reform.ation

they found a girl in the marshes

some murder in may my

sense of time was taken i guess yours was too

supposed to pick me up now where the hell are you?

he walked them forensics and all

back to the scene in the fall

the soul had softly regenerated 

a tangle of orchids tall

#katyamills

(murder) hornet spelling bee

my friend was labeled can

no longer fly the sky free they

put a target on his back the

sweetest bird i know! my friend the 

only uproar he ever caused back 

in elementary when he took on 

the bumbles and won the

spelling bee 

#katyamills

m x memory ending

m by memory -xi (fin)

Yes, being WIRED had coalesced cultures all across the earth, simply the most powerful force in the paradigm shift. What normally took the flash of a couple hundred years in the pan, took only a hundred plus, facilitated by the mighty conveyance of internet connection. Many subcultures rebelled against the seated powers once they became aware (almost instantaneously for common citizens, dependent only on the functionality of a modem in an electric grid) of the relative freedoms other cultures and countries had which they had not and wanted. They got restless under the thumbs of a ruling class they had limited stake in appointing. None of these performances on the dramatic stage of sentient theatre had the innocence of virgin material, there would be no immaculate conception by so and so producer, writer, director, star, or egocentric asshole. There would be no trailblazing invention at all. It became clear that you go with what you have, your essential ingredients, and make something more of it. Make a clearing and let it grow. Any farmer could rule the day. Meanwhile the old controllers and their desperate need for control would be stripped to the wire,  primitive and unworthy looking, and frayed. Easily spotted for removal by the arbitrators of theatre in whatever form they chose to express: tv, movie, made for tv movie, short in some indy festival, drawing on some ipad, page in some kid’s sketchpad. It didn’t matter! Just as the tarnishing of heart and soul, in a rusty mechanical sort of perfectionism, could be caught on an intellectual hook and pulled up and out of the path of vital life,  so could the real, unblemished heart and soul of common decency be ever sparkling for us to see and believe. And so we would have cause to celebrate again. Love was out in the open. Then back to work again.

murder. by memory

murder by memory -iv

the murder by memory series. parts i-iii go way back.
i hesitate to proceed with it, as it moves into something more like philosophy than simple creative writing. more like activism.   -k

torture was clearly a primitive defense of any society, forcing noncompliants into submission to meet specific aims of a culture. less clear was how a supposedly highly evolved culture involved in numerous humanitarian causes could keep it insular and protect the rudimentary institution of torture. if culture was to evolve, torture would cease to make sense. if culture was to be evolved, it would shutter the chambers and send all devices and mechanisms to their proper places behind glass cases in the future museums devoted to the betterment of the lives of the victims of torture. yet culture, like its individual constituents, tends to return to the primitive defense mechanisms when under duress: repression, regression, projection, reaction formation, and sublimation. and then covers it up in denial… torture. what would it matter the criminal or the crime? the use of an instrument reflects back on the one using it. if i pick up a sword and run it through someone, i am now a murderer. even if i kill a murderer with their own very sword, i am -nevertheless- a murderer, too.

hang by the neck until dead

i was in love with her

if i hadn’t been

 i wouldn’t have wanted

 to murder her

that day

i had a choice

to break her neck

to be a monster

and go to prison for life

(or a few weeks)

depending upon

my miserable

gofund.me

and how much i could raise

to back my colorless

innocence

plea

or take a public defender

 turn back time

and hang

by the neck

until dead

murder at the movies

You spilled your popcorn – I stated the obvious. Kell was standing up now and stretching over me to cuff Bless in the ear with the side of her hand, but Bless was fixed on the man, and taking it all in, while up on the screen was a lesser sin, in black and white, walking the halls, inspiring the fright, shadows in the night, and the boyfriend was on his way back with an RC Cola exchanging pleasantries with the cashier, it was calm and quiet in here, the safest place you thought you could be, at a movie, watching life from the outside in, the silver screen… a lesser sin. And I was in between the clash, trying to hold Kell off, we can’t do anything, it’s done! And I led her away, while Bless finished him off and his boyfriend came upon the body slumped down, and saw the woman who seemed to be holding him up from behind and he went and held his friend, down on his knees, looking between the seats into the eyes which were aglow, but it was colorful and he wouldn’t but remember later, what was so off about it, asking her what happened? and she said innocently I don’t know, he just, he just had a seizure or something, I tried to hold him but you know they say to let them free, and, well, I didn’t want any harm to come to him so I did, but it sure was a bad seizure – is he on some medication?    — Book 3 (teaser). Ame and the Tangy Energetic

review

Review: I Heard That Song Before

I Heard That Song Before by Mary Higgins Clark
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I need to start by saying I have been reading MH Clark’s books since I was a teenager way back in the eighties, when computers were the size of small houses, Ronald Reagan was president, electric typewriters were fashionable, and photographs had to be developed to be seen (unless you had a slide projecter or viewfinder…uhh… S.O.S… what the hell is she talking about)? Anyway, libraries were still libraries and books were still books, then, and I read a lot of them in my alligator tee shirts drinking grape koolaid with a Canadian penny zippered inside the pocket on my sneakers. And all of her books I read were gripping, suspenseful, amazing!

