More Confessions of a Jerkoff

Crude admissions ahead. I could say the same every week ain’t it though. Every week I’m under the gun and deadlines advance the killing hand. I’m also trying to wrangle some gnarly bad blues on here, and put down a rapacious anxiety–you know, I’m going for its throat, and so, I  don’t have the luxury of apology or explanation. Nor should there be any, in Art. FOR MADMEN ONLY, like the sign says, and if there’s ever a place to dispense with pretension, get to the point and lay it on the fucking line, it is in the Arts. You should never waste anyone’s time. It’s on par with murder when you consider that all that our lives are is time. You take my time, you take my life and if you attempt either I’ll weed you out motherfucker. Go ahead and try me but I’ve got readers around the world and we’ll find you and X you out! Forgive me, got a little carried away there. Happy Tuesday and all such happy horseshit. I’m a working man and I’ve got to get these words down today and not on my usual Thursday because this Thursday I’m heading back into the building and working a 15-hour day filling orders. It ought to pad things out a little–make it less do or die while I’m delivering corporate lunches and running into the night with whatever fits into my blue hotbag.

Delivery ain’t a bad gig, the money’s horrible but I’ve no coworkers. Trust me, no matter what kind of shitshuck or haul you’re pulling–it’s the crew you’re running with that’ll make or break you. I was the foreman of black and Puerto Rican men from North Philly almost twice my age, filling dumpsters with pitch at the end of the American Century, and as ball busting as that was, it’s heaps better than standing around the kitchen of the Chase Center and missing every single pop culture reference my university going coworker choads futilely threw at me. I was just digging out an old house a couple weeks ago in North Philly, and painting for Christ, which I abhor, but it was with my Brother Tau, someone I share a deep connection with. We did what we had to and then we went home. We laughed a lot but our chemistry was instantly thrown off every time a homeowner or boss chimed in. You’re only as good as the company you keep ain’t it though. Well, I am my People.  My people are the blood that flows through me.  My people are diamonds in the dark.  Point is–wait a second here, what happened to my point?

Ah…my point was that without a deadline, without having to write this and nail it to the fucking wall by day’s end, I’m free to roam and ramble, as it were, get lost in Hostile City reverie and take shots at the squares and all too conveniently forget my warning, forget I was about to admit to crude and unsavory things. Far be it from me to back down in writing, although I will settle and euphemize. Ha. Not a chance. What I began this post warning you about was admitting that my upper arms are sore from jerking off. I’m only embarrassed for the women in my family reading this–if you are, I apologize, but, I’m shooting pool fat man.  Maybe I’m lonely. Definitely horny.  Certainly a misanthrope.  It’s probably painfully obvious that a horny misanthrope masturbates. Ain’t it though. Perhaps finding another misanthrope to spend time with could figure the problem out. I know plenty of women of like mind. A startingly high percentage of misanthropes are only exhausted empaths. People who feel too much tend to shy themselves of the parade. Anyone who’s ever felt the world this way should do wise and spend some time in the great Alone. Solitude is the ally, just ask Uncle Hank, but isolation is the killer.  Feeling isolated around them, ain’t it though, it can be twice-fucked when you realize it kills your time (and your life!) and your needs aren’t getting met so it’s also burning your emotional bandwidth. This can lead to exhaustion and depression and is why I can, with a straight face, look you in the eye and tell you–I strive to have compassion for all things living and otherwise, but most people are horrible.

The problem isn’t sex, or lack thereof, or too much arm crippling masturbation.  The problem isn’t being alone, or, at times, being painfully isolated. The problem with me is the problem with you, Brothers&Sisters–and the problem with us all is this blog. I’ve too much time, as crazy as that sounds. Sitting here writing for no reason, with no deadline is a particular kind of madness. I can’t move my arms and neck at the same time while typing this. I hear sirens out in the city and my neighbor is hosing down the side of his aluminum shed. The feeds of outrage are growing on the social networks…WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING NOW…until  things are back to normal and the world can go back to ending without so much as a peep of complaint. It’s totally asinine, fundamentally futile and completely insane to sit here, 883 words in, in my underwear writing about masturbation and day labor. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Medium Is My Message

Proud and excited to announce this week’s post is featured on Medium!  Please go there and show me some applause (icon of hands clapping at the bottom of, or just beside, the piece).  Feel free to leave a comment, too, so they know we have arrived.

