what the whip poor will

1:11am. macrobid wages war

in the gut. i wake startled eyes

bloodshot hair reaching up and back

a victoria crowned pigeon i 

audit yesterday. submit my findings 2

the memory bank and retire at dawn 

floating prayers off the balcony

to my dear colleague

in the ICU

#katyamills

twenty thirteen

fentanyl hit the spleen

overdose became mainstream you

lost so many friends and legends and the sun still rises

the light still wakes you under

your angel hair cabbage you

formulate a mission you play with memory you

love and live on

and on

and on

#katyamills

super.u

what i would give

these memories to

reclaim how our

hearts beat the

same

#katyamills

mem.ory

the bottom of a well i 

kept drinking. archival footage 

slowly sinking flash drive 

memory 

many moods 

 like sound 

i’m thinking 

take the drive for a

ride to the river. bait it ona hook

cast it out to the mouth

of a bass 

#katyamills

12 going on 21

why you were left alone so long only the spinning world would know. by now. you know it hurts looking back. you made friends easy and what friends. a formula for trouble and trouble looks like anything but trouble at first.

reading #72

AME AND THE TANGY ENERGETIC

(from) memory

journal #

i would never see Drama alive again. i came back 5 months later from rehab in Oregon, to claim him. they said he had been struck by a car at an intersection not far from where the our mobile home had been. i buried the poor little guy up in Martinez, in the hills. i felt terrible. but all the nightmare i lived over the previous 4 years, was over. i had been beaten, downtrodden, and become willing to let go of all my old ways. i resolved to live differently, to live right, if only i had a chance to live again…

diary

journal #

i was so very sick when i awakened. i was addicted. my unemployment had run out. i was living off of food stamps and the kindness of strangers. i was lonely, hallucinating, scared. i was searching every day for my cat who ran away. our home was a tiny trailer on a truck bed in Richmond, near the train tracks led to Oakland and the San Francisco Bay. i rode my bicycle slowly, calling out for little Drama on the surrounding streets. the only responsibility i had anymore was my cat and myself. and he was the only one who loved me anymore.

brothers drama and shy

(re)telling the story

i can clearly recall my awakening. it was over five years back and i was close to street homeless. i remember the date, 12.12.12 and how some had attached to it an apocalyptic forecast. i was living in my friend’s truck and very alone. i was full of powerful feelings and fears. i was dreaming again of my family and better days long behind me. i was getting high around the clock, for i was addicted to methamphetamine and could not escape. i used it alongside the psych meds i had been described for anxiety and depression. it had become my medication. the allostasis in my mind was severe. i heard voices through walls. my depressive moments lasted long and deep. i was unkempt but i had access to laundry, electricity, food, and water. i had witnessed crimes on the streets and been assaulted and manipulated more times than i could count. i knew a dangerous dead end romance like i knew my middle name. much of my energy was lost to hypervigilance and traumatic recall. i feared people and economic insecurity. i listened to am radio talk shows like they were my only friends…

poor memory

projection of poor memory

You taught me how to survive. I taught you how to thrive. The tables before were turned, and I experienced a deep despair like the world no longer could care…even someone who feels forgotten will be remembered by someone they may have overlooked. I wonder if the feeling of forgotten is a projection of poor memory? How then to enrichen and coax the narratives into a kinder recollection?