Shrieks of Paradise, Correspondence&Rails#7: Brother Kit

The Ruined Rooms of the High Life
Fox Den
Hippie Town, USA

Kermit Hell Lyman III

The Last Frontier
West Philadelphia, PA 

 

Aho but you were right Brother Kit.  It is lonely at the top.  Nice we have our women and the spoils of this wreckless celebration we call life.  What else?
Rock&Roll, that’s what else Brother.  It saved us even when we didn’t want saving.  It’s the last grace of these United States.  We could fold it up, croak&crank it to the next and be thankful.  Our work has saved us.  And it has destroyed them.  Aho.  Ain’t nothing wrong with my crown and yours, Brother?  That’s what I thought.  We are Champions.
It all began with the decision to lose first and talk later.  Hostile City embraced our defeatism, if only b/c in her bitch-heart she knew it would be easier to take us this way.  Turns out that defeat wasn’t the worse thing that ever happened to us.  Its made us strong&wise enough to suffer through any series of mindfucks and Schadenfreude.  We know b/c we have lived the Warrior’s life and now the only lasting and final danger is this contentment.
It’s all gravy up on this vista.  Trouble’s harder to find these days and it makes me miss the devil a little.  But not much.

May You Continue To Be Luckier Than the Lightning.

 

yrs,
Brother JT

We miss you.

James Lynn Trainer
8/27/51-10/24/01

Shrieks of Paradise, Correspondence&Rails#6: The summer won’t end and we’ll win.

The Ruined Rooms of the High Life
Fox Den
Hippie Town, USA

Pat Klinck
Past the Swollen Outroads of Empire
Bedford, VA

10/18/12

PK-

The only lasting and final danger is this contentment.  And Smokestack Lightning is thee finest rock&roll song ever written. I don’t remember where I was the first time I heard it. It was like I always heard it. Sumlin just bending the flat third and then the 7 for the whole song. The bass thumping 5, 7 DOWN on the 1. That drummer is just swinging his way through history. It’s the beat, brother. The beat is the road that Wolf is just struttin & prancin around on. Gettin’ unruly.
Why don’t you hear me cryin?
Wolf was the real deal. Punkrock&black and new to town with a .38 and a record contract. Punk rockers ain’t got nothin’ on these guys, Pat.  Nothin.

I remember dancing to Smokestack Lightning with Kira Rose. A true&rare flower, that one. We were drinking Budweiser and swingin. I was in cutoffs with a broken nose.  The summer and my time in South Philly was coming to a rueful close. Aho.  After New Year’s Eve 07 I’d be white knuckling it in the slower-lower with a carton of Marlboro 27s until springtime.  But we dreamed for a little while there, and I’ll never forget it.

Here in the Land of Little-to-No Consequence the summer is over but the girls are still pretty and the music is still traditional and the beer is still cold. Whomever handed this down I thank him. Life just gets better.  Next time I run into Kira Rose and they’re playing Smokestack Lightning on a jukebox of eternity somewhere, with the endless bottles of booze in the next room, the summer won’t end and we’ll win.

May the winter cleave from us all that we don’t need. Bring the fire, bring the change.  It’s back to the dayshift with plumbers in the yard and William Parker’s Old Tears blasting romance wide and cutting down nostalgia-that silly, dreaming bitch.  Salmon&black eyed peas are the key to the sublime&ordinary existence that was taken from us in youth, when were out on the bad road without radio.

Life’s too short to suffer without music.

Yr Brother James
Hippie Town, USA

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THE DECKS HAVE BEEN CLEARED DOWN HERE AT THE OFFICE. IT'S TIME TO RESUME #letterday AND SEND OUT WORD TO GOOD FOLKS LIKE BROTHER KURT. HERE'S A TASTE OF WHAT YOU MIGHT RECEIVE. http://bit.ly/1SCLS9A #goingforthepost #correspondence #letter #letterwriting

A post shared by Jim Trainer (@goingforthethroat) on Dec 4, 2015 at 8:56am PST

 

