YEAR OF THE DRAGON

If you want war then we better start fighting…
—Tom Vek

Temperatures of 32 degrees or less can cause death in as little as 15 to 45 minutes.

Classified US military documents released by WikiLeaks in October 2010, record Iraqi and Coalition military deaths between January 2004 and December 2009 at 109,032.
—WIKIPEDIA

The latest death toll stands at  22, 509 Palestinians and about 1,139 people killed in Israel since October 7.
—Al Jazeera

Let the train blow the whistle when I go…
—Johnny Cash

How’s your epoch? I trust by now you know my authority when I tell you it’s time. The world isn’t ending, it’s ended already. Hank comes bowling down the stairs and stops mid-floor to groom his bald black leg. The sun hasn’t risen as much as glommed onto a grey January sky. It’s winter in America as I get up for another cup of joe. She writes  “…you’re crossing the creative line of nonfiction.” Everybody’s a critic. I dip the ash from my cigarette into a brass and pear-shaped pewter. The night is full of ghosts, too, but thankfully when I wake at dawn these voices aren’t coming from the past. My father’s ashes, fully integrated into the loamy brown of Delaware curl from the frost in blades of grass, and pick up some in the tuft of a mealy and feral hare. Which is to say everything is not ok but it’s ok.

You’ve made your promises. Took your stock. Any better than me you didn’t wake up to a naked man on a cocaine bender in your kitchen this New Year’s. Or suffer any kind of cheap mark neé pagan-appropriated capitalist holiday. You held ’em close, or as close as you could, or you stayed in bed all morning, scrolling TikTok drinking water and the best coffee in Kyle. Your boy was on the air yesterday after flying over Philly on Christmas day. I’ve been alone too long and now I’m starting to like it. I’m non-plussed about War and hegemony which is the most selfish thing you’ll read in 2024 so far. I can’t complain but I will. I do know that whatever we’re looking for, and anything we need, can only be addressed when we ask: how can I serve?

Enough on the dawn and poetry (as if). The truth is poetry envelopes me. Makes my sex and thirsty. Peels my ears and burns the husk of living to a molten cure. What I’m trying to say is what I am saying. What you are trying to do is what you are doing. Shut-the-fuck up once in a while, or tell them to, and listen. You’ll hear time grinding on its pestle, bastards gorging on the blood of working folk and roiling in wealth, cripples marking time block-by-block, the slamming car door of the police cruiser of your heart, two-thousand 24 years in the flue, democracy snapping on a lede and lance of fascism, Mama Greenberg cursing and Hank the tom snoring loud, Cohen at the altar and ringing that bell and the hold music for your own life but hang up the phone. Disconnect. 2023 is gone. Nothing is forever and neither is eternity. You’ve got one life to lead, that’s it. It’s excruciatingly hard but everything else is gravy. The dead would be gone a long time and anyway would’ve died for nothing if you don’t do it, now without worry or tab of recompense. Take a moment. We’ll wait for you but when the train rolls in we’re climbing aboard. 

The dead gave it to us but it ain’t no thing. Let us stop and listen, listen sometime as we’re working, working, and listen. And the dead will whisper to us this is love… 

@jimtrainerpoet

@Poet Chris Baker:BodyCatcher @Joe Brundidge @Purple Bee TV #jimtrainer #poetry #poem #prayerforthedead #prayer #buddhism #docrimesaypoetry

♬ original sound – Jim Trainer

IN THE CITY is a monthly News and Public Affairs program attesting that if the voice of the people on the street ain’t the truth, it’ll do until the truth gets here. First Mondays at 1 PM CT on KOOP RADIO 91.7FM HD1 HD3 Hornsby and on the world wide web at koop.org.

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THERE’S BLOOD ON THE STREETS, THE STREETS ARE OURS

FUN FUN FUN FEST 2009

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?
―Charles Bukowski

The right to use public spaces without fear of discrimination or harassment by law enforcement.
The right to vote on legislation.
The right to non-obstructively seek shelter, social services, legal aid, and education.
The right to privacy of property in public spaces.
The right to feel safe.
—Homeless Bill Of Rights, (CA, DE, MN, MS, OR, TN & VT)

The new American dream is the dream of the immigrant.  It’s about what you been through to stay where you’re at.
—Adrian Davila

Good morning America, how are you?  You makin it?  You reading this you making it.  You can’t get a Google account without a phone number, but can’t get a phone without a job—and you can’t traipse the corporate wasteland, paved and curated as it is to a quickly shifting ecological model, without getting shot.  It’s cold out there, or hot, depending on if you are eating or getting eaten. 

My heat’s on, though I got the doors open to smoke.  Got cigarettes, obv.  Got coffee, though the word “coffee” should be best left to interpretation.  Got food in the fridge and when I creatively hit a wall I’m bound to hop up from this makeshift desk in the wind, fry up some kale and eggs and crack open an Elecrolit™, have breakfast with NPR to see who’s crying now.  Got gas in my Japanese car and I’m booked and bound to go, out into the rain and mud and to my new place of employ.  Davila was right. It’s getting harder and harder to make it here. As we collectively wake up from the American dream I am excited to be at the helm of a great change led by the least of us. As such I am thrilled to share that I’m starting a new position as Staff Writer at The Other Ones Foundation.

RADIO VOLTA 88.1FM PHILADELPHIA 2000

And not a moment too soon, too. Ask you, how many of the boxes on the Homeless Bill Of Rights can you check, Google Client, without first taking your place as a cog and anyway throwing your weight around for the bloody cause of capitalism?  How many boxes can the state of Texas check is the question, because besides being a bastion of what THEY want for us and veritable ground-zero for intolerance of homelessness and safety only if you’re packing—it’s where I live.  I’m making it—and subsidizing my work with bartending and bass-playing gigs, caregiving, liquor promos and dog-grooming.  Lucky I got healthcare that’s provided by a non-profit and with said Japanese car I got options. 