Thanks motherfucker!

 

Charlie Gordon’s Blues

Oh, the work I could get done if my heart weren’t so full of hate.
–David Sedaris

I know this is not Church, but get close to the Lord.  The world is getting close to the end.
–Little Richard


If it could happen then — in 1980 — then it can happen now.
–Scott Crawford

We love your voice.

–Rebecca Loebe

I’ve been clean and sober for over 2 years, but you’d never know it looking at my apartment.  It looks like I been riding with the King, drinking with Papa and partying with Guns ‘N Roses.  My kitchen doubles as a place to type, much like Bukowski and Hunter Thompson’s did-but don’t ask.  Boxes full of Farewell to Armor and Anthology Philly (WragsInk), September and All in the wind (Yellow Lark Press) are underneath the War Room table.  The black nest of power cords, USBs and chargers beside it ain’t pretty either, and it’s a fire hazard besides.  Topo Chico bottles and La Croix empties christen the floor like cities and the bedroom at the back of the mansion is sinking in a cyclone of fitted sheets and pillows.  The bathroom is gross and there are piles of clothes everywhere.  “Dude clean” is apt and I’d do well to get a maid-but then I’d have to pre-clean, like Doc does, and her visits would be another deadline for me to stroke out over.  I have no excuse and no one to blame.   It’s a fucking mess in here.

The last 4 days on shift were an epic and colossal laziness, a laziness I needed to recover from, which is why I’m sitting here at 3 in the afternoon sipping cold coffee in my sleeping cargos, writing.  The world is out there and at large.  But I couldn’t get to sleep until after 2 last night, when I finally pulled earbuds from the phone and left Uncle Hank and Mike Patton mid-show.  We’re not even halfway through the summer and I feel fine.  The new lease starts 8/15 and I’ve got a flurry of shit to get cracking on, none of which I started, or even attempted to, since we last spoke.  As per usual, I sat down to write this with the intention to bag my bad blues, let you know what’s bothering me and get right to it.  Besides being beholden to a deadline, and despite all appearances of transparency at GFtT, there’s a lot of shit I’m loathe and even ashamed to admit.  Mostly it’s how I haven’t done much with my time, that I’m depressed and stuck winding down the end days as an indentured servant.  I’ve squandered precious time, that for the last couple years I only sensed running out, winding down, acutely and terrifyingly-fuck.

My other blunders, faults and peccadilloes-I’ve been writing them down, just haven’t posted them here.  They’re in a file called FVK Daily, a draft of a blog post like this one except it goes on and on, listing and enumerating all my dirties and lust, all the venom and corruption that haunts me daily.  Maybe it’s my Catholic upbringing, or the imperative of Natural Selection to never be satisfied-but I feel like I can do it, get it all out and fix what’s wrong with me simply by writing it down, posting it or etching it in ink on the lined pages of a store bought yellow bound pocket spiral I call LIGHTNING/RENDERING.  It’s a tradition that dates back to 1992.  I’d buy a notebook at CVS, its color informing me and setting the tone for our time together-me and my Friend the Journal, who would be with me, help me to manifest, worship and smash my idols, and self-actualize.  It’s the power of writing, good Reader, and poetry.  It’ll never fail to get you out of a jam-that is, your head, and help you to fetishize your pain and cast your journey with pomp and grandiosity.  It’s how we mythologize, and how we make ourselves heroes, how we hang it on the fucking wall, find and take from a sense of place, which in turn gives us a sense of ourselves-our shape and color, our small graces and thunderous foibles, our smokes and charms, our roaring and our lightning, the drums of the arena calling for your head in the black and endless rain.

I don’t have any answers this week.  I don’t have any answers most weeks, and I’m loathe to wrap this in a cute or poignant way.  It’s the end of the world.  Thank you for reading.

