FAREWELL FOR NOW

What has become of the green pleasant fields of Jerusalem?
—Twentieth Century Man, The Kinks

I don’t care about these “jokes” being offensive. They’re just not funny. They’re not clever. There’s a reason he never made it anywhere as a comedian. He is not funny and he is not smart. He is, however, very good at capitalizing off of dumb people. For that I applaud him.
—EastSideFishMurder on Twitter

Luckily, the University of Vermont has begun an incentive program to encourage New England farmers to delay their second cutting, so the birds have enough time to breed and raise their young.
—Didi Jackson

I’m happy to announce that STRIDE, my 7th full-length collection of poetry will be released this year through Yellow Lark Press.  Supporters at the $10 level on Patreon will receive a copy of the collection, signed and acknowledged and absolutely free.  I’m thrilled to be able to offer supporters at any level what will become exclusive content.  

The amount of work I come across from poets involved in academia is staggering.  Most of them are teachers.  They’ve had books published and their collections benefit from the push of publishers.  I write poetry.  I’m not enmeshed in the Higher-Learning Industrial Complex. I don’t teach.  I won’t have to because I’ve got you.  My 7th collection of poetry will be out before year’s end.  Stay tuned for its news and announcement.  I need to step away from Going For the Throat.  This much craziness is too much pain.  I need to concentrate on getting my health in order and rather than impede the total access I’ve proudly always offered you, I’ve decided to just put it down.  You came for The Real and if I’m not in a place to deliver then I won’t.  I’d rather not say anything if I can’t offer anything crucial, or of import.  I’ve little to report these days because I’m coming down off a decade of outrage, and the anger is no bueno for your Writer right now.  This isn’t bad news.  

The bad news is that the channels are clogged with pseudo-science and amateur punditry.  I no longer wish to be part of the discourse and let’s be honest these terms are incredibly generous.  What’s happening in the world isn’t political.  What the fascists are offering isn’t an argument.  I’m not arguing.  I’m mad but I can’t afford to be.  With your help I’ll figure that out but in the meantime I’m through yelling at folks who are never going to listen.  I know it was never about them, it was about us, but between debilitation from illness and crushing hopelessness, I’m at a loss.  My weekly posts have become a diary, and when I see the unending stream of petty and self-involved concern that is social media I don’t want to add to it.  The bad news is it’s the end of the world and the public at large won’t include my voice throwing it down and cutting up through the fray.  

I’d like to invite you over the paywall in the meantime, and to join me on Patreon for exclusive products, performances and content—including posts from your Writer that would’ve normally appeared on the pages of Going For the Throat, were the discourse not completely sunk and my well-being not at stake.  Patrons contributing at the $10 level will get a copy of STRIDE, signed and acknowledged, in 2021 and I’m happy to offer supporters at any level what will be exclusive content during this respite.  

See you on the other side, motherfucker. 

THANK YOU.

But it’s written in the starlight
and every line in your palm
We are fools to make war
on our brothers in arms
—Dire Straits

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Click on “Get Reminder” to join us this evening as wonderful poet Steve Denehan shares a selection from his just released The Streets, Like Flowers, Come Alive in the Rain. Tonight at 7P.M. CST!

KEEP BLEEDING IN THE ANNO FINEM:
10 Years At Going For The Throat
NOW AVAILABLE AT JIMTRAINER.NET

READ THE COARSE GRIND AT INTO THE VOID

ON WITH IT

FACTS:
The election was stolen.
Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong.
Joe Biden is a puppet.
Gina Carano did nothing wrong.
Trump did not incite violence on 1/6.
Derek Chauvin is innocent.
Covid-19 is over politicized.
The vaccine is more dangerous than the virus.
—Erik Bekke

The trial of Derek Chauvin is one of the three most important trials at the center of race and America of the past 100 years.
—Shaun King

Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed.
—Albert Camus 

Blank-canvas blues, ain’t this a bitch? I’m pitched up at the Whole Foods Industrial Complex. I loaded up and headed out of Castle Hill this morning with the MacBook, chargers, iPad, notebook, paper, pens and a pair of Sony MDR-ZX100’s. These earphones are as crucial to writing as the laptop and pen. Lucky for me the music they’re playing today is middle-of-the-road corporate fare, nothing too mawkish or cloying and certainly not the kind of rock and roll that is threatening, i.e. good. Whatever they’re playing can’t be worse than suffering the sounds of construction at home. The high whine of the digger, carving out tunnels beneath the street for Google Fiber, forfeits any chance of peace and quiet. Naturally one tries to drown out the sound but, for me, discovering I’ve been putting more effort into NOT hearing the long-suffering bastard machine than actually on the task at hand angers me. Anger is no bueno for your Writer and getting worked up would only mean a visit with the foreman and anyway suffering another of the rages that have rendered me constipated or incontinent. I’m still suffering with colitis and at times quite sick, but the point is I can’t do this anymore. I can’t look around or watch the news and I can’t report on it either. Ask you, what the fuck could I possibly say to the shit-for-brains author of the quote at the beginning of this post? “You’re wrong?” The nutters have sunk the discourse. I’d much rather enjoy a haddock filet and sip this peppermint tea than “argue” with someone that fucking dumb. Ain’t the half either as what drew me to him to begin with was his argument on Twitter that Chauvin may have saved Floyd’s life by choking him to death, being that he was on “3.5 times…” the lethal dose of fentanyl and “lots of other drugs.” It’s not that I don’t care about the rotten bastards in what passes for Police in this country. I just can’t stoop that low. The nutters don’t deserve it, for one thing, being that the basis of their whole argument is an unstated and full-on racism. The other thing is my aforementioned anger, rages that have found me here, at 46 without an intoxicant in my system and all my dreams of travel and conquest on hold and drying up. Homeboy’s not getting any smarter and I’m can’t help him. Or this country. I’m nursing my own heartbreak anyway and lamenting all that I haven’t done.

Being 46 is a bummer. Not for the mastery and typing quietly (hopefully) in a large 1BR in the live music capital of the world. Not for my mostly ok health, actually, and the fact that I can get out of bed and drive my car and sleep solid for 6 hours a night. 46 sucks because of all that I haven’t done coupled with the supposition that I might not ever. It’s fucking me up, Reader. I’m not going to be who I thought I was going to be, and instead I’m only me. If that ain’t spirituality and anyway an invitation to start experiencing life as it is or at least find for adventure as a personal journalist trawling the same citywide beat. Even then the territory for your Writer only spans the Whole Foods I’m in right now, the Office Max across the street and Little Brother’s on the east side. I thought I’d make tracks down the same roads as Rollins and Thompson but I live more like Papa, without the booze and women or acclaim. The writing always came and that saved me. You read and dug and supported me in so many ways. You bought the collection and were as integral to the realization of Jim Trainer The Writer as writing it down. I can’t deny that I’ve self-published and have at least been realizing this dream. It’s been a half life living like this, though. Suffering depression and dead after the catharsis and transformation of art and craft. Week by week, this blog has got me through. It’s been my raison d’être, my sword and shield and a reason to endure: bureaucratic fuckarounds, chlymadic cunt bosses, amour fou and even the bearing-witness industry of social media while rapt as a mark watching the world wind horribly down. But now I’m at a loss. The easy answer is often the best but when it comes to taking a break or sabbatical I feel my identity as a Writer is at stake. Without deadline I’d have to face myself. I’d just be…me! The truth is I used Art to get me through, and praise be. My heroes reached me and showed me how. Praise be that it spoke to you in ways I never could while trading skin in Babylon or engaged in the silly game of killing time in a culture that worships youth and death in equal measure. Without anger and trying my best to abstain from its foul humor, without outrage and without the drive for this quest of being The Writer, I’ve come down with the empty-canvas blues. As No Doubt plays in this bougie supermarket, intoxicant-free and at odds with myself and all I haven’t done, regretful and without love but ok, me, Jim. Ain’t this a bitch?

CELEBRATE NATIONAL POETRY MONTH WITH JIM TRAINER ALL MONTH LONG.  RSVP TO THIS EVENT PAGE FOR UPDATES AND LINKS TO LIVE READINGS, INCLUDING GREAT IRISH POET STEVE DENEHAN AT THE END OF THE MONTH.  IF YOU’VE MISSED THE READINGS SO FAR GO HERE, HERE AND HERE. PATRONS CONTRIBUTING AS LITTLE AS $2 THIS MONTH WILL GET 1 ORIGINAL POEM FOR EVERY DAY OF NATIONAL POETRY MONTH.  THAT’S 30 POEMS FOR TWO BUCKS!

