some joined the merchant marines some
emptied their bank accounts got in their cars and plain disappeared
if you asked them
they would cite neither
love of travel nor
moral obligation
but a desire to escape the drudgery
working for a balance sheet fighting
inflation
#katyamills
the nine to five to nine
with escapism was perfectly
in line. they got plenty of bread
never went home or let it get
to the head
#katyamills
they pick your bones
because they can and
you’re supposed to take it
capitalism says so
you haven’t figured how
to dismantle that so you get drunk and sad
turning your anger
inward #katyamills
America today feels like the same old bedrock of world power we’ve maintained since the first world war. a hundred years old. in her shadow she feels like fury and sound under an amphetamine sky. stout moral fortitude condensed into some lone wolf capital minded lobbyist fighting a tide of rising interest rates and people who care about something other than money. amortized forms trapped within a threadbare atmosphere. thinning arguments floated to buy time to solve the latest imperial conundrum. underclothes made of petrol product as we pitch our protests high against fossil fuels… wondering how can we unpack it… formulaic disobedience left unpunished to our dismay. we come home to blackened soot of unbecomings, where before was pastoral beauty. our unified material focused attention on one bloodbath after another through the news feed and sound byte of choice. amusement park of adrenal cells worked out again on the unoxygenated dashboard. we hold together somehow. like polar ice drifting toward the equator. maybe it’s hope. #katyamills
here was okay
but nothin like nowhere
rummaging through shops
4 clothes @ war with capitalism
venmo fugitives
we tore through the firewalls
they constructed
bleedin us for pennies
on the other side
laughing
#katyamills
the will of the people cannot always
prevail. we see this in Hong Kong even in the States
where capitalism fights democracy
to a draw
#katyamills
Any need to explain yourself by your heritage was obviated by the sameness. Whether you liked it or not you would be classified by your skin color, initially. Even the ones classifying you would insist they were not. Sadly, some might not even know they were, such was the state of lack of self-awareness in the cell phone capital saturated in binary polar regime.
Oversaturated with char-broil
ranch sauce and carpet sales
pitches
how would we survive
if we rented out
our heads
come knocking
first of the month
they look at us incredulous
shaking out a hook
the jingle
pay up motherfucker
you live on our land
what
did you think
this was
free
An eighth day was added to the week and Gregorian calendar, without approval of the Church. This allowed the populace a seventy-two hour yawn, aka ‘seventh day stretch’, before returning to the essential five day work week. And archived the general american angst.
The State Department Store sold the new issue calendar copy out of refurbished former Sears franchises, which offered ample square footage for safe houses and the novel Homeland Security and Exchange Commission.
The HSEC was setup as a critical watchdog to oversee and protect American interest overseas, now that shares of the United States, Incorporated, sold at a slight premium to its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange.
The trillion plus dollars raised in this remarkable, unprecedented, scandalous public offering, spearheaded by the now defunct President Trump, Donald
(whose final veto of the critical congressional legislation set to block his party’s ‘Incorporation of the States’ initiative preceded his impeachment)
was now being issued toward the most unfortunate application of architectural mindtrust ever known to man, aka the blueprinting of a male counterpart to miss america herself, the Statue of Liberty.
The giant slab of poured concrete was already spiraling up out of the waters like a Dairy Queen soft ice cream cone, to house the new symbol of grand patriarchy ever alive and well.
Apollo, of course, was the model.
The Trump Tower affiliate, of course, had been jettisoned.But plans to use the hollow carbon fiber globe situated firmly within Apollo’s head of reinforced steel, for home offices for the New Chairman of the Board and CEO of the United States, Inc.
(and not necessarily the President)
were subpoenaed by the Justice Department, and were now being relentlessly scrutinized by the tired eyes of the Attorney General, with the Supreme Court perched precariously over his shoulder, overlooking the whole sordid affair.
Meanwhile, an Pan-Euro-Middle-Asian Investment Cabinet of whose who, had been vetted atop the tallest edifice in Dubai, and was now casting its first votes under a mirrored ceiling, over pi
nk champagne on ice, to determine what would really happen across the Atlantic.
Sitting at the head of this VIP table of leaded glass with platinum trim of inlaid pearl, was none other than the greatest surprise of the evening, most touching to all… the prime beneficiary of all global casino holdings and friend to all four seasons, fair women and men.
No, don’t be scared. Just pay attention, brush your hair out your eyes. We can get you that haircut we have been waiting to get you, I mean, for you to get. Ummm… I promise, things will be better this way. This is life! Hold the tv. I know it sounds strange. Listen to your heartbeat for a minute… see? It’s different this way. Everything changes. You are not who you thought you were. You have been touched! Listen… see what I mean? The arrythmia, stupid! It’s going away. You can’t tell? That’s just because you’re still waking up. Come on, we can urge it on with some of that new spangled electroshock. It’s gotten real popular. I think you can download it on your phone. Just have to agree to the terms. You don’t have to read them, silly. Just touch your touchscreen. Swype the bitch. Come on, now. Twenty-first century? Ding-dong! Twinkies are coming back. They didn’t go nowhere. (Just waited for folks to miss them enough. Like the professional athletes. Come on out of retirement again. Peek-a-boo! We miss you). Okay okay, no, now wait let me finish downloading it, too, because like anything good, it requires a little bit of teamwork. No loners! Groupspeak is in fashion. Spit shine collective. May seem weird at first, but doesn’t everything? Let the relativity kick in, and weird becomes normal. Shit, you gotta know what i mean. Isn’t that how you attracted all your friends. Okay, so now take your android and bump it with my android, and boom! FEEL IT?!? It works off the same principle as static electricity, they say. Google it, if you want. Its won some emmies. Or grammies. Or google playmaker awards. Whatever, man, just do it. Whatever you want to think. All i know is this beats a triple shot machiatto blended irish carbomb, anyday. Feel it? Here take this gravity brush. Your hair is standing up. Won’t do for the interview. Anyway, welcome to the clear full of light. You heard me. The clear full of light. Oh, ya, I said YOUR INTERVIEW. What? Did you think I came by to hangout? See, that’s your problem. You have made up stuff to define stuff to make a life out of nonsense. That’s so fucking GenX, man, what are you looking to do next? Pull the trigger through your toejam? Jesus. You don’t need to reinvent Catcher in the Rye. All the good creative shit, the dreamer shit? Its been dreamed! Its been done. Move your ass out of Pere-LaChaise and back into the real world. Time to get PRODUCTIVE. Fuck the age of aquarius! I don’t care when you were born. The only sign you’re gonna see, is the sign you pencilled in and hung around your neck before you wandered onto Market Street with a deathwish and a papercup! I know it sounds harsh. I know. But listen, No more repititions. Stop asking me why I dragged you out of bed and out here with me into this frigid fucking morning. You think I like it? This is a one time deal for you. No repetition. Think of the bottom line. The BOTTOM LINE. If all was repetition, there would be no bottom line. Like that famous number. Hash tag. Pi. Whatever. 3.141414 to infinity, dumbass.
