one

do not be upset

for long dear 

youth

stay sturdy in 

your truth

#katyamills

a little action

 they was runnin red lights and not killin nobody so they thought it was a joke. they couldn't say they wasn't old enough to know better, because kids been forced to take on the whole family at not even eight years old, after some sorta tragedy, and did! you could grow up anytime and maybe by circumstance. irregardless, they had not. so they went around young and stupid and reckless. people be laying on horns and vocal chords in protest all the time. and that just made them laugh a little harder. they had whole congregations praying on their souls. funny. how one man traded for peace and serenity, while the next would give anything for a little action.

they was runnin red lights and

not killin nobody so

they thought it was a joke they

wasn’t old enough to know better

how old do you have to be?

other kids been forced to take on

the whole family not even 8 years old

after some sorta tragedy 

grown up by circumstance

they had not. people laying on horns and vocal

chords in protest made them laugh they

had whole congregations praying on

their souls

funny how one man trades

4 peace and serenity

the next would give anything

4 a little action

this

the insecurity of youth has passed

its hunger for identity
and dearth of belonging

oh! to feel this much

(closer to
home)

rebellion (internal)

there are energies like crickets set up to hum inside us when we are young, they speak to us of rebellion and work us into our circumstances. some are fueled by attitudes and opinions that over time got shaped into beliefs. others don't give a damn whether it's day or night, whether we are tired or hungry, broke or nicely compensated. they whip up a storm in us which is honestly so compelling, we cannot resist despite our better judgment. we live. we cannot help but live!

what you think of yourself

a parliament of youth came together in the U.K. to talk about issues and I watched them on c-span. the most spirited among them stood up from the green leather cushions and waved arms and smiled toward themselves, you could see. I was drawn in by the process. these kids with their fantastic regional accents trying the whole chamber, the whole house of commons, for some eloquence and persuasion. may be what you think of yourself in the end that triumphs.

another loss - fin

in your early thirties and too young, you left behind a family and so many friends. you were reckless, we all were, yet you were good for your word, and six years ago you saw and spoke of a future for yourself, creative. i dream that it manifests on some non-material plane. it does not matter how we left one another the day after the last time i saw you, on disconnected and fractured terms, for the six foot tall skinny boy i knew, whose face i saw behind glasses sometimes at the corner of 28th and telegraph, any day any season, always had a hug and wide devious smile for me, and some stories to share. and i know, had we come across one another since, it wouldn't have been any different.

i remember us in the late afternoon sun. we had met our mutual friends on 28th by the laundromat and kicked it on the street that day, fixing bikes and listening to music. i had a brief shout-it-out with my ex-boyfriend of the hour,  nothing unusual about that. everyone knows i've been breaking up since sixth grade. by the time the sun began to edge out and the sky turning colors, I had to go and you were already gone. You had told me not to worry, you would come by the next day to pick up your bike.

the following morning I was still crashed out and making up sleep from several days end-to-end insomnia and stress of the move. when you came i missed you, and several calls you made. the messages you left were far from friendly. you thought i had made off with your bike, when it was just sitting in the backyard waiting for you. i couldn't get ahold of you after that, your phone had died and you hadn't paid the bill. i was good for my word, just like you. i kept your bike for you, for weeks.

I will always remember you well, and so sad for your child and your family and friends. it's really tragic we never got to see you shine. i wish you the best on the nonmaterial plane and hope to see you and embrace you, in the next. see that tall boy with the bowler hat and the wide and devious smile. kick back like we did, trading EDM tracks and war stories. how does that sound? sweet dreams, my friend, you are loved.

in memoriam -- JR Lindberg

KatYa

kids

we were kids we carried book bags we threw rocks at each other for fun we drank milk and ate cookies and laughed crumbs and stamped them out with our kicks with our boots with our sneaks with our heels with our might, we cried and we raged and we kissed -- harmlessly -- and if the winters storms had blustered and the snow had fallen and melted and then frozen overnight well it would break loose when we thundered down on it and you could hear the earth cracking under us and we laughed fearless, convinced we would never ever never ever never ever ever ever, die

Journal #05.11.15

When I was about eleven years old, my passions were stirred by the boys and girls my age. I guess I can say looking back I was inherently bi -- my attraction to boys was equally as strong as my attraction to girls. I had a girlfriend whom I mostly saw in school, and we would cut classes to go get swedish fish at the candystore just outside the perimeter of the fields. We would sit on the hill under the oak trees above the courts and sometimes touch. Our mouths were candy red and stained our lips like lipstick. She had clear and intelligent eyes rarely looked in one direction for long. Her bangs cut short and sharp against her pudgy cheeks, her skin softer and whiter than mine. We were both tall for our age. I cannot recollect why she liked me, but we would go adventure after school and find places to makeout. Other girls had actually taught me to french kiss in the freestanding garage next to the house I grew up in. And under the stairs on a bet in one of the latchkey kid's homes while listening to Tainted Love. The year was 1984. I shared Sylvia Plath's hometown (long before I knew she grew up there), a suburb of Boston, and I wore a navy blue jacket on cool spring and autumn days, with red felt lettering across the back. Boston Red Sox. Yaz was King at Fenway. Clemens was still a boy in Texas. An author named Samuel. The boys I knew not from school but from the neighborhood, and we grew up together already. Our gang would be dissolved over late night cocktail talk and mulling over choices and final decisions to send some of us to boarding or semi-boarding schools. We were in bed. The public school system was pretty good but not good enough. In my town, this was true of almost everything. People, places, things. Rare was contentment. The boys were loyal friends of mine. And I had long summer dances with them up and over the sloping hills. On either side of the tracks. Curfews were solidly enforced, and I rarely challenged my parents. I guess I was a good kid. But not behind their backs. I would fight with the boys, and it was playful. They were intent on sports. Their sisters were intent on yogurt and soaps. We watched serial horror in installments on film. We skated the ponds in the winter. Rare was contentment. In our home town. But back then, being a kid was glorious freedom from all the narrow-mindedness. They called us rascals as though we were getting away with something. Maybe we were getting away from something. We found content in small places, and exploited it for all it was worth.