The least of us don’t. I worked for a time at the ARCH—Austin’s Resource Center for the Homeless.  That’s where I discovered you need a phone number for a Gmail account, and why Google’s texted me more than I’d like them to.  Not to worry, those verification texts are buried and anyway lost in a barrage of spam calls I get from the hungry and waiting world.  It’s capitalism, baby. The calls interrupt my daily music listening which is no bueno, it makes me mad and you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.  I’ve a right to be but nothing’s guaranteed in the final century.  I’ve a home, and as mentioned a car, and in my new position as staff writer hoping to get audience with people like Davila, Graham, Abbott and Baker. 

When our rights are so enmeshed with business and corporatism poses an existential threat well then it starts to feel like war and even a pacifist like me can get behind that battle.  I’ll sign off on this first of many missives from the front with a no-simpler sentiment than that sung by that working-class pisan and hardest working Italian-American in show business, Mr. “Born In The USA” himself, Bruce Springsteen.  Everybody got to have a home. 

See you on the frontlines, Google Client!

KINDA TROPICAL AUSTIN 2023

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COME HERE OFTEN?

Of all the things I should’ve done that I did not do
I should’ve been smarter, I should’ve been stronger
I should’ve been you…
—Should’ve California, Two Cow Garage

Boo. I’m back on the masthead if only to assuage a bad bitch of writer’s block and anyway bleed a little and speak freely on my urge to die. I don’t mind the plebeian eye of the casual reader, and certainly not anyone paying to read these words but things have gotten so serious in the Anthropocene. I’ve missed some deadlines recently and other than letting my readers down I’ve got to deal with me, which, I’ll be honest isn’t my favorite.

Country simple, on Bukowski’s birthday last Thursday I filled a 30′ dumpster with the contents of a house full of lonely people. It was 100 degrees at 7PM and I was high off ElectroLit sugar and vape-hits from a Juicy Bar. It fucking sucked but coming home was worse. Worn down and battle-scarred I could only stare at a Patreon draft-bubble before loading up Schitt’s Creek and cracking open a jar of peanut butter in bed. David was taking his driving test and Alexis was trying to tell him ‘No one cares, David’ while out my window the sun set on one of only so many summers I’ve left in the final century. Truth is you don’t have to be Bukowski to appreciate that time spent fucking-off is time well spent. It’ll take a minute to get the boot of empire off your neck and anyway slip from the parasympathetic nervous system and into a more natural and easy way of feeling. There’s nothing natural or easy about making a living and if I’m beating writer’s block writing these words, it’s only by the grace of God and to tell you what you already know—there’s got to be a better way and if there isn’t, well…why go on?

Who doesn’t want to kiss it all goodbye? The rich and charmed of which I am neither. I was born lucky in a hard time, or hard in a lucky time and anyway I’ve thought about killing myself a lot this summer. Will ’round Christmas too bet and I tell you this to destigmatize suicidal-ideation and anyway get real but, country simple I tell you Good Reader because I must. I had to tell you when I was doomed in the depths of alcoholism, fucked with by fanatic fans and berated by borderline bitches. I had to tell you when I was in trouble last summer and I am telling you now. But I don’t have to tell you at all. You get it and after all these years together we know—the only people taking offense to my work are the ones who are supposed to. 

Other than that, who wouldn’t wanna, ya know, lay in death’s breast, suck the cool, thick air of dust and float above the pain and sad triumph of the human race? Isn’t death just the final and lasting neé unconditional love we’ve been yearning for since we left the warm and safe oblivion of our mothers’ womb? Point isn’t that it’s worth it to stick around, or that we’d cause our loved ones to suffer if we checked out early. The point is that between meting out our time on a dying planet beholden to invisible corporate overlords, inhaling petroleum products until there’s plastic in the bloodstream, hemmed in by exhaust-spewing traffic while suffering another sucker crying on NPR, with every stroke and pace of our time tabulated on ledger and our very lifetime measured in capital—between living this way and dying…well, what’s the difference?

THIS SATURDAY

𝑆𝑈𝐵𝑆𝐶𝑅𝐼𝐵𝐸 𝑇𝑂 𝐽𝐼𝑀 𝑇𝑅𝐴𝐼𝑁𝐸𝑅’𝑆 𝑃𝑂𝐸𝑀 𝑂𝐹 𝑇𝐻𝐸 WEEK ON SUBSTACK

𝑆𝑈𝑃𝑃𝑂𝑅𝑇 𝐽𝐼𝑀 𝑇𝑅𝐴𝐼𝑁𝐸𝑅’𝑆 𝑃𝐸𝑅𝑆𝑂𝑁𝐴𝐿 𝐽𝑂𝑈𝑅𝑁𝐴𝐿𝐼𝑆𝑀 𝑊𝐼𝑇𝐻 𝐴𝐶𝐶𝐸𝑆𝑆 𝑇𝑂 𝐿𝐼𝑉𝐸 𝑅𝐸𝐴𝐷𝐼𝑁𝐺𝑆 𝑂𝐹 𝑃𝑂𝐸𝑇𝑅𝑌 𝐴𝑁𝐷 𝑆𝑂𝑁𝐺𝑆, 2 𝑃𝑂𝐸𝑀𝑆 𝐴 𝑀𝑂𝑁𝑇𝐻, 𝐿𝐸𝑇𝑇𝐸𝑅𝑆 𝐴𝑁𝐷 𝐴 𝑊𝐸𝐸𝐾𝐿𝑌 𝐶𝑂𝐿𝑈𝑀𝑁