 

 

More News From Nowhere

…it all just seems so sensationalized.
–Aziz Ansari

I know ppl like u think it’s “cool” to theorize about quantum fluctuations, but the heat death of the early universe isn’t something to romanticize.
–Frances Bean Cobain

…I say hey Janet
you are the one, you are the sun
and I’m your dutiful planet…
–Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

This Guns N’ Roses weekend is over.
-Your Writer on Tour with Ironwhore, July 2005

Waking up with a hardon is the best thing to happen to me in years.  Never mind I quit smoking, drinking and the Life, that I’ve published three collections of poetry and prose and survived as a working singer songwriter for the last 5 years, or that we just wrapped 4,484 miles pulling in to Hippie Town at 9pm last night.  Waking up erect is good news from the Gods, like we’re gonna win this thing.  Know what I mean, good Reader?  As we were leaving Austin 19 days ago, it dawned on me that I probably have arthritis, if not in my left middle finger, then certiainly on my right thumb.  Anyone reading this blog on the regular knows I haven’t caught my breath in over a year-and there are other, less savory conditions and maladies that’ve fell on me in these paling years, not the least of which being a lack of libido.  I let it all slide, rather than jump through the bureaucratic hoops of health insurance that only led nowhere-but decreased interest in sex was, at the time, viewed as an improvement.  Sex seemed to always land me in trouble somehow, and, by and large the partners I had were colossal wastes and the biggest drains of my time, on my health and my career as a day worker, writer and performer.

The truth is I’ve let a lot of things go.  I’ve insulated myself from the world with this gig.  I’ve maintained at minimum, and pushed harder when I needed to, but when I look back at the last 5 years and think about the fact that I’m 42, I’m terrified and disgusted-the former boring through nights pocked and shot through with anxiety, and the latter beating the opposite sex to the punch.  I couldn’t fuck and I didn’t want to.  It’s called depression, and low self esteem, which can intermingle in a vicious cycle that the worst people will blame you for, but actual compassion for, even if welcomed, can veer too close to commiseration and in any event is a shit substitute for understanding.  The silver lining is the coffee’s done, it’s time to wake up, this gig is over in less than 2 months and, like the Buddhists say-the best time to start was last year, the next best time is right now.  Lest we forget, I taught myself how to write these last 5 years, and the dream of being a columnist has been realized, thanks in no small part to you and your wonderful Readership.  I’ve got a 2009 Monk’s Robe Orange Honda Element and a Tacoma Guild.  I live in a post-gentrified Paradise and every dumb ailment and malady I’ve mentioned can be treated by swallowing a pill-ok, I still need to look into why I can’t catch my breath, it’s true, and wish me luck as I enter their world and try to get the help I need.

This blog has always been the balloon to my wet cement blues.  I talk myself down from the noose here, and you read me and it’s perfect.  Healing myself with my own medicine bag, sitting down to type and hang it on the fucking wall, feeling supported and, most of all, seen by you is terribly important to me-a rudder in the shitswells of a dark and calmitous world, the biggest boon and best thing to happen to me in years besides waking up with a hardon this morning.  Oh yeah, that.  It seems like the weeks get away from me.  I mean, sure, I work full time, and I just spent 18 days on the road with my Boss, but time gets away from me-that is, the time to address the many peccadilloes and tragic breakdown I’ve been skirting since I turned 40.  I feel like I should address it, tacitly, get up on it like Ahab, and chronicle the savage journey I’ve undergone since deciding to stop being depressed (I am NOT saying that this decision cured my depression AT ALL).  Brother Bean has asked for it, in the past, and I feel like I’d do well to bring it back for you-hip you to the saga of a working class ex-Pat punkrocking rockabilly New journalist with a a whole lot of time on his hands, a new car and a rekindled libido.  I’ll still try, good Reader.  You bet.  But I’ve got to wrap this.  I still believe in my dreams and I feel like I’ve got something to live up to, until the next time we meet, so I should get cracking.

May your crown be a halo.  See you next Thursday motherfucker.

