flashes of pixel and chrome

The rivulets widened to small streams from slipstreams, then converged into rivers, and the leaders all washed away from one another on a tide of nationalist foam. votes cast for nuclear disarmament gone up in brilliant flashes of pixel and chrome. maybe subconsciously the world wanted to blow itself away. if it was unconscious, did that make it okay? the thought was alarming, so we encased it in plastic and sent it to sea. it looked good in navy. uncompromised. salt water couldn't seem to break it down. permanent as a nike swoosh to the face. on a forehead. on a lace. demonstrably positioned yet so poorly placed.

talk show generics -iii

The association in her case was not transparent. If she introduced the darkness to light, they might achieve net neutrality and no one would have to pay. She would funnel all the nonsense down the pipes built expressly for that purpose, and run the drainage of his company into a far corner of the yard where nothing ever grew, she thought. Then reproduce the unkempt sound by some peripheral brilliance, and follow a stream into its relentless river, with side effects of curling back and slowing down. She saw herself surfing a wave and tumbling down, again and again until she got it right. The sharks would circle, yes, but she had chum to feed them. Some day she promised herself an escape from undertow, the gravity above all.

complicate me

i went all out after i passed my boards today, pushed into third gear like a demon around rush hour, cut ahead of that old man's ford and made three randy's and a lucy into the drive through lane of the local starbux for a venti iced almond milk maple pecan latté with whipped cream scenario. i sure know how to complicate an easy thing. but goddam! there's gotta be more to life than your daily mister coffee iv drip to rocket you outta your slippers

fabrique

in the street one day
 years after the war

a soundless middle ground
cast solid between them
 did resound

would we ever
refabricate and share our
common scars

or simply freeze
to death

luck

stamped lottery fare
scratched out

bored coin
thrown here
thrown there

casually discarded
to attract

a blade
a fingernail
what was luck

disillusionment
rubbed out
of

waxy
uninformed
young american
stares

seven

you recently got off the streets. you aren't getting any younger, and you feel your age. chronic pain has kept you from doing the work you love. i was just listening to you tell me your story, all the 'lost time' after you lost your kids and your purpose. but you don't feel sorry for yourself. you found a way to connect with your grandkids and even took them fishing. you still want to live even if you cannot always understand what for. i elevate you to survivor status. we laughed when you told me the story about the time you got shot in the back. you were under the hood in the garage, working on a carburetor, when a stray bullet flew from San Pablo Avenue and knocked you to the ground. once you realized what had happened, you dragged yourself to the office for help. they got you to the hospital and most of the fragments were removed and you walked out of there in under 48 hours. when you got back to work, you walked to the office to thank them. your boss had a parrot he kept in there, and the moment you walked in, the parrot saw you and started screaming: 'I'm shot! I'm shot! I'm shot!"

five

i found my peace in silence

i found my peace in a cup of coffee

i found peace in an early morning run

i found peace in devotion. working.

i found my peace in you

type.writer -xv

one morning you sit down
to your work with your coffee
beside you and

the tides have been broken 
they have turned on the ocean!
this is what you came for
so suddenly
emergent

disciple to words
the reading
the writing

the sea and the healing
fresh atmosphere replaces
the ceiling! an absence of the world
you recollect so unfeeling

your voice is upon you
you've found yourself! finally
the struggle is gone
you no longer push into page

strangely awakened
enveloped by an undercurrent
you sing the song you were born to sing
you come thrashing to surface!

like faith
you cannot see it
you only feel it
you know

these are the moments a writer lives by!
when time loses interest
appetite gone silent
and the sentences form on their own

full of spirit!
making meaning
full of feeling!
with rhythm and rolling

you collide with the page
like a strike
when you're bowling

thank the stars
thank the gods
you got lucky
kid

type.writer (archive #K) -iv

we drank coffee and squeezed oranges
in the morning. canadien whisky
at night with milk. smoking
4 finger lids

the letter c
started to stick
i had to find oil
and take arms
she was essential
to my vocabulary

tuning our guitars together
swimming out past the
sandbar to the lone buoy
the hammerheads liked to
circle

type.writer (archive #K) -i

1997
I had a Smith Corona postbellum typewriter

the war was for the world

so very wide

no.2 and sharp as a pencil

The body of the typewriter was a solid drab green

like a soldier

Millions were filled with lead

how sorry you are

the rain fell ona slant and i imagined they were all my tears i could not bear to cry. i raised my face to the wind and felt the sheets strike my skin. i stayed outside all morning long with you, reading the paper. we drank coffee without any intention other than to be helpful. lord knows we had once been thoughtless and unkind. you make mistakes. you demand more of people, places and things than you ask of yourselves. now i wanna grab hold and empty life of all its discontents. someone expects an apology outta you, and hunts you down. they may never know how sorry you are. the remainder of life, pushing and pulling those notifications, needled with predicate .coms and .orgs. comradery relocated to social media. if we subscribed it would be too soon... gimme the shelter of the rising sun, full moon. all these things we hope to have eternal, here and gone, then come again... to the faithful, pulled and pushed in the tug-of-war of a life. how sorry you are proclaimed deep space, to the star.

