arkansas blues

does the light of God blind you
or lead the way home for you?

they long&sleek&brown&elegant and they will kill you.  the last time I was in Arkansas I got pulled over for swerving
over the line.  I wasn’t drinking, I was watching the cop behind me and pulling off a rig from Albuquerque.  I was due back in Philly but was forced to stay in that greasy wet room in Arkansas.  this room tonight ain’t much better but I’ve got my friends with me.  my long, brown cigarillos&a big green bottle of beer. I’ve somehow been to every state in the lower 48 (except South Dakota).  another feat somehow trying to prove myself better than him.  I’m not sure how much better I can be stowed away in this room w/the t.v. off&the curtains down, these familiar totems of cigarettes&beer and this karma coming from a long line
of alcoholic smokers. there ain’t much anyone can do about karma.  freedom is making choices.  freedom is the monkey and freedom is the key.  but wisdom-aho.  Wisdom is knowing when to pull off the road and get a dirty room, somehow take your rest and get the fuck out of Arkansas first thing tomorrow.

I’m ‘gonna take the sins of my father
I’m ‘gonna take the sins of my mother
I’m ‘gonna take the sins of my brother
down to the pond.
-Tom Waits

last missive from the Lonely Road

So much has changed in just one week’s time.  Last Wednesday I was out on the roof smoking at Fox Den.  Rainwater was crackling in the citronella and the bluebird was out there, baiting me.  7days and 1,300 miles later and I’m up on the 6th floor of the Holiday Inn, overlooking Buffalo, NY, drinking coffee and listening to Death Cab For Cutie.  Today we go up on the mountain.
It’s almost like I was given another chance to really see America.  Was it dire&grim?  You bet.  Ohio&Indiana will ruin anyone’s mood, destroy any good feelings or grand notions about where this country is headed.  But I, the pilgrim, no longer separate myself from it.
I’m seeing a world of people and things
Bob Dylan, Song To Woody
The last time I was on the rust belt was in a 15seat Ford Econoline hauling a double-axel trailer and 4 dudes addicted to four different drugs.  That was back ‘05, when this country made its decision and cast its vote FOR MORE WAR and for FOUR MORE YEARS of a caniving richboy President who would shit-tank the economy and condone the torture of anyone in the world unfortunate enough to be misaligned w/the Christian Pogrom.  What we’re looking at now could be your just deserts, motherfucker.  Dumbshits like my mom’s ex-husband, who had such a hardon for a $600 taxbreak and blowing the “sandniggers” back to a hole in the ground may be starting to see the big picture.  The Year of the Cock was an ugly one for America but it takes the average citizen a little time to wake up and realize that the government lies and is corrupt.  Aho and this was perhaps why I chose to separate from the horrors I saw out on the road that terrible summer.  I also had ineffective coping skills and ultimately I would have to lose everything until I took that final ride down to Hippie Town.
What do I see now, seven years later, out on the road in America?  I see working people.  I see a once thriving country fade out its final days of prosperity and lolling into a new Century of War and a disappearing middle class.  I woke up in Mansfield, OH yesterday to the chilling&rueful sounds of maggot Romney singing America The Beautiful on t.v.  I see people with their heads down and their hands caught in an American dream, scared to wake up from the nightmare that their lives have become.  And I see myself in all of these.
But I’m just a pilgrim between Temple&the Bad Road.  I don’t have any answers.  I’m drenched in sin&greed&lust.  The only break I get is doing Yoga or writing on here.  All else is struggle, all else is fight.
We’re going up on the mountain today.  300miles into the wilderness from Buffalo, NY.  No internet.  No phone.  Just an old typewriter, a yoga mat and $200worth of gourmet cigarettes.
This blog is on hiatus.  In the meantime please check out my friends and compatriots’ work, here:
Everything Sucks
Groundwork
PSALMSHIPS
SEAGULLS CIRCLE MY CORPSE
La Adventura With Lybsta
Un-Granola
The Big Weasel’s Weblog
a series of moments

Stay tuned for a guest blog from the inimitable D.C. Bloom.  He’ll be guest blogging on here and you’ll get a kick out his sarcasm.  It’ll help you through the dog days of summer and put a little mirth in yr black heart&mine.