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KEEP BLEEDING IN THE ANNO FINEM:
10 Years At Going For The Throat
NOW AVAILABLE AT JIMTRAINER.NET

READ THE COARSE GRIND AT INTO THE VOID

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SAME AS THE OLD BOSS

Former House Speaker John Boehner was on the radio this morning. It was dark in the Office and I had little on my mind so I closed the glass doors and sat smugly down. We must be the masters of our own delusion and if Steven Inskeep ain’t ashamed he should be. History is kind to the victors and steamrolls over the rest. Trump went down in infamy though his ineptitude is debated by shit-for-brains like David Harris Jr. and Steven “Fuckface” Crowder. Rush Limbaugh got more respect dead than he ever gave to the living and one can only hope he died with regret or at least in pain. George W. Bush found a new cache hanging out with Ellen, hiding candy from Michelle Obama and grinning like the luckiest bastard of the 21st Century. War still rages overseas thanks to that clown and we’re all living down his forever wars and recessions. Obama’s legacy can’t be touched. His shining image is a testament to the power of his charm, even if he ushered in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He tried, I’ll give him that, and his efforts were thwarted at every turn by the Tea Party and stacks of shit with book deals like John Boehner. Time marches bitterly on leaving us with the impossible task of reasoning with all this blood on our hands. There’s no justice and the worst people in the world won’t look bad in hindsight as long as the media plays nice and puts them on.

I’m having some luck with my diet and I’m drinking more water, even if I never seem to meet my goal of half my weight in ounces a day. I eat veggies mostly, very little processed food if any, and only as much desert as I can fit in my hand. Flare ups wreck me, relegate me to the couch or send me back into the throes of a cigarette and coffee addiction. It’s hard to keep your diet when you’re only shitting blood and it feels like glass. I have hope, generally I’ve been feeling better, enough to attempt some Yoga but as long as my gut is bad my mood is dour and sunk. I’m due for another call with Good Specialist Rocco, and I’ll be taking advantage of the extended enrollment for Affordable Care with some help from the good folks at HAAM.

The Element failed inspection. Two different mechanics said it was the catalytic converter and OEMs are going for up to $1,000 online. I’m deep in the research and wont to get an aftermarket and put the profits from the sale of my CAT right back into the car. 4 new tires would be nice but not crucial. Passenger back panel could be replaced and the fender. The seats need to be pulled out and power washed and it never hurts to get an oil change. It might’ve failed inspection due to faulty O2 sensors but whether it’s the sensors or the CAT, I’d rather climb underneath the car myself than give $1,200 to a mechanic who won’t let me keep the old part. The first order of business is getting on the horn with Honda to ask them why the CAT, guaranteed for the life of the car, is crapping out at 74k miles. It’s running a little loud, nothing dire but not exactly smooth either. I’m hoping an oil change will work it out. A higher grade gas and replacing the plugs and filter could do wonders, though, I may be talking out my ass. I need to double down on my research and butt heads with the know-it-alls on the Element Facebook Group. The most worrisome would be rust on the undercarriage. I’m not saying I have it, just that I need to keep an eye out and anyway get a good look at the wheel mounts.

The blog is a bust but I appreciate you being here. My stats are down and so is my enthusiasm. It must be a trick of the mind or anyway depression because reading Pete Hamill inspires me to be the writer and live that life. Poetry collections and novels from friends inspire me as a publisher and I’m hoping to get some more writers in the Yellow Lark stable. The hard part is convincing my peers that the price is worth it. Money’s hard to come by but once your project is funded there’s money to be made selling the printed word. So, what’s to happen at Going For the Throat, as I’m mostly missing my true ballast of anger and unease? It’s hard to be angry and keep it as my anxieties are already working me overtime. The days are blowing by. I’m posting a poem every day on Patreon for the month of April and I’m keeping the dream alive. My physical and mental health are getting tweaked and I’m getting better even if I’m knocked back and need to start over. Ideally I’d be playing music every Saturday night, designing and printing collections through the week and coming hard at journalism and taking my camera with me everywhere. I got vaccinated this morning but I’m not overjoyed. I’m glad I won’t catch CORONA but otherwise not exactly thrilled with the Johnson&Johnson shot I got in Castle Hill this morning. Spring’s here and I think I’m done with being fallow. The hard part is how to get back up and kick it, as ever I am besieged with depression and bereft of the torch of anger that burned and lit the way for so long.

SUPPORT JIM TRAINER’S POETRY AND PERSONAL JOURNALISM AT PATREON

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Jim Trainer all month long.  RSVP to this event page for updates and links to live readings, including great Irish poet Steve Denehan at the end of the month.  If you’ve missed the readings so far go here and here. Patrons contributing as little as $2 this month will get 1 original poem for every day of National Poetry Month.  That’s 30 poems for two bucks!

