The following newsletter appeared, along with Jim Trainer’s Poem Of The Week, in a mailer sent to over 800 recipients yesterday. Sign up here to receive an original poem in your inbox every Monday.
As hard as I can be on myself, and I can be merciless, my art always seems to boil down to a gauge of personal growth. This week’s poem is a great example of the need to tell it, as is, and let the chips fall where they may. I have been stuck in a bind of crippling depression as the end approaches. Pick your end, Good Subscriber, but my point is between ecological collapse, imminent fascism and deteriorating mental health—what is the difference? That is to say I’m in bad shape but mostly cannot find a reason to want to improve or feel better anyway. I suppose if your worldview is more optimistic you’d have to stop reading, and I wouldn’t fault you for it. All of this is to say that I am clinically depressed and the only help I’ll be able to receive would have to come from someone walking the walk with their eyes open, i.e. can plainly see the crumbling dissolution of the world order but strives to get well anyway. This is all a long-winded way to say that I am not ok, and I shouldn’t think you are either. My journey doesn’t end where this week’s poem suggests it will but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel hopeless and suicidal most of the time.
You can get help by reaching out to Your Poet anytime, and we’ll talk it through. Of course there are other channels and your suicide prevention hotline is only 3 digits away (988). There is probably a meeting for Alcoholics Anonymous in a major city near you and anyway there is someone waiting to talk with you just a phone call away. I can’t see a way out but it seems to me, and as a poet especially, to pretend I feel any other way, or at least profess to in writing, would be the worst thing I could do. That is, short of killing myself.
That said, I’ve been running a small press with these devils at my heels since 2015. The next 3 collections of mine on the Yellow Lark Press roster will come to press, solicited to you Good Reader and supported by my yearly and bi-yearly jaunts to each coast and this year, even the chitlin circuit of Texas and deep south—regardless of how I feel. First up is ’22’s release, an anthology of “The Coarse Grind,” my monthly column on the creative life, written over 3 years for Into The Void magazine. This project will coincide with my efforts to build an archive, because you never know, and I hope to include letters and other ephemera, from the years I spent driving a truck and finding for meaningful employment in a post-Trump America, in the anthology.
I will be seeking help and this week’s poem falls in line with those efforts. Originally titled “One For Them,” I figured I’d continue granting you the 4-walls down access that has odiously become my brand over the years. I’m posting at Going For the Throat again, for funsies, and workshopping a column I’ll be pitching to the mags on mid-life and mental health. As per usual I am asking you for your support on Patreon, where you can join a growing readership of OATMILK&COLD INSTANT, a biweekly column, plus live readings of original poetry and song. There is a sliding scale of support that you can offer, anywhere from $1-$125, but the most important thing is that I’ll know you’re there.
It is my great hope as a poet that the end of things will not spare the cheapness and misery of this age, which includes a social media that has rendered the hot medium of the internet piss-warm.
Please join us.
Yours,
TRAINER
AUSTIN TX
𝑆𝑈𝐵𝑆𝐶𝑅𝐼𝐵𝐸 𝑇𝑂 𝐽𝐼𝑀 𝑇𝑅𝐴𝐼𝑁𝐸𝑅’𝑆 𝑃𝑂𝐸𝑀 𝑂𝐹 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑊𝐸𝐸𝐾
𝑆𝑇𝑅𝐼𝐷𝐸, 𝐽𝐼𝑀 𝑇𝑅𝐴𝐼𝑁𝐸𝑅’𝑆 8𝑇𝐻 𝐹𝑈𝐿𝐿-𝐿𝐸𝑁𝐺𝑇𝐻 𝐶𝑂𝐿𝐿𝐸𝐶𝑇𝐼𝑂𝑁 𝑂𝐹 𝑃𝑂𝐸𝑇𝑅𝑌, 𝑁𝑂𝑊 𝐴𝑉𝐴𝐼𝐿𝐴𝐵𝐿𝐸 𝐴𝑇 𝐽𝐼𝑀𝑇𝑅𝐴𝐼𝑁𝐸𝑅.𝑁𝐸𝑇
Going for the Throat 