Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Dialysis Cell

The guy awoke already in imprisonment. A scar ran the length of his forearm and extended through the edge of his middle finger. His fuck you finger. A swollen and blueish fuck you finger. The prison yard was muddy post a good rain. The guy was naked and sitting upon a cold stool. He rotated each arm. The long scar hid on the dark side of his arm, now revealing an IV tube sticking into his veins. On both arms. The IV ran to a wood pole sticking up from the mud. An armed officer was in the act of replacing the bag of liquid on the post.
"What is going?!" The guy barked.
"Hold still! Hold still!" the officer ordered back.
"Why am I out here?"
"Finally coming to eh? Congratulations. You fucked up and killed a man. Although he nabbed your liver, so congratulations, you'll die if you move an inch and lose the flow of from the baggies."
The guy looked back at the prison.
"No room left, but you are good and trapped here. Move an inch, you pull the plug on your IV and you'll die within minutes. Congratulations."
The officer finished what he was doing and the guy under the gray skies of late afternoon.

The night chill whipped the guy around and made the liquid entering his blood stream icy, near icing. His body temperature dropped drastically. The officer watched from the tower and laughed. He finished his warm tea and flicked on the auto beam and declared he was ready for bed. The auto beam would scan the prison yard in a constant rotation with a spotlight and sense any change in movement or space.
"The guy's fucked," the officer grumbled.
The guy shivered. And shivered. His skin whitened as though bleach popped and spread from his goosebumps. The guy's eyes glazed over. Thunder patted in the far distance and a slight warm breeze shifted through, for only a moment. It was a moment enough to give the guy the ounce of body heat needed for a lucid thought.
"This is bullshit," the guy gasped.
The guy proceeded to remove the IV tubes from his arm veins and trotted off down the prison yard and hopped the fence. Fifteen minutes later the auto beam landed on the spot where the IV bags still flapped but no longer ran to a body. The alarms sounded and all officers were called on alert.
The guy hid in the back of a garage down the street. The house seemed to be empty. He found a dirty blanket and laid out in the tube of a rolled up a rug. He could hear the sirens tread the surrounding hills and shouts from the woods, a search party. Four hours later the guy was still alive, without crude dialysis. He felt the rising scab on his arm. He recalled no such event when he killed a man. Having found warmth he now felt quite healthy.
"What kind of bullshit is this?" the guy mouthed silently in the rolled up rug.

Monday, December 28, 2009

The Bears Took My Sleeping Mound

I was on "getaway" in a cabin that my family newly discovered it owned. It was dilapidated a bit, a very gray wood that had dried and splintered by way of old weather. The screen to the porch was definitely torn at the upper corners. By raccoons? It seemed originally it was only two rooms (living room, one bedroom) and kitchen. Latrine was outside. Little rectangular slab with a hole for your buns and an open tank into the dug up ground. I met an old cousin whose name I forgot. He lived as a spirited loafer, often poking around the woods shirtless. Did I mention this cabin stood lonesome in the woods of Colorado? At the base of a rocky upheaval of mountains. We ate our meals outdoors, on a slanted and rotting picnic table. My cousin insisted that I take the bedroom. He slept on a heap of blankets in the living, as though one who tended to dose watching television on the couch, although there was no television, no glistening manifestation to proclaim the flow of electricity. The mattress was so goddamn damp though and he was so friendly in his offering up his bed that I felt weird giving it back to him during the middle of the night. I did spot a sort of hatch in the ceiling which I poked around at, revealing an opening onto the roof and the piny canopy. I crawled out and walked around in the chirruping night in only my boxers and savored the freshness of the air. A drastic improvement from leaning face first into the musty mattress. I gravitated against the slope and felt plucked by curiosity to scope out the mountain that reached up into jagged gnarles of land. The trees thinned and it was an open, grassy slant. A few buffalos grazed and the moon made everything look blue. I walked, barefooted into dewey grass and the loose grass stuck between my toes in little balls. I hiked up and found a nook of grassy brush resting on a tuck of cliff face, which I climed and looked down at even more buffalo in the far valley below. Here I rested. Fatigue caught up with me and dissolved the second wind of curiosity. I awoke once before sun up and though to make my way back to the cabin and climbed a little pine and hopped back onto the roof and descended back into the bedroom. With my nose mashed into the sick smell of the once white (now charcoal black) mattress I thought about returning to my little spot, my found nest in the open of a refreshing nature, but the sun began to peak through some trees and I could hear my cousin stirring.