Be good and be good to each other, babies.  We’ll be together again.  See you in August, motherfucker.

Namaste
Jim Trainer
Buffalo, NY
The Land of the Free

Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him.
He won’t be afraid of the destructive act:
half the house will have to come down.
This way he’ll grow virtuously into wisdom.
-C.P.Cavafy

Isabella

Me&the boy hugging Route 66 through Oklahoma.  We’re burning through the towns.  Seiling, OK and its gone.  We’re passing over the brown wines of creeks.  We’re rising up and coming back down on all that beautiful land.  There are smokes out there on the horizon and fire on the plains.  His mother is back home with the pill bottle rolling out onto the carpet.  The t.v. is on but she is not watching.  The boy will be ok.  He plays drums on his lap.  We listen to:  Dylan, the Boss, the Strokes, Belinda Carlile, Beck.  He’s a Pisces, born the same day as me.  He was conceived during a mad June back in ’04 when I was in love with her and wrote poetry on an old typewriter in an abandoned warehouse.  He was conceived in love.  Now she degenerates in her room and sinks into that town.  She tries to fill his head with madness but the boy will be ok. He is awake.  Awake is a painful way to exist.  The best&worst will have to pass through us.  But he is awake and so am I.  We’re burning through Oklahoma, July 14.  There is a subtle knowledge that passes between us.  Flowing through our deep connection and his old wisdom.  He doesn’t know that the world is a better place and that we have to keep fighting to make it so.  All he sees is a beautiful world.  He doesn’t know that many great men will pass through this world and some of them will be left standing out on a hot&dusty road.  He sees me at the wheel, big Papa, singing like a lunatic, smoking and playing the harp.  My love will not protect him but he will not need protection.  I am his father and he is awake.
The hungry land is starving.  We must feed it with our sweat&tears and toil.  We’re at the crossroads of 51&44, listening to them Outlaw Blues.  Up on a pole at the corner the flag is ripped&burning.  The sun beats down on the old concrete like judgement on the Righteous in the hungry land.  All he sees is a beautiful world.

Rain quit and the wind got high,
and the black ol’ dust storm filled the sky.
And I swapped my farm for a Ford machine,
and I poured it full of this gas-i-line.
–Woodrow Wilson Guthrie
July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967

​Just A Pilgrim Between Temple&the Bad Road

(originally published in Everything Sucks 7/7/12)

this concludes our Week of Loving Dangerously

She pulled up in a gun-metal grey Lexus 350. I was drinking the worst margarita ever at Boheme off Westheimer. The barmaid was right about the tequila but little else. I sat on the sofa, by the door, cooling off. She came in.

She kissed me. I got a taste of the Republic Silver and closed my tab.
With one kiss and one taste I started to realize that, even though I’d been travelling since 7a.m., 3hours down 290 from Hippie Town and 5more blocks through the ghettos of Houston, all was right with the world.
We pulled onto Alan Parkway and sunk into a dream. We spent the next 12hours living Life as it should be lived:  sheltered&quiet in Hunter’s Creek Village, deep in the heart of Texas, in the Land of the Free. Love-making, guitar playing and lunch and beer and more music.
I been too long in the wasteland, forgotten what love is supposed to be like.
Love is ultimately an understanding and being gentle when understanding isn’t forthcoming. Love is easy. It’s quiet. There isn’t really anything reassuring about love but its reassuring enough to know that it can live and we can be part of its song&sway. We can come and dissolve and labor the tired ego no more.
Hang it up. Park it down and unwind.

She’s sleeping in the backroom as I write this and smoke. Drink coffee in the garden. Freda, Queen of the Silkys, sleeps beside me. The cicadas lazily drilling into the magic canopy of Summer’s green theater. The brown lizard has the red leaf. All is right with the world.
Used to be that I could never be alone.  The problem w/Jimbo is that I could never relax. Still, love, to me, should be industrious&uninterrupted. I never went in for anything orthodox or static and for me love is the same. Get it all in. 12-30hours in an abandoned mansion in Memorial, TX.
Then get back to the front.

