Thank You for Joining Me for National Poetry Month

Now this reminds me of my radio days
When I’d take the mic and leave rappers amazed
No matter how large, whether gold or platinum
I take my microphone and point the shit right at them
-Craig G, Going For The Throat

Aho.
I am featured in Apiary Magazine discussing one of my favorite poems in honor of National Poetry Month.  A poem of mine is featured in the 17th Annual Poetry Ink Anthology published by the Moonstone Arts Center.  Great writer Natalie Kelly is featuring My Beautiful Day, a poem of mine, on her awesome blog today.  I’ve submitted three poems to WragsInk for their next Anthology and we’re almost sold out of the second pressing of Farewell to Armor.  National Poetry Month has been good to me.

Aho.  30 days&nights drunk on Ale and screaming along with Randy Newman.  Feeling like I could live forever. A month spent scaling the highwire nights, burning down cigarillos and fortifying myself in a temple of smoke, polishing precious jewels of rage and humming haunted hymns onto the page.  I’ve still got a fucking brick of work to sort through before the Terrible Summer and I’ve got to come up with 3 poems to submit to the Philadelphia Poets Journal before days end.
I’ve manifested a life that serves the creation of Art.  I’ve staked this peak and now I can see the chain.  The slipshod condition of my inner Life and the mess of my heart were the price I paid.  Now that it ain’t all War anymore I turn my attention inward.  I look for peace within and I take the longview.

I don’t always take the time to tell you how much you mean to me.  How your support of me&my work is the blood and the road, the rope and the anchor.
May you know peace.  True&Lasting.  And if you’re called to fight I’ve always got your back.

Go forth and rebel.
-Blair Fox

See you on the streets motherfucker.
Jim Trainer

Splendid Isolation II-The Unemployable Journalist

I want to live alone in the desert
I want to be like Georgia O’Keefe
I want to live on the Upper East Side
And never go down in the street

Tragedy, it’s nothing new.  It’s hard to take.  Hard to process.  Me, I’m too far removed.  And jaded.  I don’t get angry or upset with God or Al Qaeda.  I save all my outrage for you.  That’s right, oh diligent and moral upstanding citizens of the free world.  My reaction to the horror of senseless death and murder is anger and that anger is focused squarely on you.  While I’m sure your sentiments come from the right place, they are by rote and repeated ad infinitum a midst a fucking blizzard of assumptions that initially and individually, you did not make.  I guess that’s ok if you have a target for your outrage.  Just don’t make the mistake of assuming that your outrage is mine, Brother.  And consider that the big business of news reporting is pandering to what is accepted as truth even though they’ve told you what to accept as truth at the beginning of the news cycle.

Seeking justice has proven to cultivate a climate of herd-thought which in turn is used to justify:  War, genocide, starvation, unsustainable economic&world orders and the erosion of our liberties.  Ok, maybe not justify-that’s a pretty strong word.  How about divert or ignore?  The “worst privacy disaster our country has ever faced” passed through the House of Representatives last week, with a vote of 288 to 127.
In my line of work the most crucial issue of our time is the regulation of information.  But you don’t have to be a hack journalist like me to see that if transparency&public accountability are lost then all else will soon be coming down the shitter.
How is it any worse when channels of communication are clogged with sterile, mass -morality and assumptions?  Assumptions repeated until they are thoughts-your thoughts, repeated until they are mantras-your mantras, repeated until they become reality-yours and mine.  Thanks allot.
I’m upset when the world we’re creating is predicated on assumptions.  The fact is, there’s too much madness and too much sorrow for simple answers; let alone a headline or byline in a sentence or less.

I try to extract information from the “news” outlets.  Then I address my own personal wisdom& take my own counsel.  Then I think about my loved ones.  About how good it’ll be to connect with them again.  I remind myself and then I shut off the radio and get out of bed.  I close all the windows and I close all the blinds.  I fire up the Yerba Mate and I brace myself for the next hit.
I must willfully insulate myself from the world that we are creating with our thoughts; our own and original thoughts or otherwise.
This is our world.  At least it could be.  You must disengage and shut the fuck up for 5 minutes.  You must quiet your own mind.  But don’t do it for your own sake.  Do it for mine.

I think people…it’s like they’re living in a movie.  They just don’t think anything is real.  But shit is real.
-Ian MacKaye, EDGE The Movie

I’m putting tinfoil up on the windows
Lying down in the dark to dream
I don’t want to see their faces
I don’t want to hear them scream
-Warren Zevon, Splendid Isolation

Yrs,
The Outsider
Austin, TX

24

fat man on a stool
grinding out
a Backwoods
before he
gets up
and waddles down the row
I slump down
and pull my hat down
low
there’s every kind of crazy
in this line
and every kind of drunk.
cracked up
stinky
hard luck men
in the hard luck
morning
in line in front of me
and behind
in the lobby
of Labor Ready
San Rafael, 1999.

outside the puter fog
waits to take our silhouette
and make phantom
the dreams
of the loveless and free
coffee’s hot&putrid in here
c’mon fat man, pick me
please don’t
pick me.