The next night arrived and my cousin snored from the floor of the living room. I could easily have exited the front screen door through the porch with saggy holes in the floor boards, but I enjoyed the process of sneaking up onto the roof and out. I enjoyed the jump from the smoothed out panels and into the moist ground made of old leaves. I enjoyed sinking to my shins and pulling my legs forth, streaked with wet dirt. I read once that the elements in dirt can revive certain mental abilities and I admit I felt a tad more open minded. Well, a better way to put it would be "open sensing." Everything felt clear, sounds were crisper and my pupils seemed to dilate and gulped the blue/dark world before. I walked up the slope again, anxious to claim my little open aired nest to sleep below the stars. The buffalo grazed and from the distance their shapes triggered thoughts of old friends.

Upon arriving at my nest from the night prior, the buffalo which I had assumed, was actually a bear, a big black bear which roared at me and I stood very still. I cannot tell you what I did from there or what he attempted to do to me, because I awoke mid morning, unscathed, laying on the roof, looking up at the tall length of trees. Noises pounded from the canopy, and as my eyes adjusted to the light poking through (it was noon) I could see the figures of construction men with hard hats, clinging to the trees by rubber saddles and laying the foundation of an elaborate tree fort.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Thin Strip of Hair

I am realizing I am not a fan of the man with a ponytail. Perhaps this is something I've always tended towards but it consumed me like a gutteral reflex about a week ago when I was at a poetry reading, some ass in the back with a ponytail, drinking Tecates began heckling an old man who was reading poetry. The regular emcee was not there so it seemed they were not able to bring out the usual lighting, so he had difficulty reading. During the process of him stumbling over some words, a small group of office folk left the bar. You could from the get go that they were not pleased this was poetry night. The ponytail fellow - smily smuggly - shouted "you sure know how to bring in a crowd!" This was the closest I've coming to instigating a punching in another fellow's face. In the end I exerted self control/pussied out. God, what a smug little fuck. Reminded me of a Leo Johnson from Twin Peaks.

Last night I had an intense dream which actually has inspired within me a new idea for a play. I will begin working on it in the new year. I've never tried mead before, and I think I will make it my new year's resolution - to try mead. Fermented honey correct?

Last night chocolate chip pancakes made an appearance in my dreams and this evening my girlfriend suggested we make some. What a great manifestation it turned out to be!

Sunday, December 13, 2009

The Shivers

One of my biggest fears is becoming the ticking of time. On a subsonic level it is becoming pervasively loud, at least within my own cochlea. My guts are churning an ever increasing pool of ideas for projects and the act of juggling and sustaining each and everyone with a mighty and passionate fervor seems to be egging on this proverbial tick-tock that sends shivers down my spine. It's attempting to shatter the child-like hunger I have to create. I get the feeling this tick-tock wants to co-opt the creative spirit into a mechanical act of production. Churn and churn the goods and get them on the market. Is the capitalist trying to wear my artistic drive like a fine suit or disguise? My how the day flies by and how I kick myself for all I accomplished was write a short story, several stage sketches, write part of a screenplay, send out some promotional e-mails, cook a fine meal, read to refresh my command of the english language. And the capitalist that likes to wear my creative skins does chide me for not summoning the revenue. My I'd like to kick modern money mechanics in the gut and run like a child into the fields and build a strange fort and relax for a bit, truly let my imagination run wild.

Tonight I'd like to induce a dream, where I drink absinthe with an unknown and forgotten novelist in Belgium, in the late 1800s. We will revel in the absinthe guzzline and exchange thoughts.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Droves and Acorns

Last night I had a strange of glimpse of the city of Chicago on the brink of absolute chaos. I hopped over a roadside barrier and had to sweet talk two female cops as the sunrise came up and people took to the streets in droves. My enjoyment of the excitement dissolved as I saw apartment buildings collapse, then my meandering turned to the west, to the smaller towns, where I stayed with an old high school friend, in a large white house near a lake, and enjoyed a more subdued sunrise the following "dream" day. The warm rain fell on my shoulders. Tickling, wet, refreshment. I had a ball throwing acorns into an abandoned pool over grown with ivy.

There were tones of my dream that reflected and resembled some themes in the book I just released: Turban Tan. I hope you get a chance to check it out. I had a good time writing it and putting it together. It's a piece that means a lot to me. www.TurbanTan.com. Below is a little trailer for it.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Turban Tan is Now Available!






I am absolutely psyched - my next book Turban Tan is now available on paperback. Best place to get a copy is at the website - http://www.TurbanTan.com. It ships pretty quickly too! I hope you enjoy the read! I am really excited with how the book came together and it's proven to be a pretty important book to me. Please let me know your thoughts on it when you get around to reading a copy. Your readership means a lot to me.

-Jeff Phillips
TheIglooOven@gmail.com