death of a koi

all the work was done and now 

she could rest

grabbed a pack and a beer 

sat down by the koi pond

counted the fish

heart stopped. it did not add up

a raccoon took out a beloved one of 

fifty some years and older than her

she cursed at the gods

and the gods they

laughed

#katyamills

rumors of war

these divisions in the earth

pay heed. often invisible

noted by a sign or fence or posting

which side you are on may 

be the difference between death

and life

#katyamills

go on. be infinite

delivering packages on a bike

i am pumping legs

exhaust through my nostrils

the city a living breathing monster

the cars are out to kill us

flat on my back 

staring up between skyscrapers

blood trickling down the side of my mouth

i am no longer finite i am

a strange peace

#katyamills

(meditation on a story i am writing)

death of an inconsequential man

blood surging through his veins

disseminating after a decade of lifeless

sedentaryanism the inconsequential man 

with a battle cry hurled himself out his 4 story window 

cradling his miniature labrador 

who as luck would have it

had already passed

#katyamills

live

death was

weightlessness

unpacking all 

the bad karma you 

accumulated against 

the good

life was juicy

a study in animation

test flight of the soul  

not to demonize

dying 

#katyamills

cross current

news of the conception 

of your second child fights for celebration 

against the prevailing tide

the very day she died

#katyamills

uti

blood in the urine they

thought they may

die 1.4 liters kombucha

to kill a uti. how come death  

did not sound so terrible 

anymore?

#katyamills

rains.1

california. 4am

coffee rims the paper
six months searching the sky

headlights found rain
i turned down the radio

march of death by tally i

raised the windows 2 inhale

the breath of life

loss two

another loss -ii

We stayed up all the night long tradin’ EDM cuts and smoking, and kept mostly quiet about all the damage our exes done us, knowing in our hearts the damage we done them, too. This here was as close to the street as I ever got, out of luck on the room I had paid for every week for several months, (someone had spotted my cat and complained, again, pets were not allowed) with the half-promise of a room in West Oakland, from the mouth of a corrupt attorney with one foot in the dope game and high all the time. I had no other recourse, none at all! This was twenty eleven. I had only to be willing to scrub and paint a small room full of furniture and covered in multiple cat stank, and I could stay there for the summer. This was the house of a second attorney, an alcoholic moonlighting as a cat doctor at home, who got in over her head on Magnolia by DeFremery Park. The day I met her she asked if I wanted to make a quick buck, and walked me downtown while instructing me how to serve papers. I remember hesitating as I approached the window, a government agent behind glass, and looked back to get a nudge on from under the wild gray-hair, permanent slouch, and a wandering eye. She offered me a drag off her pint of Southern Comfort on the way home. I was fifty bucks richer, cash, and desperate. My unemployment had finally run dry  in this boarding house on 28th @ Telegraph, telling time by Kojak episodes, and my friend whom I shared a room with finally got sick of me or spun out, and bailed. By that time I was already sharing a bed with a punk I met, upstairs, and not around much anymore. On my bicycle most of the days, a Motobecane i had mail-ordered online several months ago, and always brewing pots of some of the finest grounds from Indonesia I procured from Sweet Maria’s down the way, a local coffee distributor a stone’s throw from the Port of Oakland. Didn’t have a job and wasn’t really looking most of the time. PTSD was my common denominator, and divided up my senses, hanging them far and wide by the neck, until dead…

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.