24 appears in All in the wind, my third full-length collection of poetry and prose.  Please visit jimtraner.net for a letterpressed and perfectly bound copy.  Thank you.

Splendid Isolation

I was in the garden hosing the Neapolitans when she yelled down to me from the fire escape.
False flags, she shrieked, 2 dead! And 3 bombs!
I looked up into the white oak.  He likes the dark ones fucker.  One peep outta him and he was done.  I had my finger on the trigger.
Ok, I say, and aim my gun at the rainbow Kale.  Fire.

I don’t do news.  I don’t care about the world.  This is just another post from a horny hapless journalist who spends most of his time stanchioned up in the high rooms of a dead confederate palace drinking with a hardon and a hashpipe. The concerns of my days here in Paradise are few.  There’s these precious words and there is the countdown to Maduro time.  Aho.  At this late stage of the game a cigar and a 6pack is all that gets an old pervert like me through the day.  I also have an unconscious devotion to tomatoes.  And a woman.

My heart goes out to those who find they’ll be missing someone for the rest of their lives.  But I’ve got to turn away from the pedantic punditry&big business of news reporting and the battle cries of  armchair revolutionaries and the bleeding hearts of an Army of loud&well-wishing  Americans.  I got little time for jibba-jabba and the news makes me dull.  My time is running down and I’m busy keeping my loved ones close b/c I know I’ll be missing them for the rest of my life when they go.

The door slammed shut behind her and it startled him.
Aho.  Morning fuckface.
The hot sun was climbing.  Fuck it.  I decided to take it up to the Office, try and get some work done.
Rejoice, I say, you live another day.
I’ll see you tomorrow motherfucker.

what I want to do.

Maleka Fruean

Let’s say you are a poet with your heart on your sleeve and words that get inked to the paper at every chance you get. You have a little writing corner- it’s a typewriter or a computer or a leather journal. You have fingers that fly over the keyboard or you hold a black ink pen, a lucky pen that you use to draft the most intimate of poems.

You are approached by a small publishing company or you decide to self-publish. Your first manuscript. Your first full book is out in the world.

Here’s what I’d like to do for you. I want you to pour your heart out into connecting with all the writers and artists and musicians you’ve talked to over the years and invite them to give some great readings with you to celebrate your new book. I want you to focus on reading your poems…

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A Fortnight of Poetry in the Years of Prose