Journal # 03.13.15

My friend asked me who I fell in love with. I think my first sustained love was within a friendship, towards a boy who lived down the street from me. We went to school together. His name was Nick. He looked like Elvis might have looked as a kid. Shock of hair. Vitality. Built natural in the chest. Roughneck youth. Rebel. Undisputed non-chalance. We used to spend lots of time playing video games and wrestling and outdoors in the snow in the winter, just playing until we were exhausted. I loved everything about him. And his family, too. They cared for me like I was their own. Very down to earth. Lots of laughter in the house. Lots of silliness. Dad was a crazy professor type. English teacher. When Nick transferred schools (he was getting into trouble academically speaking), we lost track of one another. Forever. I looked him up recently. I finally found him after many attempts of search by name. He is an artisan in Portland, Oregon and has won awards for his ceramics. He has a wife and i don't know but maybe kids. I did not contact him. I thought about it. The past is so angelic with us. Why not let it be? Just nice to know where he is, and that he is living a good life up north of here, about a ten hour drive. See? Part of me wants to make that journey back home. Part of us all the time, the urge to reconnect the dots. The moments of our lives. Find out if it all really happened, or was it a dream? And still... life as recounted by memory, is more and more a dream for me. I love life! I do! How it dissolves slowly on a really cold winter day, like a snowflake. Passes into the crux of the Four Winds. Dissolves into the Great Truth. The Divine Ground of Being.

vodka sun tonics

vodka sun tonics
Posted on December 10, 2014 

by KatYa


Living gave meaning and giving made meaning, as youth abandoned themselves lightly to the falls.

I felt blue and cried the color out of itself, unbearable facing the east at sunset.

Military drilling cost a heavy shilling, when shelling lobbed over the land. The purple hearts they would sink, into a deep pink, like olives in set vodka sun tonics.

You watch! you said, watching me, watching youth, themselves, abandoned lightly to the falls.

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

'and we miss you'

and we miss you

by Katya Mills

about innocence, lost

So they finally came over me… wonderfully…. sadly… terribly powerful but so could I only be humbled and basically in tears and sudden mourning and of course, somewhat secretly as is the fashion i guess,  a process instinctuelle - not contrived or deliberated or prepared…no, like all matters of things diverse and sundry, the need comes over me to tell somebody (and possibly nobody), though my faith resides all over planet heart to the core.  

Lineage download to the system 32, or in my case, 39 going on in cautious anticipation through the forty filter which now is like static or push off of some tropical blemish on some warm yummy blue sky caribbean dream day.

Every green spread of earth above sea level, from cuba to barbados across the cuts of rough waters swirling all directions and drawn into tight circles by the rising winds of an incubating tropical depression…

Hell!

The waves lap up against my thoughts with an empathic kiss and on slipping out away moments later. 

A child learning to read and write and get along. 

Just passed that frightening entrance into the great institution.

Now feeling warm and even cared for many days of the week.

Perhaps 'well-acclimated' and relieved to have been ushered in so sweetly…

with all my being I swear I would tear the fucking eyes out the head of the evil which came across and stole them from us…

she whose temples were rubbed -vi) ... the final cut)

She was not homicidal, she whose temples were rubbed
Violence was in her nature and yours. Maybe some Aztec. Some worship the sun
Maybe conceived on Mexican soil with a gun

Her parents became decidedly pacifist in the wake of all the bloodsport they boasted, as documented in the ledgers. Nobody read the ledgers. Pacifist was an unconditionally accepted façade

She wanted to live, made that choice early on
This was well-documented. On the cloud
The virtual copy spoke volumes
Real loud

Probably around four or five years
Suicide was dystonic to her and distasteful
She was clear as her favorite drink: one part lemon, one part tonic
She held it to the light like a chemist

To prevent its being corrupted, she drank it quickly
She was hard to figure
Was her finger on the pulse?
Or was it a trigger?