 

 

 

 

 

Have Heart on the Hard Road

You should learn how to feel sad without actually being sad.
-Laurie Anderson’s Buddhist Teacher

Self-editing is humiliating. I didn’t start a blog called Going For The Throat to censor myself. There have been times over the years and I’m sure I’ll be called to do it again, for whatever dumb reason life may deal me at that moment. Admittedly, I’ve steered away from skewering certain individuals because it would’ve only esteemed them. Those come out in the wash, though. It took me a couple years but I was able to call out certain cunts on here who’s name I never would’ve mentioned before. Of course there are professional considerations, but if you’re a dayworker like I am you have very little control or catharsis-I’ve found that biting your tongue on a shitjob only rears in the end. You can abstain from speaking your mind but if some boss deserves it, it’s only a matter of time before your hands are on him in the alley behind the break room. Things have their way of working themselves out. Living in fear is worse than dying which might soudnd idealistic to you but any jerkoff who posts at least 600 words about himself on the world wide web every week isn’t playing with a full deck of practicality to begin with. What that means is if I’m crazy enough to dream it, you know I’m just plain crazy too. Self-editing, or censoring, is bullshit and I only do it if I’m at an impasse. If I’ve stared at the same post, and re-read it enough times to know it by heart, then it’s time to flush it and start anew. This isn’t poetry. At best, Going For the Throat is a gun-I’d only point it at you if I’m shooting to kill.

Greetings from the Hewitt Lake Club, Population 7. It looks like rain on Lily Bay, but it’s looked that way since 9. The sky is turning silver, there’s a low thunder rumbling and a high wind swaying the gingkoes and lone evergreen to the left of the screen porch where I write this self-censored post. Whether it rains or not means little. I’ll be wet by the time I get to the greasy barn and it’d be great to build a fire in the pod. Two days ago I would’ve had a completely different answer, with Ben in Brooklyn and the rain coming down it was just me and Blair sitting around the fire-in our pod, all day long. I was worried my resentments had ruined this trip, but woke up charged, on my day off yesterday, bounding out of bed at 6:30AM and writing over a thousand words about the horrid grind my life has become. Thank Christ that’s over with.

Out on the drive behind the cabin, by the garage where I sing, working on a tune called It’s Been A Long Time That I Should Be Far From Here-I realized something. Music, songs and songwriting, lyrics-these could be the last haven for wonder in these paling years. Fantasy. Myth. What I’ve rued since giving up the life-otherness, lust, change. Of course the fear is that perhaps I only use songs to help me through rough and large transitions. SWAMP EP, for example. I must’ve buried 3 exs alone by the end of The Winner, SWAMP‘s opening track. I resolved some issues I had with my dead Father in So Many Roads, acknowledged that I loved her in Back (I Want You) and laid out LA Telegram and Back In The Game like a dream map of the South, the Rockabilly Night and my new Spring in Austin ever dawning. I’ve penned some tunes since then and unearthed even more. I wrote down the titles to anywhere from 12-15 solid songs, songs that I’ve written that I like…which ain’t bad for someone who thinks he doesn’t write enough songs. So the fear is that, at the end of this ordeal, I’ll have 3 or 4 tunes that have helped me through, but I won’t be closer to my songwriting heroes. I’m sensing a theme here, and just wrote to Compatriot Cole this morning about never realizing what I call the Rollins ideal. Oh well. At least with songwriting it’s easy to keep in mind that it’s good work if you can find it. Songwriting is a different kind of spell-it’s writing and self actualizing but it involves the Gods on an intimate level. As a songwriter you can become anything (or anyone) you want to be. It’s instantaneous and only a fool could ask for more.

When peace comes it’s profound. The blood in my head sinks at the same rate as the sun, and I’ve expereienced dusks here both utterly sublime and completely ordinary. That’s all I ever wanted. I don’t need fireworks. I never wanted Heaven though I guess I settled for Hell. Didn’t I Brother. I never wanted a panacea or a cure all, but that could be depression talking (why bother trying to feel good when it’s such a short ride from the good life to the blues?). Know what I mean Sister? Life is…life. I got a good feeling about leaving this gig even if I only heard back from 3 of the 20 booking emails sent out from the greasy barn last Friday. I wrote another verse for an old tune and revisited one that’s been brimming from the heartlid before 10AM yesterday morning. This tenuous balance, periods of synchronous bliss coupled with torrid maelstroms of anger and irritation, sounds like life to me and of course there’s so much more I could do.

