hair tied back
they mix chemicals into buckets
with water with beats
distorting the sound slowing it down
hands and knees for you
mopping waxing dusting
on the ground for you conceptualizing
open the valves fire up the boilers
in the cold for you
smiling when the work is done they
disperse into the heights
leaving behind an unreal
shine #katyamills
good versus bad could be the subject line in so many stories we tell one another, the backdrop for the narrative tales that thread in and out of the jacks in the boxes, the sevens the elevens, the wall green white hens laying eggs on your bank account until they topple and fall below zero to get charged lacking overdraft protections, the bank tricked out the selections, egg in your eye so all you see in the yolk of your mirror is some bloke whose tramped out and you clean and stamped out with some substandard nonglass maybe bleach infused product, summer tanned to understand and bleached on the beach, privileged to be lazy with your reach for the cell phone to make ends meet in another zip code, a city street, an elevation way up high in a place of certain control and power, soon to be undertowed away having worn the boot too long and through, having anchored yourself in one place. bombs away they say as they raze you — only you can raise a new you — a locus among locusts where from all the lofty semi-ideas truck over inferieures in hemis with emmys and gaze, bent over forward or backward or side to side just to hide your true feelings toward someone not quite befitting the mantle, the boss, the one who commands, the one who destroys outside thinking, the one who insulates the factory and checks off on imbalances. on the balance sheet of life its quite clear that the eggwhites of eyes register the very zero so many are fearing and steering as far clear of as may be consciously possible, and who knows where the unconscious is going sometime, personally or collectively dreaming away on a counter. what makes life interesting, makes truth stranger in many ways and harder to pinpoint than an invention of some no good for nothing unemployed poet mentored by purportedly self-actualized dharma bums and beats, optimized daily with new vegan recipes of brown sugarcane juice and cost-cutting and paper-saving methodology, supplemented by earth focused animal-friendly strawberry goo, and rather fascinating for a bonus, right? and that’s what they think of you and me, too.
Maybe in 2016 we can put our Beats headphones on and drown out the world. Maybe someone will hit us over the head and we will fall in a snow bank. Maybe we will wake up and have a whole different take on life, seeing remarkable visions and offering to pump gas for people at filling stations. Maybe we will fall in love with the first person we see, and ignore all the subsequent restraining orders. Maybe we will get confused and our cell phone won’t be able to get us out of it. Maybe our confusion will lead us home, in a roundabout way, and we will recall 2015 like it was a long, long time ago. Maybe we will have our records expunged and our CDs sponged, and become honorary members of our households. Maybe we will get edged out by all the millenials, and feel special on the margins; a wide open space about to get marked up. That’s where we get to go and write all our notes, anyway. And when anyone looks back, they will only care about us, they won’t even bother with the mainstream. In twenty seventeen.
K IS SILENT 