she sends me to the store
in my Valentine’s day boxers
to get some pale ale&Maduros
and I don’t argue.
When I return
there’s Steve James on the stereo
and she’s wearing my tux shirt
the windows are open
and it’s dusk and it’s springtime
in downtown L.A.
looks like the wedding is off.
someone should probably tell Ray.
(c)2009
The Office of Jim Trainer
21 Main Street, #3r
Middletown, DE 19709
Jann Wenner, Editor
Rolling Stone
1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10104
Febuary 20, 2007
Dear Jann-
Hunter Thompson was right. We are doomed. Your pop-culture won’t save you either.
Yours,
Jim Trainer
Middletown, DE
The Office of Jim Trainer
709 Rio Grande
Austin TX
Host Joe Brundidge&Martha Louise Hunter
Writing On The Air
KOOP Radio 91.7fm
Austin TX
Hello!
I moved to Austin dejected, at the age of 34. The first book I checked out of the Library was Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life, a biography of Charles Bukowski by Howard Sounes. It was profound for me to discover that one of my literary heroes began writing poetry at 35.
I worked a string of mind-numbing jobs. I drank. Slept with women. I devoted myself to the page. It became a necessity. Those mornings coming off graveyard, when I sat at the President XII Tower with a quart of beer, are burned into my memory. Any time I start to feel like a failure, I remember a time when failure was imminent and very real-I’d never be a rockstar or anything besides a temp worker doing graveyard shifts in the live music capital of the world. I remember that I took a step then, a leap really, I wrote and I kept writing.
Since then I have had two volumes of poetry published, the second coinciding with the founding of Yellow Lark Press, my own publishing company. I’ve quit drinking and got my certification to teach Yoga. Austin has been very good to me. I fly to my hometown of Philly twice a year. The readings there are great. Great attendance and a good show. The music shows are amazing. I feel that maybe I should revisit my hopes and dreams, that I still got a shot at this. This rock and roll journalist poet dream brought into view by greats like Bukowski and another Hank, Henry Rollins and the good Doctor Hunter Thompson. I fine tune my health and try to get my head together. I need to get back out on the road.
I would love to discuss September, my new poetry collection, as well as my continuing and well-documented trek down the savage road to becoming a writer and living my dreams. Please let me know if I can provide you with a copy of September or anything else. I love radio, love KOOP and Writing On the Air, and would love to hear from you.
Thank you,
Jim Trainer
Austin TX
POET AND SINGER SONGWRITER JIM TRAINER RELEASES “SEPTEMBER”, HIS SECOND FULL LENGTH COLLECTION OF POETRY, AT THE 709 MANSION IN DOWNTOWN AUSTIN
Jim Trainer will perform and read from September at the 709 Mansion in downtown Austin on Friday February 19. Also featuring Magician Jack Darling and singer-songwriter D.C.Bloom. The Reverend Jason Woolery will host the evening.
Jim Trainer’s work has appeared in Raw Paw 6: Alien, The Waggle, Philadelphia Stories, Divergent Magazine, Anthology Philly, A Series of Moments and PoetryInk. The release of September, his second full length collection of poetry, coincides with the founding of Yellow Lark Press. Trainer lives in Austin, Texas where he serves as curator of Going For The Throat, a weekly publication of cynicism, outrage, correspondence and romance.
jimtrainer.net
Jack Darling is a magician, actor, writer, comedian and founder of magic troupe Turning Tricks with The Darlings, who were named Frontera Fest’s Best of Fest 2012. Stirring up trouble on stages all over town is Jack’s specialty, in appearances including The Velveeta Room, The Charlie Hodge Show, Bedpost Confessions and Adriane Shown’s Hell&Back Cabaret.
jackdarlingmagic.com
Singer-songwriter D.C. Bloom has released 3 full length albums and one EP, including his latest, “The Rest Is Commentary”, debuting in 2014. This former speech writer for the FBI will talk about mortality and open heart surgeries, friendship and the love of a good woman, and the many things he’s learned whilst streaming Ferris Bueller’s Day Off over 800 times.
dcbloom.com
Reverend Jason S. Woolery teaches full time in the College of Education at Texas State University, and divides the rest of his time between acting, songwriting, and writing…always writing. He’s also the father of 2 girls, a 6 year and 6 month old, and a 2 year old boy. When he’s not fostering the healthy writing habits of his students with the Central Texas Writing Project, he manages to read an awful lot of comic books, which he’d totally blame on the aforementioned kids, but that’s just not true.
about September:
“…tough as crucifixion nails, with a switchblade wit and as sensitive as a Geiger counter.”