Then I found this one a quarter century later, part of a Reader’s Digest collection of four, while watching my clothes spin in the dryer at the laundromat down the street. They have books lined up on a ledge which runs along the washers, and it’s give-a-book, take-a-book. So I took it and devoured it in a few days. Sadly the plot and characters and everything felt very rushed, almost like it was an outline for a much larger and longer work she didn’t have time to write.

The setup was interesting, all the players moving in and around an old mansion which had been taken apart stone by stone and transported to New Jersey from Wales and re-assembled on 50 acres just a few miles from Manhattan. And the haunting memory of someone who disappeared there. Someone who died there. And someone else who disappeared. Intriguing! Old money, New York City. Ambassadors, landscape artists, drunks, addicts, art thieves, and shady personal attendants fill the pages.

Sadly the book did not live up to its potential.
Ironic it was a stone’s throw from my spin cycle.

I know MH Clark has so much talent and I cannot end there, on a sour note, after having picked her up again. I decided I am gonna go back to her first bestseller she wrote in 1975 and read that one. I probably read it already, back when a trash compactor was your foot inside the bag, when Coleco and Atari were the gamer’s games, but I want that old feeling back, when I was gripped by suspense and she had me, amazed.

View all my reviews

murder by memory (1 &2)

murder by memory  – part i

Will he come back to me? The silence in the house might break her delicate wrists in two, toss her on the woodpile, long nights, to keep warm. Abbreviated days. All of her memory of him coming home. The squeaking of the belt under the hood of his Jeep, where he parked beneath the sycamore tree. One of the kittens would bound out to meet him. Fatigue had not undone him. She would quickly get up and wrap a sweater around her, step into the sandals by their bed on the mahogany floors, and take the 45 steps down to the kitchen, the backs of her thongs clicking into her heels. She would grab a nice glazed ceramic bowl out of the cabinet, pour some oats and some water without measuring, into a pot on the stove. Oatmeal was his favorite. Then she would hop back up onto the landing, and click down to the front door to swing it open for him. The feeling of him pressing into her. The cool kiss on the neck. These were the memories.

murder by memory – part ii

A cultural analysis – or defrag – of the perceived madness and its development in the mind from inception on… The designated criminal who judged a fellow sentient for a difference on any continuum (ie sexuality, race, gender, education, age, ethnicity, body image, fanciful morality plays) would be taken to a room without furniture to stand upon an intelligent floor which assessed the sensitive points of any criminal scanning the foot with footprint technology, then, when any thought, feeling or behavior indicated a relapse into poor or judgmental bias, such would be confronted and corrected with a paralyzing shot of vibrational frequency dissonant to the criminal, and the corresponding organ would temporarily be shut down or limited of function for up to 24 hours. If the kidney got tapped, the subject would begin to experience blood toxicity and jaundice, and feel the attitude and judgment fall away as all energy became devoted to trying to locate and sweep out the source of infinite pain. An eradication of hate campaign was underway.      – KatYa

about a murder. unsolved

My impressions from an article about a murder of a young girl in my city. The trial started yesterday, but the outcome is only certain in one way… a child is gone —  http://www.katyamills.com/2015/08/on-murder.html

Murder. In the eyes.

She looked around the city night. The canopy provided by the trees made this street darker than others. Low hanging branches and leaves flecked shadow into the metallic orange light painting the sidewalks.

A sociopath stood unseen. Camouflaged against the papered concrete walls like a barred owl.

She sensed him and he sensed her sensing him.

Were she only distracted by an iphone or earbuds, he thought. But he would not be disappointed, standing there, silently watching her navigate the street in her fishnets and heels.

Only his pupils moved across the smudge of cirrhotic, ashen pale of eyes.

In the walkway between buildings, not far from there, beneath a basement apartment’s window well, out of sight, lay the crumpled formless residue of human life and spirit. Breathless and emptying itself of fluid.

The spirit of the dead hung heavily over the sociopath, like a large cotton overcoat immersed in a pool of blood of all the ones had died by his hand in the night. A parade of frozen faces preoccupied his mind, his thoughts.

She gripped her pepper spray tight. She knew the unnatural evils under city lights, might come out the woodwork and contend with her sex.

She remained unafraid, carrying herself gracefully across the pavements. Aware the heavies were awash in their own karma.

Some terror of what one has done and cannot undo. Gyre of samsara, spinning down toward the core of the earth. For infinity. Forever.