more than most can take

remember when

            we were

glazed
twisted
french
cake?

with instant coffee
at the break
and more than most
can take?

all i got is your

flat screen tv
a drill
i wanna sell
some inkjet printers from

the land of lost toys
where we once lived

you related with
tv characters over me

not the people
not the actors
but parts they were playing
police detectives
not real ones

to miss the
true crime

broken heart hypersensitives
in the land of no shame
got what we wanted
(was) high all the time. how strange
to know it (and still proceed knowing)
how counterfeit

why is that so fascinating?

you had me too
under cosmos
free internet speed
windows #7
pharmaceutical-grade weed
(you had me)
all about the
floor

my clothes
you washed them dry
i could not keep up with our snail-paced life
i tried

i guess i wrote all
over you
too

nobody scared me like me
and you in our sorry spiral
toppled up to the dresser
where we made up a million times

our palette of minerals
buff and of cream
finishing powder

at home where
we were sure never to
be seen

KatYa
(remix @ 2011)

story

GWB 1.17.1 a videobook

flash

helicopters and obamaphones and you

Life can be pretty strange and you don’t know what to make of it, so take it as it comes. Last night I went to bed in our beloved police state and woke up startled at 8pm as a helicopter was flying very low with loudspeakers and searching for a ‘suspicious person’ near eggplant alley. All the soft edges of the last polite evening have been pushed and shoved and formed into something bigger than the pushes and shoves. We are left this morning with a lot or enough or something more than nothing I guess. A thermos of coffee sweetened with cream and sugar… and I still don’t know how things will work out between us, you and me, or if it will continue on and be space harboring satellite transmissions to obamaphones and tower drops. I remember when it was once chemistry. And then it was magic. That lasted quite a while but not long enough. Once you have magic you can get awfully upset when you lose magic. You want anyone who had anything to do with the magic to disappear, because they remind you of the magic you lost. And now I am left peaceful and guarded, cause if you come with your late afternoon talk show dsyfunction a-knockin on my door, I might just have to call the cops.

running

the weather broke @ a record fifteen miles -iii

The sunlight was cheering me up and the kind exchanges I had with passerbys along the way. I was softening at a point in the run where I figured I woulda been going into ‘warrior’ mode. I passed a woman who looked awfully sad and wished I coulda cheered her up. A young man cruised past me on the uphill, doing sprints. There was a lady getting coached on the Guy West bridge, and I thought about my boyfriend who was gonna follow me on his bike today but had to cancel. I think it’s just as well – I like to run alone.

I always see many homeless encampments and the homeless folks either are keeping to themselves or, in my experience, are just as kind as anyone if you give them a shout and a smile. There are pits and labs off leash sometimes by the river, but I found so long as I don’t scare easy and just keep running toward them, everything will be okay. Only once (last week) did I change course because a dog was running toward me bellowing. He turned out to be more bark than bite.

The last four miles would prove to be the hardest, tracing the river west on the levee, but by this time I was just a slow train to sacramento and I was able to remove myself from the effort so that I honestly felt my body was its own charge and recharging system (paired with a couple more packs of gummies i stashed in my flipbelt), so all I had to do was envision finishing and get out of the way.

The idea of feeling pain crossed my mind but never really caught hold! Again, training in the heat had acclimated me to a higher threshold of pain. It gets so heavy some days when I finish these levee runs close to noon, I find myself dipping off the trail around sutter’s landing (2 miles from home) and splashing the cool clean waters over me to cool off. Today I still had cool breezes coming over me, which made all the difference in the world.

I made it home in 2 hours 45 minutes – exactly 11 minute miles x15 miles = 165 minutes. I made it! My boyfriend is really nice and he took me out for a large Peach Perfection at Jamba Juice to celebrate the victory.

running

the weather broke @ a record fifteen miles -ii

The first mile to the american river had me feeling strong and not as tight as previous days, I sure was psychologically prepared, and as I summited the levee to the railway the 7am amtrak leaving downtown sacramento chugged east, blocking my path. I fell into the rhythm of the train and got a good visualization for myself as I stood there waiting and running in place. Be like a train, be like a train. Several miles later it occured to me that birds are like mantra bodies because they often sing the same song over and over all their lives! This reminded me how useful my own mantras have become, and reassured me it’s not a needless to practice these repetitions: nam-myoho-renge-kyo. I had been singing it in the shower before sunrise.

Once I snuggled up next to the river, I picked up my pace a bit to the cool delta breeze carrying across the levee. The visor of my hat kept the red rising sun out of my eyes, as I ran due east for another mile before following the river bend south at paradise beach. It must have been 60F and I am acclimated to running later in the day, towards 75F, so my weekday training gave me an edge for the early morning long runs.

There is a boat launch with a water fountain at mile six, so I was able to stop and hydrate for a minute and take a pack of energy gums with electrolytes there. Quickly I got back on the trail, and I was feeling fantastic. My breathing has gotten easier and easier the more I run, which is what happens to long distance runners. Your body is amazing and learns to make the most of the oxygen. I always hit my inhaler before any run, because otherwise my asthma makes me wheeze, but two blasts is all I ever need before any run no matter the distance.

