identity

I was given life

I was given a name
I was given a gift
I could locate your heart

You opened your heart
You gave me a gift
You called me by name

You gave me life

© Katya WM

by the lake. by the sea. first love.

the author. self-portrait. Katya

by the lake was i

girl without a guy

by the sea was he

guy without a girl

 

by the time we met

after sun had set

all the lonely hearts

encircled

 

a sea of shells

a lake of thirst

they drank of us

to sound of bells

 

this love

we shared 

the kiss

our first

4 lives to tell. everlasting

the first life. somewhere in the former soviet union. daughter to a cossack warrior. mother died at birth. moved to st petersburg and learned the city.

the second life. germany. a boy. an aryan specimen. father was a treecutter in the black forest. mother was an.herbalist. everyone apolitical and thus good-natured.

third life. unknown. ended in miscarriage. time in womb was rough, as mom was falling victim to the machinations of a cruel and heartless world. stress levels caused an chemical imbalance which turned deadly.

fourth life. Paris. daughter to a Huguenot. the dove hangs from the symbol. this is how i remember. a good life. parents artisans. life steeped in loving wonder.

around this time, my creative energies, once dormant and passed over for to meet the great thirst of survival, were planted. seeded for future manifestation.

many lives later the blossoming of creativity encompassed my being, and strengthened and fortified an otherwise tenuous grip on life and sanity. a portal opened up to a great and spacious flowering, imbued with fine tuned intuitions and novel purpose.

in this world now, the magic has culminated. rooted in compassion. ancestral stories to be told. shared to help turn the darkness to light, everlasting.

Substrata

I support you, said the strata below. The strata was unimpressed.

He laid himself lengthwise out under the sun, facing away. With nothing to say.

The substrata wanted to cry and fall to pieces, but was very brave and held herself together. For the strata.

The strata did not hardly notice. He wrapped himself soft around the moon.

The one below wrapped herself unseen around him. Her utmost energies enveloped the strata and the moon. Like a homespun cocoon.

That night the earth moaned and trembled and shook a bad dream. The terrifying terribles tumbled up through earth. A wave emanated out the circumference. The center of which, where dreams arise.

The morning. Heralded by a rooster. Cocked with a pigeon step out into space. Firm and feathered. Solitary horn.

The sun rose over a fissured and crumbling sub surface. The strata was sunken. The moon gone around the bend.

The sun exposed its every sunken ripple harshly. The strata. Searching for an edge to burn.

None was to be found. The angered sun set fire to the land, all around. Sirens and trucks. The running of the wildlife. Away away away. Trees crashing through the canopy.
The strata lay low and frightened. Whole and untouched. Chosen to exist. Loved and held once, not long ago. Burning fields all around. The sound the sound the sound! No oxygen in the air. Consumed, the world.

The only love alive, recalled. The strata knew, remembered! And lit up and turned its weary back around to face her finally. To fall to fall to fall into her loving arms!

All was left to face, was bits and broken pieces. Some bed of torn up gravel, no! No no no. This cannot be! The strata felt alongside groping lengthwise up and down for her.

But she was never to again be found. Just as lost as she had been. Hours before the moon had gone around the bend. And out to shine.

To shine across the sea.

We are

We are undergoing cosmic shock and evolution…We are learning how to breathe again… We are justifiably hungry as we slowly spin towards our destiny of changes…

We are.

Make no mistake. You can sit in front of the television and still undergo radical shifts of consciousness. You can be all alone and inextricably part of this thing.

You can blow yourself away. Still you are with us. In little pieces. Reflecting light from the inside out. Getting to work, cell by cell, in the grande orchestral movement.

Stop talking.
Keep talking.
Does not matter.
Lock the door.
Open your heart.
Say no say yes.

We matter. We are matter. We subsist on supernovas. We lunch in Andromedas cool atmospheric halls.

Hendrix is there teaching constellations bold ill-advised new alignment. Hemingway is fishing in a black hole. Virginia Woolf is walking the frozen quiet woods of Saturn’s ring, with our mothers mother’s mother.

Nothing is ever lost.
Need not fear the change.
All we are, so shall remain.

In mutual collective admiration society…In reckless prolific creative propriety… In dreamstate loving perpetuity…

And in reality.

murder. in broad daylight

The sun was beating dust into the bricks, the world snug inside its atmosphere. Young students typed away on tablets, phones and laptops inside one of Portland Oregon’s more popular coffeehouses. Within striking distance of an accredited local university favored for its substrata of adult summer coursework, all DIY-focused. If you wanted to learn how to build a computer from scratch or make a zoo from scrapped metals, this was the place to be, circa 2003.

The owners of the café were a man and woman from Pennsylvania and Alaska, respectively, and had established a friendship from their days past as bike couriers in Seattle. She wore her hair mohawk. He was recovering from an attempted reverse mohawk. Never let someone on acid near your head with a pair of shears, was the lesson-du-jour. Even if it’s your best friend in the whole wide world.

The barista girls were counting out change behind the steamship enterprise, and drawing maple leaves out of foam in each and ever latté. This particular morning saw well-spirited banter in between giggling laughter. The aforementioned victim of reverse mohawk had arrived, wearing pantyhose on his head, to conceal the crime.

