#PTSD

watching the many screens 

killing the endless hours and

they say there’s a heart in your chest

i don’t remember and they say 

there’s thoughts in your skull

i don’t know. but it’s better

to be numb than feel

#katyamills

spirit plasticity

immortal again our spirits ascended

having circled the drain for years inside the human body

had we only remembered the future

we would have long ago wished

we were dead

#katyamills

either or

they wanted us dead

like an error in some brittle code 

we could crash the system

and the system wasn’t nothing

without us

#katyamills

translucent orange

my brother made a family 

to keep the lineage alive while i 

produced only a masterpiece 

literary in nature to mark 

these times

#katyamills

1984

the song hit the radio 

we ran for many blocks 

like someone left our cage open we

caught our breath in an army navy store

it was 1984. you held a pocket knife

under my neck. gimme all you got

my face turned red and hot

i dropped an elbow in your gut you 

were my best friend

#katyamills

paper gray

in the fields they look like deformed volleyballs

paper lanterns in the trees

why retire? the old man said 

keep working. eighty can feel like fifty 

paper gray wasp nests 

manufactured under the eaves

#katyamills

silverado

i drank the sugar water out

the bottom of a snow 

cone took a tumble in the forest

jumped a ’78 Silverado for some men

gathering cedar wood for the winter

you cannot fake happiness why

would you?

#katyamills

leaving base camp

base camp

cool dead quiet before dawn

jumps into packs tied down

sheets spikes knots

and clothes

a thousand eggs for breakfast

a hundred cups tapped off 

the coffee urn

radios full of feedback 

my love my love the dreamers 

swoon

above the swirling winds 

howl around a hidden

peak

#katyamills

my subconscious

the things that keep me up at night

cats on catnip and cars on petrol

 kids lighting explosives in the alley

no longer bother me. you could say they

save me from my subconscious

#katyamills

scout

the scouts covered alot of ground 

in the 45 hours i was away

formed a line along the baseboards

dove into gaps in the caulking

yet they would not find the 

sugar

#katyamills