Sorry, I know i’m being critical, but i am keeping it real for you. Real is not always nice. Dummy. Hey, it’s not like i don’t tell myself the same in the morning in the mirror. With my gravity brush. Three i-shocks to the wind. But guess what? At the end of the day, I can say: at the beginning of the day, all the way to the end of the day, I am one driven dude. DRIVEN. MOTIVATED. The only way to be. No impediment. No speed lumps, bumps, undulations, or tables going on here. Not anymore. Not like you. I fuckin’ outsourced a wrecking crew, man! Reshaped my image. Airbrushed my waterlogged fuckin decaying attitude, man! Photoshopped the noise out. Pulled the pillow up off my suffocated orifice. My heart murmur. One more analogy and we’re all through. But atleast I got my point across. This ain’t no backbeat boyz. This is the original tom-tom thundrous wonderbread of the regimented swing shift disciples. Yes, its a gang. In the best sense of the word. A gang of motivated, resume padded, headhunted, cubicled, well paid soldiers of fortune. The Dr Whos-Who of timestamp travel efficiency. Clocking in and out the central artery. Parking our asses irreverently in the very middle of the street. Pretenders, Talking Heads. Wall Street. Whatever. We take our shots through farmers market produce. Please and thank you very much. Long the long stretch of endless paper pushing. Short the short life of rigorous dreaming. You not only need to walk the walk, you also need to talk the talk. Stop trying so hard to assert your individualism. That’s just some raggedy-ass abstract for a special order. Well, I got news for you. The world is leaning McDonalds over Burger King. And you will have it like everyone else gets it. No special treatment. Remember the bottom line! We can’t fuck up the bottom line, if we have a prayer’s chance in atheism of competing with China.
Life! hold the tv. You’re the one! You’re the one who signed up. So what if it was after the last dollar was spent at the dollar store, and the recruiters glistened in the parking lot tarfill? So what if tv. hold the life. Held out the promise of the driven? Anything to sign you out of that funk and back on the railroad. Don’t be scared. Look alive! What you need is something altogether different — what you need is this. A haircut. A bigger box. A mentor. An outfit. And a permit to enter your own kitchen, soldier. Because you know you’re mouth has been watering for some time for a little of this.Hello! Knock knock? Who is it? Reality! Corporate world. Business class. Identical non pinstripe suits. Ladies, no open-toed shoes. Life is not a beach. Gentleman, no windsor knots in those ties. This isn’t England. We don’t have time for that shit. Every second off the timestamp is deducted from your paycheck. Ok? Let’s get into the mentality here. It’s a simple kinda program, a simple way of life. Leave your dreams at home. Put your unpublished novels in the shredder. There’s no glory in your personal story of desecrated ennui. You owe yourself and your country some restitution for all that rest. Bipolar? Autistic? Schizoaffective? Come one, come all! Let us coach you out your self-actualized mental illnesses. You wanna work like that? Like what? Work your way into a straight jacketed institution? Work your will away at some fanciful creative endeavor? Please. You just need some motivation, son. Let us know you better than you know yourself. We know how you tick, we have studied homo sapiens and cognitive behaviors for the better part of our wonderful miserable lives within cubicles. Heroes! That’s what we call ourselves. Because heroes are real!
Wake up, sunshine! Heroes are real. They don’t need to dream. They’re out saving the world, not cracking nuts in some blue diamond almond factory down the street in the day. Not throwing paint chips at some glue-dipped armchair and passing it off for high art at some oakland first friday telegraph avenue meet bourbon street doused in whiskeytown rotgut penniless parade! All the drunken prairie dogs. Come up off their skateboards to see some lost vision. High art my ass! Bottle bands and road flares lit up for applause. Kids hooked on ropes, bouncing off buildings. Calling it dance? There’s solid proof of wasted time and effort squeezing dreams dry. No, I’m not angry. No, no, i’m not jealous! Can I continue, I was working up to something good, I think…And all the teenage angsters and the oakland gangsters having their out of body experiences over that fucking couch sprayed with paint chips, yelling Hey! Look! A masterpiece! What does that almond farm factory sweatshop sucker call this thing? Barber Shop? Barber shop! I get it. No way! Dude, your girlfriend looks so dope passed out on that thing. Her ass hangin’ out. Loveseat for one. Maybe she’ll get a haircut. Hey, man! Someone give that bitch a haircut! This is Oakland. This is the East Bay. This is experiential learning.
K IS SILENT 