KEEP BLEEDING IN THE ANNO FINEM:
10 Years At Going For The Throat
NOW AVAILABLE AT JIMTRAINER.NET

“2020’s been a year of death and graft. Survival is this new paradigm.  It used to be Art or writing and Rock&Roll but now living in The America is its own end.  There’s nothing past this.  You make it to the end of the month congratulations, you’re broke.  You catch this disease or anything under your deductible you’re insolvent or dead.”
—KEEP BLEEDING IN THE ANNO FINEM

KEEP BLEEDING IN THE ANNO FINEM is almost sold out!  Get yourself one of the 35 remaining copies, bound in a letter pressed cover designed by Snakes Will Eat You, at jimtrainer.net.  You’ll find a selection from the collection below.

READ THE COARSE GRIND AT INTO THE VOID

Yellow Lark Press is opening its stables to writers, poets and anyone who has something to say.  I’d love to discuss publishing your next collection, broadside or zine.  

FOR THE SAKE OF THE SONG

and Rebecca&Jon

The First Amendment limits the government’s ability to regulate speech. It does not require news organizations to treat all speech as equal, or to provide an open forum for comments. Rather, the First Amendment ensures The Inquirer’s right to publish what The Inquirer chooses to publish.
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

…nobody wants to hear blues on blues on blues.
—Townes Van Zandt

THE FOLLOWING POST WAS WRITTEN ON APRIL 5, 2021

This one’s to keep Going For the Throat alive. I thought I’d get a jump on this week’s post, allow for a wide runway between this afternoon and deadline Thursday. With time I can refine and I might even strike gold. In a way, posts like UNDER THE WEATHER and LIKE A SOLDIER are a victory for plain-spoken and what I call unmiraculous prose. The reporting reveals over time. The moments get stripped and contextualized and from the droll details and mundane the story appears. Or it doesn’t, no story Bubba, and that’s the story. Of course that’s the luxury of personal journalism ain’t it and blogging anyway that I, as your narrator, can wrap any missive by declaring there is nothing to report.

I’m happy when that happens, and much to my old college Prof Macaluso’s chagrin, it’s a stick in the ribs of cute-essay writing and happy endings. Happy endings never rang true for me. Begs the question, though—why aren’t happy endings true for your writer and anyway why should my experience be accepted as truth? Just because happy endings don’t happen for me doesn’t mean they don’t, in general, happen. I’m struck writing this however that with perspective almost anything will have seemed to turn out alright. I never wanted to trade in that happy horseshit. Guess you could say I wanted to revel in it, grovel some or commiserate and, tell you the truth, I’ve never really examined why I always had such a fucking problem with Heaven.

I knew depression, always lying in wait, was sure to take me down. So I tied it on myself and the blues was my message and albatross. I figured if happiness was only going to end then why not just be miserable and save myself the disappointment? When I was happy I was flying high, too, though not in a healthy or sustainable way. I removed all those quick-fixes, self-medications and chemical-love. I’m on an even keel now, mostly. I probably won’t crash. Better than that is this ease in my life now. Nothing wrong or terribly irritating. Well, my gut health is touch and go but I think it’s all connected. So…I’m happy with posts like the last couple weeks’ for the sake of their language and for the fact that they offer no solution, no aha, or feel good, tie-it-together moment as the credits roll. I like just ending a piece and seeing what the language will tell me later. I like it when language tells the story and especially dig it when details and moments from a day observed take on a resonance, and their writing is a talismanning or fetishizing of the normal and mundane into a deeper meaning and significance. None of this has anything to do with not feeling up to posting here anymore. I need input and I’m bored and I used to solve both these problems by digging my claws into the matter and anyway grinding an ax and burying my enemies forever.

It ain’t working, Reader and my efforts to save this blog so far today have failed. I don’t know how much longer I can write to perform. It used to work, swimmingly, and if I’m being honest my real fear in hanging this site up and quitting is how will I ever be inspired to write if I don’t have to? Now this is the real writer’s blues ain’t it and all my hubris and fast-talk about never having writer’s block has come home to roost. Strange it doesn’t hurt more than it does or maybe this is a higher plane of creation for me. This work isn’t so wrapped up in my identity. I don’t know what to write about and it’s not the end of the world. I’m not devastated but hardly inspired either. The thing about this block that’s kind of exciting is I know I’ve been here before. I know that something is waiting for me on the other side and like Mama Greenberg said I should be able to envision a way to create that’s peaceful, that I don’t have to destroy to create, me or them, and I can perhaps be driven by something other than compulsion and be free.