Taking the digital back to analog
and the analog back to black
purging this here and now of scenes best left
on cutting room floors
The hoping machine grinds to a halt,
its whirrs and hums drowned out now
in a sea of simple stoney silence
pirates camp on the fringes of reason
on the outsides of chance
plotting to rob the graves of the
ville des lumierres
at today’s midnite
horses gallup into the blue night
chasing venial sins back to the canyons
fortune’s wheels seek the simpler times
of wasted nights and puzzled glances
carrots and sticks, those needed prods that both
winners and losers
cannot do without
new songs played for the first time
their choruses loud against trivial pursuits
and poor choices
Sweet Emmylous of the night
the sweethearts who choose clowns
over cowboys
and grams
over ounces of pain
the fortnight’s steady barrage begins
weeds and bran, cats and dogs
animal instincts and inconvenient truth
new eyes that see what could be
what could never have been
poetry and prose, the good money of good work
hides skinned
drinking slowly from parting glasses that now hold nothing but
tears
sorrow, wisdom, resignation
and shame
The ever-so-sleight of hands, changed plans
dinners rolled and cream soured
leagues above, leagues below
gallic tongues whispering from Northern hills
poor men with few options
they make decisions without emotion
with only the need to get it right in this one moment
charm and candor’s limits
the warm embrace into a world never known
never seen before or since
hands of fate cosmically turning back rhyme
and reason
slander and treason
true believers of kismet, of dittoed facts
shared sentiments and scarlet sediment
ears playing proverbial tricks
hearing what they want to hear
believing what they know could never really be
remembering the we,
the beautiful rides of fashion moving ever forward
contraband passed with knowing glances
in darkened parking lots and shadowed coves
express buses never slow
so never does a waiting man dare do anything more
than simply wave and nod
deadly sinners with dead fish handshakes
acknowledging the lustful sloth of sick puppies
Was it four, was it three
does it even still matter?
was it you, was it me?
Was it the fear of flying
the fear of crashing
or the burnt melodies of shook up mixed up worlds
complications
ruminations
long drinks of sweet tease
proffered by waiters who could not wait
the ancient river beds are still there to lie in
or are they simply made of long ago lies
scouring the transcript for smoking guns
for evidence of complicit kin
Waco’s winds buffet complementary musings
Poetry is fucking hard, its noted prosaically
10ccs of a needed drug
the drug of choice for this cold April night
when Indian squatters shiver and wish
they’d never left the warmth of grandmother’s quilt
Heads bob, fingers pop, moves are busted
and melodic BBs hit their mark
the sharper focus begins its fade
the clouded streetlights show themselves once again
the pasttime game, past its prime and past its time
of Leo and Luke and Leopold
ten years between twins is long enough
the sad-eyed mother wails
and the albatross of the once betrothed
sits idle in its glory
hands that should be folded
in resignation
or in prayer
because the ante cannot be met
theory and practice
banging fists on flimsy doors that do not hold
idol threats, litmus tests
Pogo thoughts of both enemies met and history’s
great loves
Johnny and June, John and Yoko,
Sid and Nancy
their cheap sunglasses offer no protection
from the white hot burns of a distant sun
It’s 405 miles into the future world over back roads and potholes
that will never be filled
It’s tenacity
It’s audacity
It’s ten things and great aunts with even greater secrets
It’s yellow and white
It’s hoards of plenty and pastures of dusty collectibles
It’s a man who no longer jokes, he’s fallen out of favor
It’s unknown icons and beautiful wreckage
from which one must crawl away
It’s number four on the charts
It’s red letter days begun to fade
It’s rubes and sweethearts
It’s street views and street legal senors
driving, driving, driving onward
It’s smiley faces, shuddered grins
It’s good fridays turned bad in a fortnight
It’s the latest – and last – temptation

It’s bonne nuit, alors
fais des beaux reves

by David Charles “D.C.” Bloom

Celebrating National Poetry Month

People say I’m crazy. They have no fucking idea. I’m out of my balloons, as Bobby Lemons would say. Good old Bobby Lemons. The Mayor of 10th street. The years I spent in South Philly were a mad slipshod blurring of the lines between love&death. I was crazy enough to live there and I was crazy enough to leave.  Aho. I pulled stakes and closed a chapter of my life that will always  affectionately and ruefully be remembered as “The Never Ending Summer of Evil Kanevil.”
Now I live in Paradise.  Sometimes you got to rattle your chains. Am I right, Brother?

A little bit of madness goes a long way and a lot of madness goes nowhere fast. At this late stage of the game, some of us are taking our Crown while the rest are just taking shit. Oh well.  Had I not been there it would all be for naught and you probably wouldn’t even be reading this blog.
I miss the days of amour fou and ruin.  It’s amazing the things you can accomplish with the single-pointed focus of dying before the age of 30.  But then 30 hits and you take a look around.  There comes this feeling of gratitude.  You get to the top of the mountain and suddenly you see the chain.

This blog ain’t about being crazy on the streets of Philadelphia.  I’m tempted to touch on the particular and startling lunacy of a journalist who reports on the news with a story about how he couldn’t give a fuck about the news-but it only gets worse and I’ll spare you.  I ain’t goin down that rabbit hole.  I’m in a good mood today and it’s National Poetry Month.

My point is, after battle, after War, after trivial half-love and virtues that needed to be proven, we rise.  We discover a no more worthy adversary.  We find that despite our bitching and moaning and haggling and hustling down the beat ends of dirty streets, there really isn’t anything standing in our way.  I’m mostly speaking to those of us living in the First World (as if anyone else is reading this).  Whatever misery it’s been honey, and whatever was so heavy Jack, put it down.  Come take your Crown and sit with us  in the high rooms.
There’s room for us all.
-Hot Snakes

Rattle your chains.  Get free and die laughing.  Or, peck-peck-peck your way through the lead tumblers of the late night, like I do.  Send me a poem and I’ll post it.

Because fuck ‘em that’s why.
–Sicko

Put your motherfucking game face on and read some real killers this month.
–Josh Britton

We’re all mad here.
Best,
The Boy Bandit King

Not But For a Night

I’m as guilty as you are. My hands are shaking,
there’s a new curl in my lip. All night we stitch
our eyes through the air; I can hear what you’re saying,
but only the curse words, and I’m simply miming “Kill me”
at the bar. And the heat is on, so we’re forced to raise
a forearm to our brows, and you mock fainting; I pretend
to choke. People are noticing. You’re as guilty as I am.

by Josh Britton