un.con 39

in the thirty-ninth year on earth the uncon appeared and became conscious. a new formidable player in my life. uninvited. she had to be held up at the gate, a credentials check was imperative. this puppy has some torque to her, i thought, my adrenaline rising at the sight of her. she might turn over the apple cart (the stomach the sole beneficiary). i made a quick decision and i killed her – with kindness. i could no longer survive being conned.  #katyamills

safeways

some beet faced drunk knocked

produce off the stand

dodging shadows stepped 

on garlic cloves 

the masks had just come off

that sound

the flesh breaking under 

paper skins

you paid me a compliment

 i – i wasnt sure i 

could take it    #katyamills

try me on.in.when

try me on a winter morning
try me in the fall
try me when your heart is yearning

something so familiar
what you thought was gone
what if it returned to you?
like some forgotten song

catching you unexpected
barefoot on the tile
sunlight meets the

shadow

god
its been
a while

breath of ice

there were coyotes last night out in the snow under the shadow of the mountain. panting breath of ice. underbellies soft and warm. eyes ringing truths of the wild. in small packs they roam. hunting. howling.

say hello 2 autumn

I wish I could take your loneliness and fill it up with non-threatening things will never leave you. I could be boredom and light a match inside your skull, we could watch shadows play on the wall. I wish the summer was over, too. One of my wishes came true. Say hello to autumn ’cause it’s fall.

makin shadows – by katya

white metal rabbit

survive and cast shadow (white metal rabbit)

There’s no world of all smiles, unless invented. In the real world we have rabbits we grab by the ears and make lucky feet for a keychain. We stuff them in hats and make them of chocolate. The white ones we want for a symbol of purity, and photograph them next to an egg.

Some of us tune our instruments to metal, find the harmonics, amplify them and get bent. I wanted to be one of those, but I didn’t have an amplifier or an instrument or a room or a friend. I prayed to god for a fireplace where I could burn for you. I would. I had become inflexible like the white metal rabbits and within the realm of being bent out of shape.

I was far from worn thin with love. I followed ideas tangentially to distant and unrelated ends… my younger self had grown old and retired. Typically far from inspired. I must have committed some literary felony, for soon I could no longer read. I had a curious relationship with speed. It’s a crime to torture a soul with words made from sounds of a cacophonous hole.

The ground I laid where I buried myself, the part of myself that was offensive. Myself who had been distasteful, rebellious, irreverent, and smart. My shadow now missing, a lack in the heart. The part that was human and fell down a lot. The part that refused to connect all the dots.

This is what i offer you, I told myself, dying. The black sheep’s fleece. To warm you like Kentucky’s finest. The past? no worries, shes fallen behind us. I urge you get waxy, let flow… the degenerate benevolence of liquid smooth language. One spirit, survived anguish so deep it near killed you.

I languished well near obscurity, until i found a little peace in letting go, to take with me down that long hall back home, the one without shadows or light. Water, laughter, a kind word, awaited me. Even prayer would be welcome there. These words ahead of me are here to be written. To describe all our likeness in ways and intangibles, to know with a knowing that cannot be described.

If you know what i mean, if you’ re grateful like I am, if you’ve survived and cast shadow…then go ahead and read these words I have trained to be and be still. May they bring you all out like flowers by the sun. I need your devious smile, your shadow, your light. Before the rabbit turns metal, then white.    – KatYa, 2017

typewriter.14

My younger self reminds me not to forget my shadow, not to leave it out of the story, for without a shadow what are we? Nothing of substance, for anything of substance casts a shadow. The world needs a recluse, the world wants a freakshow, some deep failure, fatal flaw. So they can see themselves through it, otherwise they cannot often look. And when they see character lost in its shadow, well, contempt may turn to stone and break, and inside the contempt may we find our humanity in another’s vulnerability. And find our compassion again. Toward others and toward ourselves! In a book, on the silver screen, in a play, in the news, at an opera, on the streets. We all are born into lives with our limits. We come abbreviated! Short-changed from the start. Getting alienated and thrown out of the womb, severed, the umbilical cord. What awaits us are further separations: from family, friends, community, self. From shadow. We need guidance to negotiate our way back into relationship! May books be always our guides. To the one who you know who knows you, too, I tell myself, may you steer your pen and the keys, to help and relate, not to please.