Sorry for the hodge-podge, good Reader. I tried to salvage the high points of my charge and kept the low points of the original missive to myself. No good deed goes unpunished ain’t it though, ’cause now I’m out here in the garage writing this. I flew the screen porch and came out here to wrap this fucking thing. Our pod got too full of good vibes and company, no room for me and my bitterness, which, truth be told is only killing me. Jill just walked by and said I could turn on the light if I wanted to. I told her I’d just suffer in silence and we laughed, this 86 year old Artist and me, hard, because she’s right. I could turn on the light if I wanted to.

New Century Blues

Greetings from the wasteland and hello from the high rooms.  I’m writing this from the War Room, a kitchen in an apartment of the last Confederate Governor of the U.S.’ old place, in sweltering downtown Austin.  I’m writing it on a Monday so I can get the world off my neck.  The afternoons are best for poetry but I blew it out yesterday with a poem so bitter I won’t be able to share it with anyone, except maybe the Devil himself.  Although, when it comes to offending folks, the creation of Art usually wins out.  As it does over:  sentimentality, decency and even privacy-yep, all of these and especially privacy are rolled over in favor of getting product out.  Be it a poem, blog post, Youtube clip or article-content trumps everything.  Which isn’t to say I wanted to hurt you.  That’s not true.  There are some of you I was trying to hurt.  At least I’m not trying to offend.  Whoops.  That’s not true either.  What do you want from me?  I’m a digital garbage man so stick out your can.  If I don’t put out at least 600 words a week, black detritus piles up in my mind and I start weighing heavier and less savory options, if you know what I mean.

I started this blog 7 years ago, emulating Dr. Thompson and all but killing for his place on the pulse, his connectivity and prescience, his wit and high drama and even his gloomy war drum tone.  His predictions always came home to roost, leading Frank Mankiewicz to dub him the “least factual but most accurate” reporter on the Campaign Trail in ’72-and we all know what’s happened since then.  Trust me on this, Brother, if it got too weird for Hunter Thompson then you know we are in for one hell of a ride.  Nutter’s Rule.  I’ve written on it before.  A future on the order of raining frogs and swarming clouds of locusts is all but imminent-because that is the power of dreaming and it’s all those Nutter’s could hope for.  The music they play in mass alone should hip you to the sad imagination of folks who don’t have premarital sex and are afraid to die.  In their defense, we’re all afraid to die-it’s just that some of us have the sense to understand the Wisdom that living their way is just like dying, so we may as well get on with it, which is probably what Dr. Thompson was thinking on that black day in Febuary 2005.

That’s what is wrong with my generation but don’t get me started on my generation.  Or, do.  It’s only Monday.  My next 600 ain’t due up until sometime Thursday, and that’s plenty of time for me to examine my place in this culture and where I fit in to my Generation-because I certainly didn’t know it or fit in at the time.  Shaving your head and donning braces and boots wasn’t popular where I come from.  Neither was skateboarding, or doing anyting except getting your 12 year old girlfriend pregnant and drinking a case of Bush big boys at the trestle on a Friday night.  Playing in a band wasn’t either, believe it or no, at least not the type of music we were playing-but we did it anyway.  Of course I’d want to go back there, like the song says, but if I can’t then I’ll settle for the attitude we had back then.  Because goddamnit, the Buddhists were right, attitude is everything.  We did shit back then, that no one else was doing.  Because we were bored and our parents didn’t care.  We smoked and drank post-Nevermind, and we wrote.  Those journals are gone, or burned, or on a shelf in a cold garage in Middletown, Delaware at my father’s house.  It’s a shame what happened to those journals and the young idea is gone.  We’re all alone in the New Century but connected somehow in the hall of mirrors of social media.

It’s all fucked and I guess it always was.  The real kick in the balls is that never stopped me before.  I haven’t been breathing right for the last year and a half.  It’s been a long time that I should be far from here.  I got a Monk’s Robe Orange 2009 Honda Element with 53,000 miles and some hail damage on it that bothers me way more than it should.  I’ve got 64 copies of All in the wind’s pressing of 150 left, and orders are still coming in.  I’ve got clips of me reading and telling stories that I shouldn’t post if I cared about certain poets in my commnuity’s feelings, which I don’t, so I will.  In 23 minutes I’ll have to report back to my boss, smoke him out and make a dinner run.  5 years ago I walked out of the food service industry for good.  I threw out my serving blacks and began the search for meaningful work.  I’ll let you fill in the blanks as per if I’ve ever found it, and offer that the only meaningful work there is is for yourself.  You can be a slave in the service of another but you’re still a slave.  You can draw your own conclusions, of course, but I should’ve been gone 2 years ago, when I looked back at my life in horror and knew that if I stayed any longer I’d only be dying.

