The Worst Kind Of Trouble Is No Trouble At All

Trainer’s fine baritone, compelling songwriting, and unrelenting rhythm drive this tune that could have been unearthed on some Lomax recording just as easily as written last week: it’s timeless.
–Michael Batchelor, Curator of On The Hill

There are two kinds of blogs that I will always dread&abhor.  One of them is thee hated self-promotional blog.  Seems like, at this stage of the game, I should have a girl doing this for me.  She should dress business-formal, just this side of sexy, and pay visit to the office.  A hot girl Friday in glasses and heels.  She could get this stuff off to you and I could watch, drink and systematically bend, break or obliterate any mores or rules of conduct and sexual harassment.  But, I digress..
I have lots to share, good&cherished reader.  The Pope has stepped down and a Nazi hasn’t quit that much ass since Hitler resigned from the Third Reich with a bullet to the head.  The Grammys happened this week and despite its asslicking bloviation of un-threatening and irrelevant culture, rock&roll will never die.  President Obama delivered his State of the Union on Tuesday, revealing the profound and ever-deepening extent of my utter apathy about politics.  I’m just giving you the hard stuff, Brother.  No chaser.  Drink it down.

My trouble these days is no trouble at all and it seems that the only lasting and final danger is this contentment.  Also, I’ve developed some nasty habits to get me through.  It’s all gravy up on this vista and slowly killing myself with cigarettes&alcohol doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore.  Perhaps this is my Karma.
I come from a long line of alcoholics.  The Irish side of me drank to get through the Twentieth Century and the Italian side did worse.  Don’t get me wrong, that I’ve survived at all and am here today is testament to my ancestors.  They did what they had to do to close out the bloody age of Pisces.  They fought, fucked and killed but mostly they just smoked&drank.  Like any good American would, new to the country on the streets of Southwest Philly and involved in utterly dysfunctional marriages and brutal dayjobs as laborers and masons.I am no different.  The bottom is always the bottom and the sky is always risin’.  I didn’t get this far without an Irish-Italian American’s spit&spite-the ire of the Irish or the redhot passion of a dago’s fire.

But now I look in.  The battlefield’s been leveled.  There’s nothing but old soldiers and champions up on this plateau and there’s no room for losers.  I smoke fat black Maduros in the sun.  Drink my coffee and my beer at cafe tables but still peel a few dollars off my wad for gnarly landlocked sailors, drunk with madness-the insane and the homeless.  The homeless are the only folks in the world you’ll ever hear me saying God Bless You to.  It’s because it’s the only possible way I could sincerely mean it and, truly, I hope that if there is a God he will bless them.  Then…I’m off.  I fly the cafe(s) and  make my way back to the mansion.  I climb the fire escape and slide down, nice&sleazy, into the good life.
Not a fucking thing wrong in my life right now, Brother.  But I’ve got some dirty habits I need to break.  It’s killing me but worse-it’s weak.  Also, it’s nothing special.  Like any smoker, I suffer from the dissociative schism of doing something that pleases me profoundly but is also fucking killing me.There’s a lot in store for us all during this most auspicious year of the Water Snake.  As I told you before, I am going up on the mountain.  It’s time to set the record straight.  I’ve been interviewed for Mike Batchelor’s On the Hill Series and it should be up on the site next couple days or so.  I landed a gig reviewing music which should be a good ride until the publisher finds out that we’re all mad here and she should have known better than to give the job to a perverted poet with an anger problem.  Aho.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my beautiful Editor is on her way over to the office, hopefully dressed business formal and just this side of sexy.  She’s a bright flower and she’ll be in charge of all such self-promotional blogs as this from here on out.

What a drag it is getting old, eh Brother?  See you up on the mountain motherfuckers.