Getting Used To Nothing Being Wrong

Indian Summer. Windy&warm. Black September giving sway. Moving into the mournful season but everything is OK.
Bad blues finally broke. I’m cleaning up the apartment, apologizing to friends and I feel like I’ve been let out on parole.
Had a sexy&smart editor come through. She blew through here and we blew through my stack of words until we had a tight little package we could send off to the publisher.
Heard from WragsInk, “68 pages of Real…” and it feels good. It’s what I’ve wanted, for 20 years, and now it’s here. I had a vision when I first touched boot to Texan ground, back when I was on the night shift and the day shift and living in a $500 flat off Burnet. Seems like so long ago and that I was such a young man. Which is funny considering how I thought of myself back then and all the times in my life I thought I blew it for that matter. I blew Hostile City and landed here. Life goes on. Life always goes on. Then it ends.
Got Winged Shoes and a Shield in the mails on Friday. Burned through it in two days. The man’s writing is brilliant. Makes you wonder if you haven’t been sleeping. Or it could just reaffirm what you always knew about:
-this country
-death
-adolescence
-rock&roll
-culture, war and war culture
It’s important to be awake. And its great to have allies. You know who you are.
Tune in here for a guest blog from Don Bajema. He’ll be posting one from out on the road of his Spoken Word Tour. Catch a reading if you’re up on the East Coast.

Snakes Will Eat You designer, singer/songwriter of Psalm Ships and good friend Joshua Britton is blowing through Hippie Town tonight. He changed his mind about El Reno, OK this morning and it’ll be good to see him. It’s been awhile.

So hold on, Brother. You got this. We haven’t come this far down the bad road to close our eyes or turn any away from the Temple door. This is our life. We made this. And we’re not alone.

Best,
Trainer

Guest Blogger Don Bajema

It was through no fault of  novelist, screenwriter, actor and spoken-word performer Don Bajema that it took me this long to find him. But now I’ve got him in the arsenal and there is no finer an ally to have in your corner as we enter these early-dark days of Autumn in America.

I came across Boy In The Air sometime around its release through 2.13.61 (Henry Rollins’ publishing company).  That would be around 1996 for me and the beginning of a hardheaded&balls out decade of my post-adolescence.  I don’t think I was ready for Bajema then.  I wanted nothing to do with rock&roll and I wanted to forget all about America and where I come from.  I might have superficially judged the former world-class athlete and football player but more than likely I was intoxicated with my own young&dumb ideas about immortality and romance and rebellion.
To reconnect with the creator of rockabilly fused insider/outsider Eddie Burnett now is not only right on, it begs the question:
How was I fighting this long w/o the words of Brother Don?

Do yourself a favor and take the 3 minutes it takes to read this post by Bajema.  It sums up my appreciation and respect for the man.  Not only was he there, he was watching and he was beautifully awake.
He’s been there.  He’s done it.  His prose just gives it to you-slices of life replete with the wonder of being young&alive in America and the strange, diaphanous rites of adulthood that could take it all away.

Like I said, it was through no fault of Bajema that it took me this long to truly connect with his work.  I had to drop the anger&outrage I had been spewing out towards the world and take a look down at my own feet, on the ground and in my own country.  Bajema has that effect on you.   Some writers take you down the road of their characters’ psyche with nary a good luck.  Bajema drops you on the road in your own shoes, maybe offering a nod to the signs that are always there, until it’s too late.  I think the man’s been seeing the signs for a long time.  Not only that, he has remained beautifully awake.

It’s no accident that I hear rock&roll when I read Don Bajema.  The man believes in rock&roll.  Rock&roll is true.  It burns off the phonies.  It keeps you warm at night and kicking against the pricks in the morning.

He’ll be posting some road blogs up on Going For The Throat and chronicling his spoken word tour in support of Winged Shoes and a Shield, out now through City Lights Bookstore.

As we move towards election day and deeper into a Schadenfreude of national politics, do yourself a favor and spend some time with a true patriot and rock&roller.  Stories from the street and damn fine writing to ignite us and keep us warm through the coming Winter in America.

black&white

Can’t touch on the bad blues.  It won’t let me share any of the over 6,000 words I have written about him and this most recent struggle with him, this “friend”.  Sorry I have been remiss.  Sorry if you thought any of these black&venomous missives were in any way about you, good&cherished reader.

