ROOM WORK

We slipped through each other’s hands
our lives had their own demands
I’m still one of your biggest fans
and it’s been long enough…
—Mike Stinson

And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls
From out the stars into the Solitude.
—Rainer Maria Rilke

I’m on deadline at the Throat, in case you didn’t know, and anyway have made a deal with myself to have something up there every Monday plus a formal 6-1,200 words here every Thursday. The fact that it is Monday and 7 minutes after 7 in the evening as of this writing means I am feeling the crunch, if not already evidenced by the aforementioned too-many smoke breaks. Why the crunch and why the deadline are a weird deal I made with myself to try and snap out of it—this block and slump of suicidal affirmation my life has become since I got off the road.
—ROOM WORK on Patreon

Well. It’s ya boy, working 28 hours this weekend and listening to Psalmships on Bandcamp in between shifts. For my double on Sunday I drove straight through, parked in the mega lot of the HEB and downed hot gumbo and sweet tea before reporting to the night shift. There’s a lot going on in the world which I’ll be honest doesn’t make a damn with me. I’m reporting here because I said I would and because sometimes all you can do is get it down, on the page, and frame it as best you can before a hot breakfast after a good night’s sleep. Sales of STRIDE are inching along, and we’ve sold almost half the pressing of TO A DOG I MET IN CALABRIA. We’ll get their releases on the calendar and in the meantime shuck and jive between the lunch delivery gig and caregiving work.

The idea is to start putting some money away, if at first to get out of the hole that is a bass bag & rig, my home studio together and set up to record music and video performances, and maintenance on the Element including a new catalytic converter and cosmetic repair. Working on the weekends mostly, I should be able to curate virtual and live releases for STRIDE, TO A DOG I MET IN CALABRIA, the VAX POP VAX DEI screening and Singers On Writing showcase. Of course I’ll need to sleep and eat well, make strides toward the betterment of my mental health and libido with Yoga and actively choosing presence in my immediate environment. And of course I’ll have to hit the road and thinking Indiana in the spring, if not Hostile City for the AWP in March. I’ll need to demand desk time of myself and do my own room work until I can get back out there. This includes columns on culture and creative process for Music, Movies&Hoops and my own weekly on Patreon.

It’s weird to be back at it if only because I can’t be sure I’m all there, or here, as I’ve been slipping into self-doubt and wondering of my place as a poet within it all. I know that the work I’ve done has been in the inner forge and I’ve made for myself a joyful loitering of life. I’m happy on the fringe and down for the strange and diaphanous turns of the Anthropocene, as long’s we’re together. Judging by the stats on this blog it looks like we are—here together, and isn’t that nice?

We accept that we’re broken. We’ll never get along or be happy with what they’re selling and so we take it on and make it ourselves. Books and music, poetry and the spoken word. Rather than bemoan or regret their ill-fitting program we get up and tell our own stories.—READ MORE OF ROOM WORK, AND ENJOY JIM TRAINER’S PERSONAL JOURNALISM, POETRY AND MUSIC ON PATREON

NOW AVAILABLE THROUGH YELLOW LARK PRESS

JIM TRAINER’S 8TH FULL-LENGTH COLLECTION OF POETRY 
&
LETTER PRESSED AND COLLECTOR’S EDITIONS OF BROADSIDES FROM JIM TRAINER AND WILL STENBERG