Tag Archives: prayer

fear and the medulla

Posted on by KatYa

Back in the desperate place the mind likes to take me, where the thoughts are all discouraging and fear walks unaccosted across the oblongata, tamping the vessels until blood pressure rises, I see that I am troubled and finally say a prayer, as my breathing heads for the shallows where the shore has disappeared…

from King’s ‘The Dead Zone

what saved me, this time, was drawing the Dead Zone, the paperback, up to my face, my nose tucked in towards the spine, and closing my eyes and inhaling deeply the scent of the pulp, which transported me body and soul into a lovely forest, some forgotten place and time,  from which this pulp was hewn.

the ides of march upon us, here is my wish…
may we overcome all our fear, live long and prosper
– KatYa, 2017

trax

Posted on by KatYa

trax

the weekend came
with rain and the grasses fantasy
green

reality was dishes
was rent and quarter
moons and abrasive

the train tracks are so
godddam polished

when the weather clears
i think i will go eat lunch
on them

or paint my nails
or lay my spine out
or straddle them in denim
and ride them

choo choo
like a freak

or follow the vibration
to the end of
the world

like church bells
like prayer

like god was in doing
the thing which
when done

made you

smile

i gave up

Posted on by KatYa

i gave up
once friends
who gave up
on me

to keep them
demanded i lose faith
in myself

this was sad
i prayed

i gave up
cigarrettes
they cut short
so many lives

i wanted
so badly
2 breathe

this was hard
i prayed

i gave up
fighting
myself and
the world

behind
some romantic
notion

what i wanted
to be
to see

made a wall
stand between my life
and me

i gave up bread
to the pond
to feed
the ugly
truth duckling

i gave up
retail therapy
no
that’s a lie

i just ran out
of money

im sorry
life gets sad
im sad
lifes so hard

a timeless
tradition
the human
condition
may not
make sense

one day is okay
the next is not

now i pray
every day as
i did
when i was
a kid

back then
early eighties
2 feel good
4 myself

now i pray
how?

2 live how
2 trust how
2 give

away
and not
up

people work better when driven (insane) – iii)

Posted on by KatYa

No, don’t be scared. Just pay attention, brush your hair out your eyes. We can get you that haircut we have been waiting to get you, I mean, for you to get. Ummm… I promise, things will be better this way. This is life! Hold the tv. I know it sounds strange. Listen to your heartbeat for a minute… see? It’s different this way. Everything changes. You are not who you thought you were. You have been touched! Listen… see what I mean? The arrythmia, stupid! It’s going away. You can’t tell? That’s just because you’re still waking up. Come on, we can urge it on with some of that new spangled electroshock. It’s gotten real popular. I think you can download it on your phone. Just have to agree to the terms. You don’t have to read them, silly. Just touch your touchscreen. Swype the bitch. Come on, now. Twenty-first century? Ding-dong! Twinkies are coming back. They didn’t go nowhere. (Just waited for folks to miss them enough. Like the professional athletes. Come on out of retirement again. Peek-a-boo! We miss you). Okay okay, no, now wait let me finish downloading it, too, because like anything good, it requires a little bit of teamwork. No loners! Groupspeak is in fashion. Spit shine collective. May seem weird at first, but doesn’t everything? Let the relativity kick in, and weird becomes normal. Shit, you gotta know what i mean. Isn’t that how you attracted all your friends. Okay, so now take your android and bump it with my android, and boom! FEEL IT?!? It works off the same principle as static electricity, they say. Google it, if you want. Its won some emmies. Or grammies. Or google playmaker awards. Whatever, man, just do it. Whatever you want to think. All i know is this beats a triple shot machiatto blended irish carbomb, anyday. Feel it? Here take this gravity brush. Your hair is standing up. Won’t do for the interview. Anyway, welcome to the clear full of light. You heard me. The clear full of light. Oh, ya, I said YOUR INTERVIEW. What? Did you think I came by to hangout? See, that’s your problem. You have made up stuff to define stuff to make a life out of nonsense. That’s so fucking GenX, man, what are you looking to do next? Pull the trigger through your toejam? Jesus. You don’t need to reinvent Catcher in the Rye. All the good creative shit, the dreamer shit? Its been dreamed! Its been done. Move your ass out of Pere-LaChaise and back into the real world. Time to get PRODUCTIVE. Fuck the age of aquarius! I don’t care when you were born. The only sign you’re gonna see, is the sign you pencilled in and hung around your neck before you wandered onto Market Street with a deathwish and a papercup! I know it sounds harsh. I know. But listen, No more repititions. Stop asking me why I dragged you out of bed and out here with me into this frigid fucking morning. You think I like it? This is a one time deal for you. No repetition. Think of the bottom line. The BOTTOM LINE. If all was repetition, there would be no bottom line. Like that famous number. Hash tag. Pi. Whatever. 3.141414 to infinity, dumbass.

