From "Hey Diddle Diddle"

We stop for food at a diner near Sheboygan. Our waitress sports K-mart rhinestone studded glasses and a pink uniform that clings too tightly to her thighs and breasts.She has spatters of unrecognizable food on her apron. She heaves her heavy body to our booth with coffee and omelets.

From the kitchen drifts the bittersweet yearnings and adolescence angst of Gene Pitney on this autumnal morning. We watch the lascivious flirting between our large pink watiress and the tattooed ex-con that made our omlettes.

I point to the ample pink buttocks and whisper to Cow, "Do you think he plays these songs as a hint to her?"

Cow turns her head excitedly to peer into the kitchen., "Oh. You know what? I think so."

I raise my eyebrows and grin at her, "When songs like 'That Girl Belongs To Yesterday' and 'Half Heaven Half Heartache' play he looks at her so longingly. I wonder what is going on? Do you think they've ever done it?"

Cow bites her bottom lip, her eyes flash with fervor; "That's a fantasticly seductive idea. Can you image them in the walk in freezer! Her pink uniform pulled up over her huge hips, her red lips smugged against his neck and her dishwasher hair falling around her face. Sweat dripping down their bodies into the open containers on the shelfs."

Her stocking ripped and him pushed up behind her with his stubby fingers covered in grease gripping her buxom bosom. Pants around his ankles and their faces contorted in a hot moment of ugly lust."

Cow licks her lips and continues. I look at her in a pale blue wonder, "I can imagine it now. His low grunt as he pushes into her as far as their jiggling fat can go. He ejaculates and her large bosom shakes as she cums. I bet their after sex stink reeks like rotten eggs."

I shake my head and laugh. Cow takes a sip of her coffee, "That is disgusting."

Back in the car flying south toward the backward part of town. It’s twilight when we reach the neighborhood that Moon has taken hostage. I stop at a red light and Cow is gone. At home I fall asleep as the rain stops and dream of waitress with Maxwell House eyes, marmalade thighs and scrambled yellow hair.

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Happenings and Happenstance

I'm needing models (of sorts) to take portraits of. I have a bunch of black and white film and need to take photographs of faces for my own enjoyment. Let me know if your interested.

On Saturday, March 7th, at 7:30 PM, Artocratic Presents
Greg Dember,
Evan Gross,
and Willem van Spronsen/ the Super8

at the Neptune Coffee house 8415 Greenwood Ave. N. Seattle

I am good friends with Willem/The Super 8 and they can be found here: www.myspace.com/thesuper8band

Well worth the check out at least.

Speaking of bands, Saint Brickhouse is changing to Mahoot and has some wicked songs up at:
www.myspace.com/mahootmusic

Other than that, I wrote my shitty poetry I then proceeded to throw out. I lost my work when I lost my harddrive so I'm struggling trying to re-create and innnovate new stuff.

Been working hard on this so called "memoir" which is primairly about two very different points in my life I merged into one. Its "creative non fiction" for sure.

Here is something small I was wrote one night with my head in my clouds but my feet hung tight to the ground

Passive moments in wintertime as it paved into spring. I left you when the morning arose and I found myself a new person hiding beneath this skin. Finding love in overlapping circles of social grace and personified glory. A car driving north to friendships on tin foil and lace. A clean house and a romantic gesture leaves traces of forgotten romance that died in early 2004 with a man, a guitar and a hope for the future.

There is a silence in the early morning when the rest of the world is sleeping and I’m taking pills and drinking drinks to keep the hurt from turning to hate. There is nothing else to say. I swear, I know it’s true. I keep remember the day you first left, the cocaine on the floor, the trip to the dump. “I *heart* huckabees” on the television. The kisses and the promises that we would never keep. There is a tired romance that comes with greyhound terminals and the lovers I have left for dead at them. Leaving always, for farms that hold no home. Its as if holding you in my arms were as if holding strangers to lose change they ask.

There was a connection so deep between us it scared the life out of anybody who came close. Or, at least, that is what you told me. It explained a lot. I tried, for months I tried, to figure out how to say hello without sounding so cruel. Then I tried to say goodbye without sounding cruel. It's hard.

That is all.

excerpt from new fiction piece

Just the beginning of the piece. Its pretty ok, the end (not posted) rushes too fast, according to most people. I'm working on it, alright? I'll post more later.

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What Artists Do When Not Suffering
By Tamarah Phillips

I think it might have been Oakland, or maybe it was my own devices, but I would like to blame Oakland. Smears of white powder gleaming my eyes, looking out at a crowd that’s waiting patiently for me. “This one is called,” I say, “Picking away at Sobriety with a Bourbon Ice-pick.” And they laugh. They always laugh. I used to too, but that was before Oakland.

Other renditions of that night can have me standing, smoking and looking for anyway to get to a place where I can stand my own voice. Getting on a red-eye groundhound bound for Oakland, I thought leaving Seattle would leave behind a life of degernetive trust associated only with the feelings of self destruction. In other words, I thought I was tough enough to survive left to my own devices. Sitting outside my drunk motel room with a girl I found spare changing, we shared a joint and I realized this was it; this is what I had been waiting for.

I found Natalie the night I moved to Oakland. She was sitting outside Nation’s Burgers asking for cheap red wine. I bought her a blueberry pie and a cheeseburger. We went back to my motel room and got drunk past the point of collision. I had a bottle of whiskey and a 12 pack and thought I was going to change the world. She had a gram of cocaine and knew she could do nothing but resign herself to life of depravity.

One night walking down near Jack London Square, the place where Oakland meets the bay, seeing San Francisco glittering in street light constellations, hearing the sounds of trains in the not so distant future we held hands and made plans to kill off the pain and live in a quiet desperation. Behind Barnes and Noble, in an alley smelling of urine and cardboard boxes, she pulled out a mirror and cut us lines. "This is real pain," she told me, "You can't fathom the sort of depth I have been."


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other than that, I'm back in Olympia taking a Writers Workshop class. I have written a feature article on Stephen Jesse, which is neat. Got OK reviews. My friend Mel 0pened a bookstore on Vashon Island. It can be found at www.strangerthanfictionbooks.com

It is a very good bookstore, great poetry section. The owner is well versed in everything he sells and it's a great little place to get a tattoo too! (more about this later)