I discovered that mile 7 is about where I begin to loosen up and hit my stride. The trail took me under a couple of highways and now the sun had climbed and lotsa people were out walking their dogs and cycling and running, too. Some of the early morning fishermen had packed in their river waders and were heading home, climbing the levee right before my eyes. The american river is full of salmon and snowmelt off the Sierras. I did my U-turn and headed back on a slight incline then stopped again at the same water fountain at mile 9, as it was the only water I would get on my run…

running

the weather broke @ a record fifteen miles -i

Before you let yourself start believing change cannot be kind, remember how summer breaks into fall and the most welcome change of all. I confess I hit the café for the pumpkin latté this morning to celebrate. The sweetness of the drink did of course mask her flavour, so I did what any good lover of coffee might well do and went home to top her off with a fresh pot. Since then I have been shining commensurate with the rising sun. Reading all the headlines may we not be pinioned by tragedy, no, may we only resonate with the triumphs in the world. Wanna try?

Yesterday I ran a new personal best in distance, down the river and back, more than 15 miles. I run a slow pace, slow and steady and I don’t care, eleven minute miles. The idea is to run and enjoy running long distances (my mom is funny, she’s calling me forrest gump). I tallied 41 miles across a five day stretch last week: 6-9-6-5-15. Each day more painful than the next, but I prayed to god saturday night I would wake up feeling ready and able to do the morning long run… and sure enough when I got up @ 3am sunday i felt okay and took it slow, ate a bowl of noodles and drank a thermos of black london tea no.1, did some light stretching to the gems of piano sonatas strung out by the gentleman on public radio, wrote a little, read a Russian fairytale, laced up my gray wolf Nike Pegasus runners, took a B complex vitamin and a caffeine pill, drank some organic juices and water, buttered my skin with Banana Boat, charted my course on g.maps, shook it out and hit the trail at marathon standard time, 7am…

excerpt

 

 

“I watched over my little sister of the emerald eyes, she had fallen fast asleep on the leather beside me in the back of the sweet car Freddy had brought back to life now pushed into fourth gear, the tachometer up then backed up off the redline, all the windows open for the salty sea reconditioning of hair, lungs and spirits, Bless in the shotgun looking back at us, Kell using me for a pillow, and above us the towering red of the golden gate aspiring to the heavens, as we cruised on and on, into Marin county and the break of dawn.”   — from Ame & the Tangy Energetic

bubble tea in the rooms of death

Conservatism surrounded me. A comfortable keeping to ourselves on the wings of transaction, give and take, society set up such that any otherwise lively action be tourniquet by predictable social etiquette, unnatural at best, dull and senseless concession to an all American model of commerce, profitable for sure and devoid of interest. I enjoyed my bubble tea in these rooms of death. Taking my sweet time, a sidestep from life. Only the tapioca between my teeth would burst with lifelike flavor amidst the somnolence. Then shot down the esophagus to the only exit from the constriction of our numbered days. God bless America.

remix

dominoes. heaps of clothes -iii

They are dropping chlorine bombs again, while we splash our faces with the ones in our faucets, garnish with lemon and salt, now saddled with inhalers ready and breathless, in a homemade salt water sensory deprivation tank of fish, we are the fish, all is quiet and swimming in social medium. Crystal hot sauce splatters over the oysters in a postmodern spasm, slide off their rocks to Sitting Tongue who awaits. waiting. all we got this morning is waiting for confessions for paydays for unemployment checks for new leaders with new promises made, waiting for the promises to be made good, or not, or more to come.

i was waiting for you and my internal (programming) to stop the isolating (command) and go outside where you told me the sun still shines, waiting for the sun (listening to the Doors) in a bathtub on the run, completely thrilled was all i got (when i had you) and the two cats – Shy and Drama – somehow all my adult life all the cats again and again protect the sanctity of my life, but you, there is you and me and (we are) more than most (cats) can handle  – in 2011 – we had our homeless friends looking for homes we had our home which we would not have much longer, we had been told. you and me we have grown but not grown old. we have been abused and abused we have, tossed our litanies into the fire of another conjured argument with friends or enemies or one another and the same. all i got is you and our song remains the same. the hook is the only problem.

all we got is enemies. number one on the hot list of those who hate our guts? you. and me. in the space between us god bore witness, well, that’s the kind of sentence got strung out and led to the forest path this morning, sometimes urgency in it, too, or swollen with bottom dwollen wrath (Allman brothers can soothe us only so long).

all i got is my music sometimes. this morning all i got is a cloud and the light so bright its perfectly loud and hurts my head a bit. but i got medication for that. OT and C what i got? i got meds and antibacterial handwash a tropical sea color blue with bubbles trapped in there like, well, like leaders trapped behind their military might in Syria in Egypt in Tunisia in Iran in Yemen in Algeria…trapped like bubbles in a cascading tropical Facebook blue ignited and (it had been said) long overdue…

like me and you. take us back and stamp us red and pay for us so we can recirculate back into the system where some unfortunate child some day will wander away and pull us off a darkened shelf in the horror section, to look through to the other side. ya, all i had back then was a pretty good feeling we would stay alive and survive the two and the ones (these numbers gotta add up to something), on a day was February twenty-one, twenty-eleven.  0.2.2.1.2.0.1.1. numbers add up to nine …

#9
KatYa, 2016 remix 2011

remix

dominoes. heaps of clothes -ii

the little panels were etched plastic
if you lined them up right you
solved a code
and then they let you link
up and in

made a clicking sound
each time a panel hit the wooden table
(a computer will try and replicate this
but won’t ever cut it. thank god)

the exhaust out the back
continued for hours (rising against the snowfall)
black fossil fuels somehow taken into
the sky tone

crisp and light and exposed
unlike before when
it was soft and
dark and unseen

well. you and me we would have it all
exposed
on a beaten path
now road. on a long road
west

moving moving moving
as if there was anywhere better
to go