we watched westerns

people struggling
people gettin’ angry gettin’ loud
everything burnin’ in the sun spell
people in the city park
wading into the fountains
oblivious

people gettin’ high
people gettin’ drunk
staring at the sky
hittin’ a goldmine
hittin’ a vein
barely gettin’ by

people bein’ offensive
mistakin’ themselves 4 radicals
people bein’ abusive
mistakin’ themselves
for anarchists

everyone wants a headline
even a recluse

sometimes
late at night
other times
middle of the day

sometimes
bottom of the first
tagged by heat
hash brown
eyeballs yellow

ready to steal
flagged
indiscreet

sunny side staring
up from the
plate

after a spell
feelin’ so done with it all

we
we watched
westerns

loss six

another loss – vi

faith is porous on the streets. you only have what you see, and anyone wants you to believe there’s somethin more for you, if only you trust them for a moment. you gotta keep your faith deep in your heart, and not extend it to those who would use you… i tried explainin’ to you about your bike, and how i needed to switch it out for mine, and could get it back to you tomorrow if that was okay. but you lost some confidence in me and could i blame you? we did not run in the same circles anymore. we argued for a while. i implored you the bmx was safe inside my new digs on Magnolia. i offered you collateral if you wanted, i would leave my rings with you. if you wanted we could go and get it later. you thought about it and either you extended some faith in me or else you didn’t wanna argue anymore, and let it lie. i helped you pack your stuff and clean your place so you could get your deposit back, and you let me shower there before checking out, because where i was going, well, they might have had the law behind them and plenty of cash, but these corrupt attorneys letting me a room, well, they coulda been arrested for uncleanliness…

if friday was

if friday was saturday

the cost of living was an abbreviated attention span and the tasteless smell of green in the back of your throat. the cost of living was a cold brew coffee fueling an organism programmed to turn on itself. the cost of living was an unholy alliance with anonymity, a television you paid the company to babysit for, hours on end in an armchair, and a remote to control you by. the cost of living was free.

when pennies were copper

mag wheels for eyes
roll out in silent film
silver screen dyes

down walkways
floorlit and salted
and buttered with
scenes

of someone else’s storied
childhood

long legs falling in love
with strapping lads on streets
paved flat by
pennies

land without
cell phones

a sunday. 1955
a city. 1959

when churches were
sanctuaries

mark the time
by the bells and
the sun

we rest on
bloody knees

the automobile
extinct

home. 1936
the sky. 1910

the pool
1920 and two metres
deep

the denim
1969. when pennies
were copper

the board
she saw better
days

cut elbows
in ink

porcelain cheap
for the poor

inscripted
the names
in powder blue
soap

sliding down rails
to the subway

we saw better
days

laughter echoes

a certain
despair

– KatYa, July’17

transcend.journal

the great force i sometimes seek to embellish or highlight my mundanity, is located in the heart of the stillness of the chaos. somehow every day i manage to pick myself up (and coffee helps) and put my old self together and step out into the responsibility i feel to live a full if not helpful life in the chaos of old earth. i have a little ocd compulsion while driving the midtown streets whereby i check back to a purple inked textbook i rely on professionally, which sits in the center of the backseat catching light beneath the canopy, my only passenger, and bring my eyes back to the curve of the chipped windshield and my path before me, and i will reach an arm back and press the heel of my hand against the glossy finish, too. i don’t know why i do this but it grounds me. life is fucked up. we ought to be good to ourselves, be caring.

12.

twelve

Twelve went out for a run at eleven only to be liquefied by noon. A group of children roaming free for the summer came across the silver tracings and got down, low to the ground, and dipped their fingers into the silt, looked at one another and laughed. They painted their faces and tracked twelve back home. Lodged in the system for good and no longer alone, twelve struck twice a day and made himself known.

free

The air was popping and crackling and exploding all around us, and as the sun set i listened to independence day sing her song, sizzling and whistling and screaming into darkness, and the chaos of my mind went dead finally, in the midst of this busy life, and i became a small yet meaningful voice among millions, no, billions of inflections wishing to be heard. And small yet meaningful was all i ever was and cared to be.