She excited all the men, and half the women
And one third of the royal family
A high figure
Indeed

Strange, how the only one (unseen) in all whom exist
who shakes up their rocks with a twist of her wrist
recovers her balance despite leaning - en list

now give us. 
        give us. now
give us a kiss

When all her luck seemed away from her
our loveless child of gen eXxers
true marinated in grunge
wore cycling reflectors

She drew to her temples
(like the strike of a match)
a guardian to protect her

Who held her down in the chair
where she cursed and she howled
caressing the pulse of her dome
where calm was endowed

The healing was practiced
not random
she could give a damn
about facebook and fandom


Damn! our girl cried
young girl, leaving youth
massaged all the way
-- past gloss and glass
and glitz and glamour --
all the way to the truth
and thereby enamored

The thoughts that once clamored
and crowdsurfed her brow
excised at the temples
the fingertips ploughed

The flying cuts flew
unlocking the locks
all the cuts
from her temples
right down to her socks

A wave of great and invigorate feeling
 this young girl, leaving youth
-once damning found expression-
self-resolved as they say

fresh love welled up
self-propelled
by the way         -- fin

young family portrait @ dawn

The day started well. We were asleep, as the night folded in and retreated, real quiet like. Real nice. Left without anyone knowing she left. After sharing her stars and her sweet summer darkness. Her shade cooled the earth and the air and the waters. She asked nothing in return, no, nothing at all. The night she retreated, and the day came, to call.

The air was a cool fifty. The sound of the silence was heavy, delicious. Like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Quiet. Rich. Impermeable and whole. The air, a cool fifty, going on fifty-five. Circulating through town, with the taste of corn and scent of almond, and sweet summer wildflower. She carried the scent of sweet wildflower honey.

Then the birds started up, politely, maybe two at a time. The calls they repeated, maybe three by three times. Then tried out a different spacing, between breaths. Carefully setting the tone. Up in the trees, or down under eaves. Outside the home, in a nest papered with leaves.

 A clock am radio, at a low volume humm. Some nightshift wonder, still talking fresh into the day. With a warm-hearted colloquial, and a laughter contagion. Rare few would catch it, the laughter contagion. The lucky night owls. He shared his thoughts so sweetly, and with such elation. Through speakers. Talking to anyone. Drinking hot coffee in his sneakers. Laughing about kids in his life, maybe nephews and nieces. About coming together...or falling to pieces.

The day started well. The air a cool fifty. The birds set the tone. Against the graveyard shift dj and the wonderful silence. The box fan shared generously, the breeze from the delta. We felt it come over us, in our dreams and subconscious.

We were all asleep in the apartment. The Tibetan bell hung from the ceiling fan, softly chiming every once in a while. The ceiling fan spun slow on its calmest rotation, pushing the moist delta breeze, pusing fifty. Pushing it around. The air did not care. Kinda liked to be touched.

The moon was running high, when it started to fade out, like an ice cube dropped into a warm summer sky. The moon, she had offered us all many chances. Chances for romances in the tall grasses. Chances to find what we otherwise lost. Chances to appeal to some final burst of energy. Some reservoir typically untapped. The moon offered chances, before fading out. In the tall grasses, in the outskirts. In the outskirts of the city.

The sun came up slow and easy. Would have been shot down in a gunfight. So there would be no gunfight, not when the sun appeared that way. The day anticipated peace. The scavengers hung their heads and searched the soil for worms. The sun warmed the earth, and made the day up like soft clay. The sun made the day. The day like soft clay.

We all awoke to this. This soft day of clay and moist air, set into tranquility. With birds and clock radios, calling us out. Circulating air a cool fifty. Summer dawn sun and moonlight, kinda blue.

You and me, and the kittens make four. Four little creatures inside a small house. We all awoke, all four, all four of us. Number: 4. We all awoke in one room, but only one at a time. One by one by one by one. First was the kitten, the orange one, to be sure. The orange tiger tabby woke up by your feet. By your feet, in the sheet, curled up by your feet.

Next was me, I woke up next. Back to your chest. My soft summer feeling arose from hard, wicked dreams. My countenance, upset. Almost disturbed. But my youth returned to me in a flash, not just thoughts but some feeling. I could feel your arms around me, and your body come up against me. I was harbored by you, that's why I smiled in the sheets. The cats were curled up like some ropes around cleats.

I smiled in the sheets, by the bay window there. In the cool air. The blue white light. With the kittens at our feet. This was so welcome, like the sound of the birds and the box fan and radio. Like the silence that surrounded and harbored us, each morning.

You were still asleep, next to me. Next to me. I was slowly awakening to the light of the day. And the orange tiger tabby, who awoke first of four? His big brown eyes looked in mine. Up from a valley, behind the white sheets. Behind the pure dream of my waking, and yours. With the light from the east, and you by my side. With a kitten by the west wall and another by the east. And those beautiful brown eyes.

Those golden brown eyes. Your golden brown skin.
My pale figure, heavy rising up from the bed. To replete the hummingbird feeder, with liquid sugar. To get some OJ out of the freezer. To pour orange into blue cup.

Then you raised your pretty golden head. And you got yourself up.
Then the cat by the west wall, stretched up like a pony.
The kitten. The west wall. The starch sheets and moist air. The blue and white dawn of the day, so clear. I awoke next to you, next to you, my dear.

by Katya 07/13
kissilent.wordpress.com