At exactly five minutes after eleven am, pacific standard time, all fingers hovered motionless over virtual and physical keyboards, inside the café.

All eyes turned toward the long faux marble counter, behind which an irreverent prankster of a girl from Alaska, with blue and green spikes of frozen hair touching sky in a five-pointed inline star cutting through steam and coffee aromatics, was holding pantyhose just out of reach of the grasping tatted arms of her famed partner and co-pilot in the steamship enterprise.

A cheshire cat grin extended across her lips, as she shielded her prize with her body, shouting: LOOK EVERYBODY, IT’S MY BROTHER FRIM ANOTHER MOTHER!

The tragedy became complete, when our poor beloved Pennsylvania transplant turned to face the student body, with only the counter between him and them, and not tall enough to hide the DIY fail. His eyes tried to follow the path the others all took, and rose toward the sky. The sun set red hot on his face, then…

Murder. In broad daylight.

Murder. In the eyes.

She looked around the city night. The canopy provided by the trees made this street darker than others. Low hanging branches and leaves flecked shadow into the metallic orange light painting the sidewalks.

A sociopath stood unseen. Camouflaged against the papered concrete walls like a barred owl.

She sensed him and he sensed her sensing him.

Were she only distracted by an iphone or earbuds, he thought. But he would not be disappointed, standing there, silently watching her navigate the street in her fishnets and heels.

Only his pupils moved across the smudge of cirrhotic, ashen pale of eyes.

In the walkway between buildings, not far from there, beneath a basement apartment’s window well, out of sight, lay the crumpled formless residue of human life and spirit. Breathless and emptying itself of fluid.

The spirit of the dead hung heavily over the sociopath, like a large cotton overcoat immersed in a pool of blood of all the ones had died by his hand in the night. A parade of frozen faces preoccupied his mind, his thoughts.

She gripped her pepper spray tight. She knew the unnatural evils under city lights, might come out the woodwork and contend with her sex.

She remained unafraid, carrying herself gracefully across the pavements. Aware the heavies were awash in their own karma.

Some terror of what one has done and cannot undo. Gyre of samsara, spinning down toward the core of the earth. For infinity. Forever.

something great

There’s something going on. I can feel it. As I carefully position the linked hearts floormats in my car. The floor is now hidden beneath a trail of pink hearts in the corner of a clean black fairway.

There’s something going on. I can feel it. As I squegee my windshield and f@ck it – my whole car. Too tired to locate a carwash. There’s a drought anyway. Call it ‘saving water’.

Palestine is burning. I’m saving water. But I would donate the entire Sierra Nevada snowpack to Palestine. What’s left of it.

The snow melt.
Palestine.

I’m trying to reach my friend Sunshine’s house in West Sacramento. There’s a protest blocking the street. They want to end police brutality. The bullhorn is leading the crowd in a cheer:

Hands Up!
Don’t Shoot!
Hands Up!
Don’t Shoot!

There’s something going on. Spreading like wildfire across the Internet. Your kids are dying to go see.

Some innocent black kid got murdered in Missouri, the Gateway to the West. Some guilty cop shot him six times. And twice in the head. Not all cops are bad news. But this one is.

Hands Up!
Don’t Shoot!

I can feel it. Something going on. I’m driving on a bridge. High above Sacramento River. Water looks so yummy nice. Against the high noon valley summer drought. There’s a little house with a shingled roof being propelled slowly down the river. Not a houseboat. A house.

I can feel it. So lucky to live here in this peaceably violent land. USA. Individuals with guns will never be controlled. That’s why they got guns to begin with.

So lucky. My friend sunshine. Like a sister to me. She’s excited. She was given a large canvas, and now she’s quitting her job.

She’s gonna paint a woman with ribbons in her hair. Stitched into the canvas. Her daughter’s middle name is Anais.

The woman will have razor blades hanging from the ribbons hanging from her hair, and around her head a mandala.

Like a halo?
No, not a halo. More like an aura.

I can feel it.
I can already feel it.
It’s gonna be something great.
Something really great.
Like sunshine.

missing you

Early saturday morning. USA. Someone took a bite out of the supermoon. The neighborhood sounds like noon.

A girl is out on the front lawn, yelling about her parents. She is distressed. Saying she will call the cops. Someone trying to hush her.

Someone stole something from her. She won’t say what it is. Plenty of dogs barking all around. The neighborhood sounds of noon.

I guess you wanna see me. Talk to me. You let me know in a text. I really wanna see you too. Someone took a bite out of my heart. I might have to call the cops.

I miss you. It’s so hard to keep a distance. I don’t wanna feel upset. Lonely when i am with you.

I listen to the sounds around me. To drown the ones inside me.

Maybe i will see you some day.
I wish I hope we can.
Maybe soon.
We can meet at high noon.
In the garden.
Behind the café.

Watch “memory. untitled #2” on YouTube

memory. untitled #2: http://youtu.be/eHkqYCU19RY

Original song written and performed by Katya Mills
© 2014