See you coming out the grave, motherfucker.

Burning Down The House

“Dating is a game,” the cunt was saying.  “You’ve got to play.”
She took the cigarette out of my hand and sucked on it the bitch.
“So how do you win?  And who are the losers?  Where are they tonight?  Who are they with?”

She, as you can tell, was thee absolute fucking worst.  Last I saw, she traded in her minivan for an Acura, got back with her baby daddy and continues to walk around like her shit don’t stink.  Also, she’s been one of the biggest motivators for me to quit drinking and get my shit together.  I was in love with her, or getting close, but I guess I lost the game of dating.  I really don’t mind losing but ultimately I’d rather not play-especially if winning means kissing the ass of a phony cunt who sells medical supplies for a living.

We’ve all got our row to hoe.  It betrays my Buddhist leanings to hate anyone, let alone this much and for this long.  It’s been a long time that I should be far from here.  I’m kicking in my stall, digging up corpses from the past for another round of abuse.  The only reconciliation I can come up with between hating her and having compassion for all things is that after all this time maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about her, let alone rueing how awful she is.  My hatred is distracting me, desire is the root of all suffering, but she is still thee absolute fucking worst.

I’ve met many lovely ladies over the last 5 years living here, and most of them were the same:  self serving and narcissistic, coupled with a diabolical need for constant validation.  I should’ve known better than to try and love any of those broken birds.  The Buddhist angle on it is loving them would be hating me.  Ultimately hating them would also be hating me but not so fast, Mr. Bond, and don’t too wise.  Forgiveness of that scope may have to wait for the next leap of evolution-and hatred will have to end here, with me, the last Trainer.

The truth is I don’t mind burning bridges as much as I don’t mind losing the game of dating.  My only regret about burning the bridge is I can’t ever go back and burn it all down.  That doesn’t sound very Buddhist, does it?  I’m a writer, not an arsonist-but if I can’t come up with at least 600 words every week then I might as well set myself on fire.

I’m nothing if not a hard worker but my inspirations are hardly pure.  Another week has come and gone.  I’ve managed to dodge the bullet and stay the avalanche of self hatred that’s always waiting should I fail this quest and not live up to who I chose to be.  Self hatred is fine fuel, it’s worked for me, though it used to be hatred for:  him and her, my Mother and Father and them and that town.  Now it’s only me and this mountain, 600 words high.  Some weeks I ride the tiger, the words come pouring out and the world, having written, is a better place.  Others I overly personalize, I take you into the inner chamber or I dig up corpses of former adversaries and hang ’em from the poles while we ride silently together down the charred avenues of memory lane.  This post is obviously one of those.  We both know I can do better.

She’s still thee absolute fucking worst.
Ab irato,
Trainer

View this post on Instagram

3a of 30 celebrating #nationalpoetrymonth . #nationalpoetrymonth #30for30 #30for30challenge #poem #poetry #poetryislife #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #poetryofig #poetryisnotdead #poetryporn #poetryloving #poetrygram #poetry_addicts #poetrylovers #poetrysociety

A post shared by Jim Trainer (@goingforthethroat) on Apr 3, 2016 at 9:33pm PDT

Papa

I first read him in a bookstore when I was 19.
Reading him was like being given a key,
it was before I became acquainted
with the shrinking room
before such wrong&wicked love-
the kind that leaves powder marks
the kind that betrays
streets who’d curl up beneath me-
it was before that part of town
and before I developed such dire fondness
for brown mash,
before the strangling roots of comfort
before the burgeoning bitterness
and bouts with homelessness
it was the beginning of a couple
decades on the dayshift
falling in and out of love.
at that young age I felt so misunderstood
I ached for something,
anything
to break me out&he showed me how
as I stood in the aisles
I knew this man was giving me something
he was showing me how to burn
before my hell had even began.

