INDIANAPOLIS

been a dog! since winter
froze down
and just blind with the blues
“How much of our worries
and trouble,” you posit
“can be shucked just by
getting on a plane?”
your voice through the phone
sounds like a bikini (or what
I imagine a bikini to sound like),
out the window the mockingbird
is yelling at the sun
I lean hard off the pile of
work at the desk
“Pack light.” You suggest
and as I hang
on your every pert
Saskatchewanian word,
I only wanna know
“You think two shoes are too much?”

INDIANAPOLIS is my 26th poem of 30 written for every day of National Poetry Month.

Buy me a bubbly?

Most of my Patrons are contributing as little as $5 a month, and they’re getting letters for it, letter pressed broadsides, live readings and songs. I’m your mutineer, and I need your help.  I’d love your readership, vis-á-vis a a few minutes of your week and for the cost of a fancy beverage.

Patrons keep me writing until I can find someone to pay me for it. Luckily I’ve a piece featured in Music, Movies&Hoops this and next month. The good news for me is that I’ll live and the good news for you is that as a Patron you’ll have access to street-level reporting, poetry and song. What could be better?  

Please support me on Patreon.

Your Poet,
Jim Trainer
AUSTIN TX  

GET YOUR COPY OF STRIDE HERE

A TURRET OF SELF

it’s the calamity of a bad mind
that put me here and
in the writing
a fleeting
peace.  

Buy me a bubbly?

Most of my Patrons are contributing as little as $5 a month, and they’re getting letters for it, letter pressed broadsides, live readings and songs. I’m your mutineer, and I need your help.  I’d love your readership, vis-á-vis a a few minutes of your week for the cost for a fancy beverage.

Patrons keep me writing until I can find someone to pay me for it. Luckily I’ve a piece featured in Music, Movies&Hoops this month. The good news for me is that I’ll live and the good news for you is that as a Patron you’ll have access to street-level reporting, poetry and song.

What could be better? Please support me on Patreon.

Your Poet,
Jim Trainer
AUSTIN TX  

GET YOUR COPY OF STRIDE HERE

THE MARK

the heart retches
at the walls of my chest
the plain streets wedge in
with their hard-yellow light

the nights are a closure
and I’m cool in my seclusion
but the lie has ingrown and
to its idea, the body 
is dragged along

you told me that love was just 
peace with the unforgivable
but that was cities ago
and now I try and 
untrain the mark
keep the fool’s toil,
my beat on the long room

I’ve a ruin and I covet it
an annihilation that sure 
as I stand here will
unmoor

all that could’ve been
send it wide and heaving
to tumble in the canyon
its bones thrust up
from the wreck of itself
to roil in the roan-dog sky

THE MARK is my 12th poem of 30 written for National Poetry Month.

The Editor informs me that if f I get 600 views on “See You in Ten, Will” he’ll throw me some cheddar. Help a brother out and read what mainstream culture should mean to us, which is absolutely nothing.

The Honda passed inspection.  Rather than wait for a motor mount they drilled right into the old one.  My bills are paid and I’m broke.  But I’ve got fish in the fridge and a lunch date with the lovely Ms. V on Wednesday.  It’s a good life.  The fear keeps you lean and the work means you’re available for whatever storm or favor the gods have in store for you.

Please support me on Patreon.  What’s coming for the working poor in this country needs to be reported on and you know goddamn well I’m your man.

Your Freelancer,
Jim Trainer
AUSTIN TX  

GET YOUR COPY OF STRIDE HERE

BLACK IRISH BEST

we think it was a small hammer
or mini-aluminum slugger
and though I’d lost consciousness
and minutes of my life
I woke up standing there
I’ve been through worse
and of course I’ve been through
much better
if it wasn’t for luck I’d have
never made it out of Philly
but if it wasn’t for something else
I might not be standing here
at all.

Buy me a beer?
Most of my Patrons are contributing as little as $5 a month, and they’re getting letters for it, letter pressed broadsides, live readings and songs. I’m your mutineer, and I need your help.
Above all, I’d love your readership, vis-á-vis a a few minutes of your week at less than the cost for a pint.
Patrons keep me writing until I can find someone to pay me for it. Luckily I’ve 2 pieces to be featured in music movies and hoops this month. The good news for me is that I’ll live and the good news for you is that, as a Patron you’ll have access to street-level reporting, poetry and song.
What could be better? Please support me on Patreon.
Your Poet,
Jim Trainer
AUSTIN TX