reading #223

AME AND THE TANGY ENERGETIC BY KATYA MILLS

typewriter.15

one morning you sit down
to your work with your coffee
beside you and

the tides have been broken 
they have turned on the ocean!
this is what you came for
so suddenly
emergent

disciple to words
the reading
the writing

the sea and the healing
fresh atmosphere replaces
the ceiling! an absence of the world
you recollect so unfeeling

your voice is upon you
you’ve found yourself! finally
the struggle is gone
you no longer push into page

strangely awakened
enveloped by an undercurrent
you sing the song you were born to sing
you come thrashing to surface!

like faith
you cannot see it
you only feel it
you know

these are the moments a writer lives by!
when time loses interest
appetite gone silent
and the sentences form on their own

full of spirit!
making meaning
full of feeling!
with rhythm and rolling

you collide with the page
like a strike
when you’re bowling

thank the stars
thank the gods
you got lucky
kid

wild who we are

dally into dream. wild who we are

We began by recalling the sea. which was not hard to do, for the sea faithfully came back from far places with green bottles and messages inside, wrapped in the trendiest of weeds. the sea happily let us believe, then to lull us asleep to the tune of the tides. i dallied into a dream i had when i was younger, back then a stronger version of itself. i recalled it sadly now for now it could not capture me like those days back after a war, before a war. sadly like a strong figure, man or woman, who meant something to me looking up, looking up to as a child. or some strong oak tree now dying, now slowly. now drawn up in my drifting mind, as i intend to open my eyes unblinking upon it, as though i may recall it so well it’s not called recalling. where my memory ends it begins. the path made purely of small sea shells, both of my hands they were held. sweet talk of summer evenings and what ever to do. sounds and warm light spilling out of small houses. side by side. rolling granny applecores away beyond which wild flowers nobody need bother. leaving orange peels for a trail… wild is how i remember us then, and here, the foot of snail and sand, where our memories began.

distress mistress

Journal # ten four

The theatre was replaced by a store, on the street dead-ended at an r.v. park and a crown jewel, on calendar day ten and four. the grasses there were brown as the ground of an aftermath island by a category storm, planks of wood in a dance as they logged the water and dove by drift and distances great, colored settling on ocean floors for schools of fish. we painted on better days that shook a palm tree head of gloom. and so you stood a-looking mournfully out to the deserted street by the window of my room. the dust was swept up and circulated off of the street in the midsummer heat, damselflies at the mercy of cats and lizard wind. you turned to me with a look asked for help. i could not but inexplicably mirror your distress, and in a moment was i your mistress.

you cannot fight her. she’s the ocean

by KatYa

i went to the ocean and crashed into a giant wave; it was like a slate wall, transparent green. i had only a white undershirt on when we collided and black boyshorts underneath, and the wave did not hurt but it slapped and broke into many liquid particles which could not be traced but pulled my hair down and stuck to my face and neck which felt pretty good, and beneath me everything was undulating with a calling, sucking motion, calling me, fizzing, and i was not scared though i was unlike the giant scaly bodies underwater, deeper out; i knew she would not hurt anyone unless they fought back, you cannot fight her she’s the ocean. i did not break in my black and whites, in the rainy day greens and blues of the undertow, i just stayed together and let the ocean cry and pull me, and the salt to dry in the bubbling nest of spit and foam. i went with the ocean and i guess i disappeared, i mean the earth did not know me, nobody looked for me, or if they did they did not find me, but someone missed me, somewhere, i just know it. i could feel them and saw them in my routine kelp readings thereafter. Mostly it was my family, so far away but still caring and loving me a lot, maybe more than i would know, the otters suggested, teaching me the art of cracking mussels. i lay my head on a current, listening to the ocean, and traveled to new lands never before known, in a sea bubbling like soda, the many colors peeking up off the crests of the waves crashing inward far from us on the inside looking back to the shore, and the earth now was scary, dropping off of the level, and the sky quite unfeeling, unhelpful at best, but we didn’t care… and i slept peacefully, peacefully, there.

inky

Squids spray ink across
the under
water

the tide goes out

in

gallons of heartfelt
prose

© KatYa

journal entry. date unknown.

And suddenly the long uneven thickening and thinning motion which we followed for days,  to some terrifying expanse of the same substance, which slipped through our hands and burrowed easily into earth, endless before us; suddenly jumped up into the air, unseen, and  immersed us, standing there. We tried to take cover, yet still could not escape it.

I shivered so long. I knew not would we survive. One of us took on a strange chill, became quiet and very hot to touch. Then ceased to be anymore. Another one then began to shake and call. Overtaken by the bitter salty substance fell out the eyes for days on end. They, too, would soon cease to be.

The rest of us finally understood. We fell down before the mighty moving creature. We prayed. Then cupped our hands around it, breaking some off from the whole (though appeared unbroken), and looked at one another one last time; then took it to the lips and raised our eyes to the sky, open pale of neck, and let the substance seep into ourselves! A most unusual feeling as it reached down into me! Further!

We waited. We then fell one at a time, to earth, and fell asleep awaiting.

Then rose I know not when or how! And smiled! And embraced one another! For we were still alive!

From this moment forward, we drank and followed the uneven line of this great, mysterious, borderless, lightness of mass. Trusting. Cupping it in our hands and hollowed tree limbs. It led us to verdant wonders never before seen, or known! We listened and the sound, once frightful, was now soothing us to sleep. The air was fresh, and colorful at times!

And in the mornings, sometimes, as light awakened life… we immersed ourselves entire, in cool and friendly waters still. Life would never be the same.

Neptune. god of sea

Neptune
god of sea
worshipped
at the altar

for years
we knew
the rock
Gibraltar

made of masthead
sheets and sailors
songs

crosses
bones
precious
stones

bankrolled by
imperial loans

prayers carried far
from heavy hearts
ashore

on backs of breathless
gales and whales
the salty groans
the rusty nails

out
beneath  the slender cut of
moon beneath the silent shimmering
waters
eye

beneath it all in
solvent lye

Neptune fills
an invert
sky

Seahorses (from a dream)

Spiny number
fives. the teeth all up
and down

unzippering the ocean
to a salty
sequined
brine

Nickel-plated
guns

Pearl handled by
a hundred
watery
suns

inside out
the ocean

outlasting
everyone and

universal
sexy
you

Seahorses gallop
long the coral rail

one quarter mile
through

one for the fishes

i cannot know
not will not
go!

to hell for
fishes

cannery row

i cannot
no!
not cannery
row

a hell for fishes i
cannot know

in stead in
place i
read the
book

so not to know the
evil living hell
for
fishes

so not to can
so not to
know
the dreadful
cannery
row