KEEP BLEEDING IN THE ANNO FINEM:
10 Years At Going For The Throat
AVAILABLE AT JIMTRAINER.NET

JOIN ME TONIGHT AT 5P.M. CST, AND EVERY THURSDAY OF NATIONAL POETRY MONTH, FOR A SHORT LIVE READING FROM 2031 ON FACEBOOK PREMIER.
FOR LAST THURSDAY’S READING GO HERE.

NIGHT 1&NIGHT 2 OF THE KEEP BLEEDING RELEASE

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PART 36 OF THE COARSE GRIND GOES IS LIVE AT INTO THE VOID MAGAZINE

UNDER THE WEATHER

What do you think an artist is? …he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.
—Pablo Picasso

By the way, fear works. And if you have a leader that speaks your fears right back at you, boy, that is the most compelling thing to get a vote.
—Adam Kinzinger

This place has always been, above all else, a deeply violent place.
—Sean King

Poverty in the richest country in the history of the world is a death sentence.
—Bernie Sanders

This is the longest I’ve gone without an intoxicant in 30 years. I’ve quit smoking three times in my life—once as a straight-edge skinhead in 10th grade, then at 40 for 6 years and finally last night. There isn’t anything wrong and it’s a bummer you want to know the truth. Of course I could get into it with somebody on the socials or creep out a platonic in what passes for human courting in the pandemic. I don’t want to write this column anymore, it’s painfully apparent. Perhaps it’s time to make the leap from Personal Journalism to Journalism Journalism. It wouldn’t be the worst thing and I can’t think of any other way for me to affect change. Fuck man, write about it. Ahoy it’s time for something different to happen. I haven’t been writing daily, not like I ever did but I don’t know what I should expect from this column as it’s been written, closer and closer to deadline, until finally I’m writing this post past it on a Thursday.

The best thing that happened to me today is I felt the sun on my back. Once in the court this morning and again in the afternoon down at the bodega. Some haircut pulled up in a mini Audi. He squeegeed his windows and dried them by hand. A newscaster with a fat ass got out of her Channel 61 news van but had to pull around to get it pump-side. The skaters down there are endearing and impeccably polite. Michael’s behind the counter, he’s only had his Element for 2 years. I ask him about it, and his catalytic converter, and he doesn’t know or let on. I would’ve told him to beware but he doesn’t seem into it so I stepped out and stood in that Texas sun.

I go down there for junk food and I eat junk food for 1 of 2 reasons. To help regulate me or else to deal with stress. By not smoking a cigarette first thing this morning I took control of the day. This one wasn’t ruined but anyway I’ve still got to deal with my intestine. My gut’s flaring up again though it could be the nicotine passing. Another 3 days of wrenching pain til it all clears. Or it could be gone tomorrow. Girl next door’s going on with her bassy beat and that’s after enduring the teeth-rattling hum of construction all day. They’re installing Google Fiber, if you want to know what’s going on in the world. Ain’t shit changed.

The wisdom of middle-age is attuning to your own deeper rhythm and lost to the general sway. Turn your mind down because everything is so numbing but don’t tune out completely because then you’re only sleeping. Anyway, this post is to fulfill a deadline and I’m sorry but for the life of me I can’t do it like I used to. It makes me sad because I was really hitting a stride writing here in the Fall. I just couldn’t go on being mad Good Reader and I was either not depressed enough or so sunk I didn’t even know it and now I’m punching keys and making word count because I said I would.

It ain’t the worst thing but I hate half-assing anything so expect an announcement from me out of respect and in thanks. I wrote my way through a decade and now the field is fallow ain’t it, posting about the Castle Hill bodega and finally being intoxicant-free, without love or anger and standing in that Texas sun beaming on me in bright-hot and warm glory.

KEEP BLEEDING IN THE ANNO FINEM:
10 Years At Going For The Throat
AVAILABLE AT JIMTRAINER.NET

GO HERE FOR NIGHT 1 OF THE KEEP BLEEDING RELEASE
NIGHT 2

PART 36 OF THE COARSE GRIND GOES LIVE THIS SUNDAY AT INTO THE VOID MAGAZINE

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