One of the giants of industry had trouble at home. his wife would not speak to him and his kids ran away. he was a god at work, and very alone. he would scream early mornings in the elevator and rising. then, self forgotten, go calmly about his business. he didn’t even realize his secretary wanted to sleep with him.
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| concert by k |
The world did not wake me up singing on a Friday, unless a whistle in my bones counts. Over a pastry from Pushkin Bakery and coffee, I tried to manifest my namesake and bring Hurricane Katia out of the Gulf of Mexico and into my energies ona late summer early fall morning. She was swirling around so heavy, I was liable to knock some neighborhoods around. I had to figure out could I settle all my madness, and make it righteous good?
you told me again how it happened. you found a diary from two years ago, and read me an entry from a single day. what you wrote came to pass. you got to feeling good about yourself. you were tired of living in a room and board. you stopped taking your meds when they ran out. before long, there would be empty bottles of vodka under your bed. you lost touch with reality. you stopped returning calls and closed your door, and began to drown. again…this is not the first time we have said goodbye. i make sure to hold on longer because i know how bad it gets when you fall. i am just a counselor, tangential to your life. you have worked so hard this time, i’m proud of you. you inspired the others. i hope we won’t see you here again but if we do, we will be family and embrace you.
i found my peace in silence
one moment you feel little, then large, and in between. some hang on to your every word, while others wouldn’t know you exist. you care about something, you care some more, then the world becomes full with meaning and you couldn’t care more. you could care less.
chalk drawn sidewalks told a story of the city on a sunday morning. the heat was beginning to climb upon us with the sun in the sky. i took some coffee and you had water and we walked three corners of the square. many of the artists were down on their elbows touching up. a kid who had not learned to talk looked in our eyes and pointed enthusiastically at some faces in the stone. no longer alone.
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| solar eclipse 08.17 |
Some of us tune our instruments to metal, find the harmonics, amplify them and get bent. I wanted to be one of those, but I didn’t have an amplifier or an instrument or a room or a friend. I prayed to god for a fireplace where I could burn for you. I would. I had become inflexible like the white metal rabbits and within the realm of being bent out of shape.
I was far from worn thin with love. I followed ideas tangentially to distant and unrelated ends… my younger self had grown old and retired. Typically far from inspired. I must have committed some literary felony, for soon I could no longer read. I had a curious relationship with speed. It’s a crime to torture a soul with words made from sounds of a cacophonous hole.
This is what i offer you, I told myself, dying. The black sheep’s fleece. To warm you like Kentucky’s finest. The past? no worries, shes fallen behind us. I urge you get waxy, let flow… the degenerate benevolence of liquid smooth language. One spirit, survived anguish so deep it near killed you.
I languished well near obscurity, until i found a little peace in letting go, to take with me down that long hall back home, the one without shadows or light. Water, laughter, a kind word, awaited me. Even prayer would be welcome there. These words ahead of me are here to be written. To describe all our likeness in ways and intangibles, to know with a knowing that cannot be described.
If you know what i mean, if you’ re grateful like I am, if you’ve survived and cast shadow…then go ahead and read these words I have trained to be and be still. May they bring you all out like flowers by the sun. I need your devious smile, your shadow, your light. Before the rabbit turns metal, then white. – KatYa, 2017
K IS SILENT 