of going to the devil, too. but he brought joy into so many people’s hearts. there is no single narrative that defines you. the lines are always jagged. backlit by fresh sunsets and rises. the life can be really good if you let it!

 – Katya Mills. 12.24.24

12.26.24 diary

 We walk several miles north to Elvis Presley Boulevard and the Westgate Hotel. I have a heavy backpack on with water and bananas and clothes. My basic black dress over jeans and white Nikes with maroon swoops. Your knees are sleeved and cannot take too much but you don't complain. It feels right to arrive a little road weary. Like our little pilgrimage to the King. Along the way a Buddhist came up to us and pushed a jade bracelet around my wrist before I knew what was happening. She flashed us a generous smile. You dug out twenty bucks and she placed two necklaces around our necks with emerald seated Buddhas hanging off of beaded chains. She did not speak any English and it didn't matter. We offered thanks and loving embraces. 

"It's going to be the longest drive from your house to mine tonight," he tells me. "I'm going to hate it." It's 5am and your thoughts already have you twelve hours ahead. We haven't even checked out of Room #2342 in the Horseshoe Hotel. You watch the morning news while I swallow my vitamins and meds with coffee and perform my rituals. 

The Westgate still has the original clamshell billboard where they used to post lettering announcing his residency. That was back when it was the Las Vegas Hilton and the International. The first thing you see coming in the lobby is memorabilia. His first ever pistol alongside his favorite gun, a .357 which he kept holstered and brought with him, on and off stage. A menu of all the groceries he ordered two weeks at a time. Lots of porterhouse steaks and pot roasts and filets. Five whole chickens. Tomatoes and veggies and onions and bread. A pair of his black boots and photos of him, on and off stage. The sheriff badge he got when he was deputized. A gold watch and his stripes from the Army. A few of his favorite belt buckles. 

We only had one major fight the whole five days and it was the day we lost one another on the Strip for two hours. "It was because we were apart," you say. I love the way you frame it and name it. I love you so much. Who knows how many more years we can travel here together on holiday. I have faith it will be many more but life can be unpredictable and you never know. Bunny and Mousey are almost twelve years old. 

The hotel holds the old world charm. The lobby ceiling is low with recessed lighting and there are chandeliers by the bar and lots of frosted glass and redwood. Big black and white prints of Tom Jones and Bobby Darrin and Wayne Newton and Elvis, and many others who performed here years ago. There is an inscription that shows how many shows Elvis performed in a decade, and every show was sold out. He gave his all to this place and the people who came to see their beloved hero. We walk around looking at all the images carefully like we are in a museum. A lady approaches me and warns me not to go into that room. They are selling timeshares.

You could call something tragic but you don't have to see it that way. All of us are born to expire. Our lives and bodies are like land leases or timeshares, too. The King lived the most spectacular life! Just like the Buddha before him. It doesn't have to be tragic. I offer you something, too, after all you have given me. Not just a hundred dollars of the seven hundred I won this week betting on the NFL ... I also give you faith over fear. The nine miles distance between our two homes is nothing! Distance cannot stand between us. We are always together, like magic. 

Katya Mills, 12.26.2024

biggest little city

 

touched by the gods

encircled by sierra peaks

Reno is some half century old Vegas

pawnshops and desperate cowboys

who lost they hats but found

they girls under the grand 

marquee

#katyamills

conversations with the future

on a train leaving Las Vegas

i thought to my (future) self

with all the deception in the world

who needs magic?

#katyamills

bird of vegas

the bird sung so well they gave her a stint in Vegas

a symphony orchestra a platinum 

bar dome the finest raw 

foods. weekends find her perched 

high in pecking order over raw chia pumpkin seed 

blends drinking oat milk throat coat 

tea couldn't spot her tail feathers

in a line up   #katyamills

book status two

The plot has finally come full circle, and my 5th work of fiction is weighing in @ 60,000 words +. I can promise you each word has gotten equal attention and first rate treatment. You can cancel your trip to Vegas. Read my book. The entertainment is top notch.

lost ina video

He was an older man, single and retired and replete with cash, dating a woman he knew through her employment at a casino he frequented. He was forever dysconnected to a timeless place of artificial light and sound. He committed an atrocity, an even several hundred yards detached from the crime scene. He was once flesh and blood but got lost ina video poker game that never ended, and whatever connect he had to reality if any, was severed. Nobody can understand how this can happen to a man, and few will ever forgive him. His father was a known criminal and he was born into a family on the run. This cannot account for his psychotic break. He left behind him a timeless place of artificial light and sound. And thousands upon hundred thousands of broken hearts.

she whose temples ... - v)

She loved the feeling of the sound of her teeth
up against the wall
mango flavored hi-chews
seven eleven in the fall
when the insomniac in her was alive and walking.

Feeling like they were gonna shatter. painlessly
her teeth
through the veneers she wove her own ideas
who was anyone (or herself) to take her away the pragmatic reality?
what kinda place to live is there? (there)
in the heart of a shapeless heart-shaped box.
in the fire in the belly of the sky.
what so obviously presents itself to us
sunrise. sun set. rise. set.
No one could answer her.
not just yet.

The rocks in her glass, they came in contact and chattered about. sublimating down.
vespers. dawn. aperitif
conclusion of the day
demerit. thief
they sublimated down to water. in the base of the glass
they took the form of the glass
they worshipped the glass
the glass began to perspire
the rocks they cracked and chattered
A boisterous lot, indeed. Something like an audience.

k selfie 04/14

Reminiscent of audiences of years past....
Lenny Bruce's audience. Caesar's Palace. Vegas
Bad Brains audience. CBGB. NYC
Audience to the guillotine. French Revolution. July 14th. Bastille Day
Audience to Nine Inch Nails
Audience to Aleister Crowley.
The Order throws a party for #4
both major and minor arcana are invited
all suits. preferably hearts alongside spades.
preferably against the grain
the motor activity
motor city
throb

Audience to nothing.
Axl Rose won't come out tonight. his vocals need chakra treatment.
Elton John's done to much blow.
Billy Joel is scared.
Janis is laughing and drinking.
Phil Spector made a crime scene of the wall of sound.
Hall and Oates are making love.
Jim is in the bathtub. with gin.
That dude is coming out to sledgehammer watermelons again.
Mick Jagger's bff just offed herself.
Chris Brown's in jail.
Bieber's dodging Miley on a wrecking ball.
Rihanna behind her.
pushing

Witnessing the moving standstill of time.
Amusement park. Painted ponies impaled on recycled pole dancer poles.
Up and down. Robot lovemaking. Tin man grinding.
Judy Garland drunk underneath the platform.
She got in for free.
She can never leave.
Contemplation of navels.
Contemplation of labels.

Contemplation...
That something frozen cold could move quick
and lightly float like soft-boiled eggs popping out
of the clouds, bubbling down the gravity pressurized earthen
atmospheres, down...

down into soils
taking on nitrogen
feeling alive
glancing off roots
excavating now
unintentionally
sub sub conscious
Judy Garland
submarine sandwich
Malaysian flight
deep hollow
blue

deep down there lay
her temples
some fucking
where