Curator at Going For the Throat, columnist for Into The Void, progenitor of stand-up tragedy™. Jim Trainer publishes a collection of poetry every year through Yellow Lark Press. To sign up for Jim Trainer’s Poem Of The Week, visit jimtrainer.net.

Papa, along with 6 other poems and an essay written in tribute to Charles Bukowski, are available in the latest issue of The Schuylkill Valley Journal.

Kingdom Found

Henry Charles Bukowski humanized poetry.  The stoicism of his anti-heroes perhaps betrayed a respect by many writers of the 20th Century for Ernest Hemingway.  They called Hemingway Papa.  Hemingway is not my Papa.  In plain-spoken, dispassionate prose, Bukowski included the sometimes gross and hairy minutiae of life to arrive at a greater truth.  He was not resigned to this–sometimes there is no greater truth.  Some nights there is no peace.  Papa helped me through many war-like years and he still helps me, when I must ruefully look back on those years and try and find some peace with it all.  Giving up is easy, the fight is painful.  Losing the game is painful, until you find your own game and are thus victorious.  He wanted to “frame the agony” and get in touch with magic, the miracle. He had more to say at the street level because that’s where he lived and spent most of his time.  What is so important culturally about Bukowski is that, for all intents and purposes, he was part of the Beat Generation. The difference is he had to hold a job throughout America’s boom and twilight.  He had no aunt with a house in New Jersey where he could sober up and dream of America.  He watched the new school from out in the yard with all the other hopeless scabs.  He watched them come and go and he outlived them all.  

Life went on for Papa.  It always did.  He had to contend with elements unleashed after the dark curtain of a right-wing backlash fell in the 80s. And for all intents and purposes, we are only living in the post-80s.  He found courage, acceptance, defeat and ultimate glory in the mastering of his own game.  The poetry coming from Papa during the August years of his life in San Pedro is some of his most indelible.  It smacks of one of his heroes, Li Po, with its all-inclusive sentimentality and the beautiful realities uncovered once grand notions of entitlement and romance are stripped and thrown away.

It couldn’t be taken away from him in his early years either, even if he didn’t know it, while under the spell of his “assault”; bad cases of the blues he wrote about so unflinchingly.  Underneath all his armor was something his father couldn’t take away with a razor strop. So that, years later, when looking back at a “decade of 12 hour nights”, he was suddenly touched by magic and left the job for good.

Credit is perhaps due to Hemingway, for the emotional subtext of Bukowski’s man’s man, but as it turns out, his writing owes a lot more to Raymond Chandler.  It’s fitting that his last novel was a detective one, and his protagonist hired to find Lady Death.

Papa had some luck.  But luck won’t help the truly bitter and the ungrateful.  Luck didn’t help him continually submit work to the literary journals and magazines while he was:  unemployed, under employed and homeless (although he was perhaps his most creative while sitting on a bar stool in Philadelphia for 10 years, but, weren’t we all?)

Many lived like Papa but did not become a celebrated writer, poet and screenwriter.  Many just died in madness with their women or in a gutter all alone.  Throughout his literary output and life, Papa knew what eastern mystics like Li Po were saying.  He moved about a destitute metropolis of 80s America, admiring cats and simple distractions like the race track and the mockingbird.  But through it all he knew succinctly what another great Taoist writer, Lao Tsu, knew:  little fears eat away at man’s peace of heart. Great fears swallow him whole.

Make your best peace with things, a deal, because the game is rigged.  The real action, the best game, is inside.  Be alive with the gamble, be touched by magic but don’t get so wrapped up in trying to beat the game.  Be like Papa and lose everything.  Lose it all, you don’t need it.  It’s a rigged game and a burden.  When you put down the burden of who even YOU think you’re supposed to be, you can just be who you are.

Thanks for the courage, Papa.

 

---

Curator at Going For the Throat, columnist for Into The Void, progenitor of stand-up tragedy™. Jim Trainer publishes a collection of poetry every year through Yellow Lark Press. To sign up for Jim Trainer’s Poem Of The Week, visit jimtrainer.net.

KINGDOM FOUND, along with 6 other poems written in tribute to Charles Bukowski, are available in the latest issue of The Schuylkill Valley Journal.