I’m lucky.  Some people in my life are keeping me alive.  Keeping me from going off the deep end.  It’s a different kind of survival now.  Bad blues doesn’t own as much of me.  There is less for him to grab onto.  I’m lighter.  I’ve pulled myself up the littlest bit over these grim and bone-sharpening years and I have run into some fellow travelers on this vista who are priceless to me.  They know who they are.  You should, too.
I used to see this girl when I lived in the barrio.  She was a good kid.  Never told the truth a day in her life but a good kid.  I couldn’t get even 100 words up on here w/o her reproach and needling questions.  It was never about her.  It was never about you.
Oddly enough, the person it is about, this “friend”, won’t let me publish anything about him.  He’s got it locked down, brother.  If the bastard had his way he’d clamp down on more than this blog, too.  For true.  He’d just love to see me, shut in and ruined.  He’d love to try and prove to me that I am nothing and will always be nothing.  And he’ll take all he can get.  A real motherfucker, the blues.

from The Glass Key

        Listen, Paul:  it’s not only the money, though thirty-two hundred is a lot, but it would be the same if it was five bucks.  I go two months without winning a bet and that gets me down.  What good am I if my luck’s gone?  Then I cop, or think I do, and I’m all right again.  I can take my tail out from between my legs and feel that I’m a person again and not just something that’s being kicked around.  The money’s important enough, but it’s not the real thing.  It’s what losing and losing and losing does to me.  Can you get that?  Its getting me licked.  And then, when I think I’ve worn out the jinx, this guy takes a Mickey Finn on me.  I can’t stand for it.  If I stand for it I’m licked, my nerve’s gone.  I’m not going to stand for it.  I’m going after him.  I’m going regardless, but you can smooth the way a lot by fixing me up.

-by Dashiell Hammett

WHY I DON’T BELIEVE IN ENLIGHTENMENT II

For all its timewasting&disabuse&useless jibba-jabba, Facebook has a sole redeeming quality-Block.  How many times in life have you wished not that your hated enemy would disappear but that you could somehow disappear from their lives forever?  Call me spiteful but it’s all I ever wanted.  Big Sister recommends 1 Block per month.  Block is thee very best thing about Facebook, oh and it captures the straight dope in real time about:  regimes changing and piles of bodies discovered.
The Office has been receiving some strangely similar correspondence as of late.  Most want some insight, some truth, some glimpse into what really happens in the ruined rooms of last Confederate Governor’s mansion, hmm?
Here ya go, Brother.  I am writing the story of my life.  In Literary speak it’s called Creative Non-fiction.  My goal was to always report from where it was at-inside.  Characters move in.  Characters move out.  Characters throw bikes&books through the windows on silly soaked nights, and bros&Fratlanders rumble in the hedges outside.  Your writer can be found staring at the Pride of Barbados most mornings in baggy sweats&flip-flops, Matte&MCD in hand.  Can be seen most of the time out back on the roof, w/the insufferable fucking chiggers&the redbird.  Saying hello and Namaste to all the strong&beautiful vixens who blow through Fox Den and park it in the back.  Also the construction crews, the cops&lawyers and the young, fucking off in the backlot of Khabele across the street.  I’m host to them all as I  sit on the roof typing.  And it’s only b/c I can’t smoke inside and I cannot write w/o my burning magic wand.
I go blind
when I stare at the sun
-Charles Bukowski
You might hear Monster Magnet or Dirty Three blasting out the fire escape window.  Smoking in the sun and writing upwards of 800words every day before 10:24a.m.

And that’s about it good reader.  Generally angry but specifically annoyed by the insufferable fucking chiggers&liberal radio.  We don’t care about Presidential politics here, but if you must know I’m voting for the black Romney, ok?  No need to rope in an apolitical, anti-social, anarchist/ex-Pat punkrocker/aging singer-songwriter/poet into any kind of political discourse b/c any and every argument you throw at me will just fume out when I tell you that
I don’t care
and
won’t you have some wine?
I’m feeling reflective these days.  The break in the weather here in Hippie Town has turned the focus inward and its pretty fucking gnarly inside, in here.  I’m coming to grips with lessons learned up on a mountain in North Creek this summer.  And those lessons are coming home to roost, brother.  For true.

I’ll leave you with this last little bit of insight, good&cherished reader.  I’m half-Irish.  Besides being the champion of lost causes the Irish have perfected a peculiarly pleasing type of clannishness.  When we Irish lean in, blow out a plume of cigarette smoke and speak lowly into your ear about them,  we are including you in our plight.  You are in the trench with us, warm with misery’s glow.  It’s like Whiskey, smooth&sweet&bitter.  Warms ye.  Yum.

There you have it.  Here at the office it’s the general and not-so-quiet voice of outrage that speaks to us.  It prompts us.  That and the ticking clock.  The ticking clock distracts me from you, Brother.  It turns my attention from your suffering and for this I am here to make amends.  I will soon hear your song and we will sing from the mountain top, together again.  For true.
Unless you just bring nonsense into my life in which case I will block you on Facebook and never talk to you again.

With Love Always,
jt