Sorry, I know i’m being critical, but i am keeping it real for you. Real is not always nice. Dummy. Hey, it’s not like i don’t tell myself the same in the morning in the mirror. With my gravity brush. Three i-shocks to the wind. But guess what? At the end of the day, I can say: at the beginning of the day, all the way to the end of the day, I am one driven dude. DRIVEN. MOTIVATED. The only way to be. No impediment. No speed lumps, bumps, undulations, or tables going on here. Not anymore. Not like you. I fuckin’ outsourced a wrecking crew, man! Reshaped my image. Airbrushed my waterlogged fuckin decaying attitude, man! Photoshopped the noise out. Pulled the pillow up off my suffocated orifice. My heart murmur. One more analogy and we’re all through. But atleast I got my point across. This ain’t no backbeat boyz. This is the original tom-tom thundrous wonderbread of the regimented swing shift disciples. Yes, its a gang. In the best sense of the word. A gang of motivated, resume padded, headhunted, cubicled, well paid soldiers of fortune. The Dr Whos-Who of timestamp travel efficiency. Clocking in and out the central artery. Parking our asses irreverently in the very middle of the street. Pretenders, Talking Heads. Wall Street. Whatever. We take our shots through farmers market produce. Please and thank you very much. Long the long stretch of endless paper pushing. Short the short life of rigorous dreaming. You not only need to walk the walk, you also need to talk the talk. Stop trying so hard to assert your individualism. That’s just some raggedy-ass abstract for a special order. Well, I got news for you. The world is leaning McDonalds over Burger King. And you will have it like everyone else gets it. No special treatment. Remember the bottom line! We can’t fuck up the bottom line, if we have a prayer’s chance in atheism of competing with China.

Life! hold the tv. You’re the one! You’re the one who signed up. So what if it was after the last dollar was spent at the dollar store, and the recruiters glistened in the parking lot tarfill? So what if tv. hold the life. Held out the promise of the driven? Anything to sign you out of that funk and back on the railroad. Don’t be scared. Look alive! What you need is something altogether different — what you need is this. A haircut. A bigger box. A mentor. An outfit. And a permit to enter your own kitchen, soldier. Because you know you’re mouth has been watering for some time for a little of this.Hello! Knock knock? Who is it? Reality! Corporate world. Business class. Identical non pinstripe suits. Ladies, no open-toed shoes. Life is not a beach. Gentleman, no windsor knots in those ties. This isn’t England. We don’t have time for that shit. Every second off the timestamp is deducted from your paycheck. Ok? Let’s get into the mentality here. It’s a simple kinda program, a simple way of life. Leave your dreams at home. Put your unpublished novels in the shredder. There’s no glory in your personal story of desecrated ennui. You owe yourself and your country some restitution for all that rest. Bipolar? Autistic? Schizoaffective? Come one, come all! Let us coach you out your self-actualized mental illnesses. You wanna work like that? Like what? Work your way into a straight jacketed institution? Work your will away at some fanciful creative endeavor? Please. You just need some motivation, son. Let us know you better than you know yourself. We know how you tick, we have studied homo sapiens and cognitive behaviors for the better part of our wonderful miserable lives within cubicles. Heroes! That’s what we call ourselves. Because heroes are real!

Wake up, sunshine! Heroes are real. They don’t need to dream. They’re out saving the world, not cracking nuts in some blue diamond almond factory down the street in the day. Not throwing paint chips at some glue-dipped armchair and passing it off for high art at some oakland first friday telegraph avenue meet bourbon street doused in whiskeytown rotgut penniless parade! All the drunken prairie dogs. Come up off their skateboards to see some lost vision. High art my ass! Bottle bands and road flares lit up for applause. Kids hooked on ropes, bouncing off buildings. Calling it dance? There’s solid proof of wasted time and effort squeezing dreams dry. No, I’m not angry. No, no, i’m not jealous! Can I continue, I was working up to something good, I think…And all the teenage angsters and the oakland gangsters having their out of body experiences over that fucking couch sprayed with paint chips, yelling Hey! Look! A masterpiece! What does that almond farm factory sweatshop sucker call this thing? Barber Shop? Barber shop! I get it. No way! Dude, your girlfriend looks so dope passed out on that thing. Her ass hangin’ out. Loveseat for one. Maybe she’ll get a haircut. Hey, man! Someone give that bitch a haircut! This is Oakland. This is the East Bay. This is experiential learning.