Jim Trainer could easily be writing about his scrappy past as a day laborer, a tempestuous old romance or even the muse itself. All appear and disappear throughout September, leaving Trainer in turns marveled and stumped, sitting at his typewriter at the end of summer. He’s hardly mournful. His past and his love and even the muse may have gone but the wonder of Trainer and the poetry in this collection is that he’s able to make an altar of their graves, and find repose in the Autumn of life.
“Every single poem has the teeth of a 20 year old, tempered with the wisdom gleaned from twice that much time living the life.”
–Central Texas Writing Project (CTWP)
“September” Austin Release-An Evening of Poetry, Spokenword and Magic
with
Jim Trainer (SWAMP EP/Farewell to Armor, September/Yellow Lark Press)
Jack Darling (Turning Tricks With The Darlings)
D.C. Bloom (The Rest Is Commentary)
and host Reverend Jason S. Woolery (Central Texas Writing Project, Texas State)
Friday February 19, 2016
at the
709 Mansion
709 Rio Grande
Austin TX 78701
8pm
Poster pressed and perfectly bound copies of September available for $15. Cash only.
CONTACT:
Jim Trainer
Dear Mr. Trainer –
“…that guy is trying so hard to get out, and he’s never gonna be the one to hurt you, believe me. Let him talk. Let him tell you what you did that was so bad. Listen, you know what you did? You hung on, kiddo. That’s it.”
-Berger, Ordinary People
Therapy works. Take it from me. First time in the chair I was strung out on cocaine. High for over 30 hours but coming down hard. Oh, right. Not my first time seeing a therapist but certainly the first time I wanted to. I remember sitting in therapy when I was 20, with a swollen black eye and thinking that if I fought this counselor well that would be alright, too.
Generally speaking, something happened and I got buried. To think on it or wonder why boggles the mind and sometimes there are no answers, no matter how hard you try to find. Dysfunctional upbringing? Ok. But I had become my own man before I even left home. The self-talk I used to help me twist from the wreck of dysfunction worked. I guess there was more than one way out, but I chose mine and now I’m free. Or getting there. The mere existence of self-talk is a loss of innocence. You’re beside yourself. Apart. My brand of the stuff was particularly harsh and unforgiving and, well, ridiculous. Should somebody have told the rageful 2o year old me that Ayn Rand and Henry Rollins were at best mythical but at least as one dimensional as a page in any of their hard-bitten and overwrought books? Point is no one could have. Their and others’ work for me was fuel. And the point is no one did.
I’m not on here to victimize anybody. Ok, that’s not exactly true, but I certainly don’t want to victimize myself. Ok, that’s not true either. Ugh. Let’s just say that it’s a wonder nothing short of a miracle that I sit here today, mostly sober, drinking tea and reflecting on the past. The glory and the wreckage. I’ve been talked down from the ledge of addiction to cocaine, the depths of alcoholism and the abyss of seeking unconditional love from damaged and narcissistic partners. Rick, if you’re listening, I owe it all to you. You’ve been like a father to me, and we roped off my demons and laughed and cried and held on our way to freedom.
Know thyself.