I got orders of a different kind recently. I’m still standing in the doorway but something tells me this threshold will be fluid. The door might never close but only swing in&out. Within, without. Life has sent a messenger. She can hold a mirror and I am in love with her legs.
And so, with this vow re-tripled, and with orders of a different kind, I’ll be heading back up to Hippie Town and preparing for the day that I walk through that door-get an interview and sign on.
There is a great&grave suffering in the world. There is a great&grave suffering within us all. We all are trying to be happy&free.

I finally got my orders,
I’ll be marching through the morning, marching through the Night,
moving cross the border of my secret life.
-Leonard Cohen, In My Secret Life

May we stalk ourselves on the road to Freedom.
Jim Trainer
Memorial, TX

guest-blogging

Aho.

I’ll be featured on Brother Sicko’s awesome blog, Everything Sucks, in the next couple of days.  Look for it.  Think I’ll skip town and forego the Ow My Balls Amateur Hour.  Your light&love is keeping me alive.
See you in Houston, motherfucker.

Namaste
Jim Trainer
On The Road, TX

Shreiks of Paradise, Correspondence&Rails-Dear Chuck

The Office of Jim Trainer
Fox Den
Hippie Town, USA

Chuck Daas
loveydovies.net
New Orleans, LA

7/1/12
10:24am

Dear Chuck-

Holla at yr boy.  Tell ’em sorry.  Don’t tell ’em I could never be alone.  The deadline wasn’t kind but nothing is.
Ibuprofen
Chardonnay,
Melatonin,
coffee&a couple packs of long brown MORE cigarettes-what am I, a 60year old woman?
Aho and beware the Whiskey.  It takes away the pain but you need pain to write.  And time.  Time’s more important than all these sundry ingredients& pharmaceuticals or some Holy Suffering in the Land of the Free.

It’s officially summer here and I am officially done with the bio.  The July sun was just:  burn&peel, yesterday when me&my partner were trolling the Drag, blasting Brandi Carlisle and looking for falafel.  Summer.  Aho.  Thee most celebrated of seasons.  We lucked out w/some rain the past two days.  It’s cooled everything down and even the hangers-on are fled the sun porch.

We will live to see stranger things than our own mortality, Chuck.  Please remember this and make yr homeboy know, too.
We’re in the Piscean Age, have been since around 50 BCE and will be, well into 2110.  I don’t take any stock in hokey, star system jibba-jabba but, if I did, Beware.  There has been no bloodier Age than the one ruled by the dueling angry Fish.  We both know that Piscean women are looney-tunes but fish men ain’t spoolin’ wit a full reel either.
What is tantamount, Chuck, is that life in the Year of the Water Dragon shall be an auspicious life.  There will be a great clearing off and we will pretend that the dead are gone but we will go on carrying them in our hearts.  There will be something called Middle Class Island on both coasts and down here in the Pearl of the South, the future of Austin is beginning to look more&more like a giant&sprawling Whole Foods.
Oh well.  That’s the price you pay to the Big Boss Man.  The 21st Century will be a paying one.  Aho.  Right down the line someone will have to pay even if it has to be YOU, brother.  The question becomes-who will judge the Righteous, Chuck?

I’d love to explain all the shit that went down as soon as I accepted his offer of work last May.
Actually, no.  I wouldn’t.  It was life and it was messy, a collision of the Kings&Queens and a week of loving dangerously.  Whatever, it’s only nature and nature always Wins.

Power attracts power.  When one tree grows tall about the others, lightning comes to strike it.
-How Yoga Works

Me&my partner sunk into the heart of college town but made it back to the land of Fat Living&Little Consequence.  It was summer in the city and the sun had set.  The bio is done.  Long live the bio.

Go fuck yourself, Chuck.

Jim Trainer
Fox Den
Hippie Town, USA