BOOK READING GTL1 33

BOOK READING 2.15.1 GWB

peaches. subsumed

all the rest
made me only more tired

so i stopped sleepin

now im

trackin shadows
cross the wall 

while my ice cubes

wave water trails

into ginger ale

rattlin the cubes

against the glass

to remember you

the man above me 

looks off the wall into space
dreaming of life
with someone real

i am sunk into a couch

like buried treasure

all the gouramis gape at me

silent kissing

an air bubble
tough feelings to feel inside
more than i can handle 

i

rattle the cubes 

to remember you

another character
jumps off a page

into my heart

i wonder bout the man 

the life in two 

dimensions. how safe not having

a back to watch

not being real

how safe

how dry
how terrible

you cannot
lend a friend 

a hand or take a stand

brushed off 

like you are. canvassed

for meaning

pretty rendition

come into my heart!

lemme hold you there

make you real

i rattle the glass

and remember you

wax inwards

street sweep the cottons
real estate gets pricey
along the ear canal

listen
i need an extension 

of gratitude
outward. my ideals are almost met

almost

there is

there is
still time yet

last day of may the reverb

America. was the last day of may and all of the dead end streets look like never ending roads, and all the dead end relationships are enthusiastic pressing another go around with hopes one lucky night of what we once had may carry a small sound around and turn the johnny rotten back to first date territory with long lashes and laughter, and heal the deep gashes like reverb sweetening the deal, to hold a song's triumphant note deep into the memory of the night, a stripped mall's dollar store turned boutique, a dead end presidency turned back to camelot and kennedy days, a mid-preaching pause full of meaning, careless words begin to care, a rebellion to the cause of suffer leaning... it was the last day of may and we have a chance to be deep again, full again, and resonant

netflixxx

the last episode of the last season pulled
all the feelings
outta me
 today

god it felt good

katya. 2016

the opening is tbd. byo latchkey

we were...

latchkey kids. made deaf beneath 

the wall of sound

of the industry

of the landscape
in the head

we played arcade games

to recover and chewed bubble 

gum and drew on ourselves

with ballpoint pens 

dumb kids. not stupid just 

contextually thin

lacking or without sense or

the means to make

sense

hungry for relevance
starved of context 

ignorant of our rights 

we no longer studied our 

country's constitution

in high school

we microwaved tv dinners

and rode our bikes into the 

night with duran duran baking

our heads by transistor

radio

stressed kids. the trance-like induction 

of environmental stressors fill

the internal auditorium

teeming life of feelings acid-washed
a sensitive study of self
unreleased

abbreviated from an lp to an ep

the world stops when the record store is closed
the opening is tbd

you are all invited
statistics will be gathered

and fall upon us
with friends

new cokes slim jims leg warmers

byo latchkey

KatYa, 2017

ten. indivisible

i breakdown, too. useless, not unlike a chevy silverado, nothin in the tank. if there's no coffee in me by 6am, make a lawn ornament outta me. so i start early, crackin those beans through the grind, by hand sometimes, yawnin bedhead and all, spring winter summer and fall, gotta keep myself runnin and runnin along, so i can be luscious good and vitamin k for you, my love, roarin my middle age burnin fuel with that special manner makes all the millenials turn their heads, double take, slap their faces to wonder where the hell i came from? yes, i am my own sensation, out in the wild west of this great nation, one being, guarded, sentient, indivisible, under god, and irreverent to the core. last week against all odds ran my first ever ultra, just ran and ran eight hours long like a lunatic, up and down quarry road through the american river canyon, drawing poison oak for the second time in three months, so sore for three days i could hardly walk and find me thrilled through the pain... just now i saw the county job i applied for has hit processing stage, so juicy like a quarter orange shall i climb out of my navel and squeeze on to the commodity, precious life, dear god, and hopefully get around my self center and finalize my time, this life, on the carrying about in service to those less fortunate, county state country corner, with a beating heart and a backpack and a rushing spirit glancing off the darkness like light does. that's all i want, anyway.

the sky and the tree

It need not be so complicated
for you and
for me

said the sky

looking with warmth
upon the tree

but when
oh when
will all become clear?

asked the tree
shaking in the wind

when it rains
when it rains
when it rains

give free or die

I wish i could stop myself, arrest my forward motion, always in a rush the way i am, to be there for someone who is calling on me, in a hallway, on the street, out in the front yard or on the sidewalk heading to or from work or errands. Often they call and they always have. Years ago i stopped stopping for them, to give them my time and attention, no, i taught myself not to give my presence and maybe only a smile or not, giving nothing else but a smattering of words, before making my way to the next destination in a rush. i was usually in a rush. i still am. but it was more than that, i was also fearful and guarded of people from a young age, you see, i was the exact same age as the first kid whose face was plastered on the side of every whole milk carton back in the 1980's. those kinda happenings were iconic then and remembered dearly today, too, for they changed the operation of many a nuclear family, and likely the percentage of latchkey kids fell down for a moment, as mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles began to watch a touch more closely their kids. all i remember is i was called home many early evenings when i preferred to be out wandering the streets with my young friends. i thought surely when i reached double digits i could be trusted to come home in my own time, but nope it rarely happened. sure there was a lot of freedom, after all, this was america and this was new hampshire and this was live free or die country. so i did my fair share of wandering, skateboarding around playing cards, chewing bubble gum, and making out with other kids. still, guardedness got drilled into my dna and today it takes a concerted effort to open my heart to anyone at any time, for i always feel like many particles of magnet being sucked north. there must be a mantra in my head to help me along back into my original open and giving ways. give free or die! that's the one! i found it! now to put it in motion and change my life, i cannot wait! to start stopping for them again! fresh! to stop when i think i am in a rush and ask myself, why, katya, are you in such a rush? where really do you think you oughta be at this moment? can it not be here? with this one who is calling upon you in a simple greeting and willing to stop and give themselves freely to you? are you not honored? and can you not stop also and honor them with your presence? give of yourself freely today? what is the cost of all these moments in the halls, on the sidewalks of the world, in the streets, in the parks? the cost, my friend, is the life itself. for what is living if not sharing and loving and caring? these small exchanges, when widened and opened and made space for, they are the life! are they not? please, give free or die, i pray that i may answer the call of my people in the world, and today may i be with you. for you are all i really have, and i am yours.