-First Rule of Magic
That I do, good Reader, and often to my own determent do I know myself. Of course there is the danger of being so active and engaged with your own issues, no one else has to be. But fuck them. They can go on living a charmed and unexamined life. The real danger in plumbing your own depths is simple-you run the risk of isolating yourself. But, let’s face it, that’s not always a bad thing. I feel like I’m always heading for the cave, seeking out space and wide swathes of time to “write”. What’s up for me these days is anxiety. I’ve roped off the bad blues. I don’t drink. I practice Yoga. I devoutly get 8 hours of sleep every night and fucking isn’t at the fore on my list of priorities. I am me, at a higher intensity and for more sustained periods of time. I’m not trying to avoid and I have allot less to prove. Drinking and fighting and fucking. Take these off the dais and all I’ve got left is this dream and the audacity of it, calling down to me where I sit and agonize over the details of September‘s Austin release. I am thinking of all the right things and that’s the problem. My identity as an artist is on the line and that’s the problem too. I’ve been strung out on bad anxiety since I published the book, and I’ve dealt with it by laying around and watching Howard Stern. Jerking off. I fear the relinquishing of my identity as an Artist to the extent of paralysis. I let another day go by with my dick in my hand without placing the ad, making fliers or editing the proof. The fear that I’ll be found out when no one shows up to the reading is my main motivation. Depression is the slothful bedfellow of anxiety. Anxiety is the real and it’s a real mother.
I’ve been lucky with therapists. My first therapist, Rick Ferry, is the man. We trawled the savage road together for almost a decade. Don Jones won’t let me off the hook and he’s like the master on the mountain, slapping my self-talk across the face weekly. If me&Rick went on safari through the rich veldt of the heart, Don and I are in the pit of the arena, where the lights burn the brightest, and we’re doing work. We will make this dream happen. It’s my hero’s journey, and how lucky, how fortunate and auspicious that I still got a dog in this fight.
“Of course you know your self-talk is ridiculous and of course you can see the logistics clearly, after the gig. But that’s of no use to you now. Not while you’re in it. You’ve got to track the anxiety.”
It’s Thursday afternoon. I’m waiting on word to go ahead with the ad for the reading. Waiting to hear back before I book a flight to Crescent City and a train ride back. I’ve been shot-through and ridden since I got back from Portland but there’s one thing I can do and that is track the anxiety. Once a nervous wraith of doubt hung, I turn the barrel around and take the safety off. I’m not strung out on coke, weighted and soggy from booze or mad with perseverant lust-but a nervous and dreaming boy, wide-eyed and wanting more, wondering if I deserve to have the life I want for myself, but not for long.
My time here is parsed with deadlines. I’m nothing if not stubborn, my Italian mother’s son, my cocky Irish father’s boy.
The Office of Jim Trainer
Between Trouble&the Blues
Lucky Town, USA
Wiggs Daniels
c/o Hope By the Sea
27432 Calle Arroyo
San Juan Capistrano, CA
7/1/11
Yo-
Well, we made it through. We were kings those late nights and the pale light of day cut us down the middle but we made it. I don’t like looking back and I can’t see ahead. Hope you’re enjoying the tranquility&peril of a sober mind. Sobriety always worked for me. It’s enlightening to learn that the Beast within dwarfs any&all drama they may visit upon us. It’s like being on fire and walking through a paper wall. That easy. Your own trouble, aho, now there’s the Problem. But I can handle my trouble brother, can you?
Maybe it’s my upbringing, or lack thereof, but I liked being a jackoff. Can you think of a better way to spend 20 years than burning down the streets of your hometown in a Japanese 4-door with a bottle of Ephedrine and whiskey in the jar? Maybe not but it got old quick. Buggerall so did the body. In a perfect world I’d still be drinking corn liquor and stowed away with Katy D. on Hazel Street. Thank the gods that we weren’t 25 forever.
Or curse them when all you’ve got at the end of the day is sweet memory, loaded and stinging. Back in Double Aught&Buck there were plenty of women and madness was fun. The chamber’s clicked three times since then. The die’s been cast. Welcome to the New Century. Count your blessings, be thankful for things like shoes and kiss your middle class goodbye. It could be worse, we could live in Bahrain.
It’s getting hard and harder to make it, Wiggs. We’re clocked in allot longer than we’re clocked out. The shit has started rolling and for those of us who live downhill even wisdom won’t help. We both know that the dumb only get dumber. They get violent too but I’m in a bad mood so I embrace it and take to the streets.
This much madness is too much sorrow.
your Friend,
jimtrainer.net
The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the future with lead.
-Henry Rollins
Have a seat. This could take awhile. I write about things to understand them, get an edge on pain or clear a vista, high and wide, so I can take the grand view. When I started writing in earnest I was a young man. The channels were clear, my health was good and life hadn’t broke my heart yet. With a CVS notebook I could tell the future. As a writer and an artist I could study motif, could meld the physical world and I could self-realize. But maybe I was just green. Innocent. The real challenge could be to try it now, prophesy at the stubborn age of 40, marked and beat by life, and some battles won-the argument could be made that only now can I self-realize and that’s because I’ve become who I am.
I believe in everything and nothing. I believe in that angry, young man. Looking back I think the kid really came through. I also believe that it was a young man’s thinking that I could somehow be whatever I wanted. As much I never wanted to be like my old man I am him, and at the same time nothing like him at all. I’ve heard that life doesn’t begin until your Father dies. It made sense then and it makes sense now. I am my old man, with his trappings, his strength, his aloofness and his bitter, black Irish loyalty. My mother is still alive. That’s a harder nut to crack. If I could’ve been whatever I wanted, I would’ve done so without any of her support either. Unless what I wanted was to stay in school for thirty years but only receive my PhD to retire in the sunny hills of Italy where I’d write part one of my memoir-I was on my own.
It’s hard not to be resentful. Just as hard to do it too, and get overcome with an old and tyrannical anger. When my dad left, she called the shots, and her shots amounted to sleeping in the park on Christmas Eve for not raking the leaves. What a fucking quagmire-to feel it sting and simultaneously surmise how pointless and inane it all is. My youth made me who I am. As mentioned, the kid came through. In fact he’s here with me and we shudder, and get struck by the lightning of anxiety when it’s time to get it on the books-that is, take it on the road and self-realize a dream of mine to be an artist full-time. If I’d of took his example I’d be dead in 10 years. If I took her example I’d of went to school on her dime and retire to a condo in the sky with two-thousand copies of my latest book in the closet, and plans to hit the big 5 by 2017.
Instead I sit here in the bright afternoon coughing up these words and performing surgery on myself. I look back and read over this post and it’s a living, throbbing thing. I’m caught between a torrential anger toward parents who never supported me and a crippling anxiety about the future. One could argue that these are heads of the same monster-one looking back in disgust and the other looking ahead in dread. There is no way out. Only in and through. As sure as these United States sprawling across the laminated map on the southern office wall. As sure as the Great White Machine and copier/printer/scanner propped up beside the desk. As sure as the Bose wireless dialed into 44 gigs, the half full SD card and the Tacoma Guild hanging on the wall. Have iPad, will travel. I’ll be stalking this dream awhile longer. As if there could be any doubt. Not from you, good Reader. Never. Wherever is your heart I call home.
When my Nissan died
on the corner of 49th
the morning we split
I slept in it
I had my nose
re set
in my good friend Butch’s kitchen
I always hated that car
now it sits in the very same spot
when we broke up I really hit the jackpot
She’s the queen
of the parlour scene
up in Philly
down to New Orleans
she likes to tell
everyone
what a cold hearted bastard I’ve become
she had very insightful, poignant things
to say that I forgot
when we broke up I really hit the jackpot
‘cause a lie is a lie
and a cheat is a cheat
there was too many heads
rollin’ round in our bed
and too many hands
around my neck
and the streets are filled with the dead
her millionaire dad
probably bent out of shape
when he looks back
to her Ivy League days
but her wedding
it was on T.V.
all that night and the next day
she’ll probably run around that way
until she gets caught
when we broke up I really hit the jackpot
My good friend
he lives downtown
if I get blue
Butchie’ll come around
We’ll watch the news
through our teeth
and we’ll stare at the tube in disbelief
27 rooms, a couple thousand-acre plot
looks like when we broke up she really hit the jackpot
Christmas time
in Guerneville town
her father’s face
her torn gown
I wasted him
I hit him so hard
they had to carry him out to his car
I wasted 7 years of my life
when I gave that quarterback a shot
shoulda said “Look buddy, you really hit the jackpot.”
Going for the Throat 