Won’t Stop

…to live outside the law, you must be honest…
-Bob Dylan, Absolutely Sweet Marie

It’s a good thing I don’t care about what you think then, isn’t it?
-Your Writer on Facebook this week

Last week on Writing On The Air cohost Martha Louise Hunter asked me where I get the time to do it all.  God bless her.  We were talking about this blog and how 600 words a week is the least I can do if I’m going to call myself a writer.
“Of course there’s Letter Day,” I told her and cohost Joe Brundige, “and I’m posting a poem every day for the month of April celebrating National Poetry Month.”
I told them that All in the wind was book 2 of the 10 that will be published through Yellow Lark Press, beginning with September in 2015 and ending with a collection, as-yet-unnamed, in 2025.
“10 books in 10 years is great, a fine goal,” I went on.  “-but I’m only making up for lost time.”
Brother Joe and I share a symmetry, and experience the joy of communication that can happen between two stringently honest people.  It took appearing on the show twice for me to realize-I am doing the thing.  It’s good when that happens, as opposed to the slave driving I’m usually doing with myself and the crippling feelings of despair anyone reading this blog is, by now, all too familiar with.

I finally booked Boston.  I’ll be speaking at the Middle East Corner with the Reverend Kevin O’Brien and bussing down to Philly the day after, for the Philly release of All in the wind.  Joe and I recorded an episode of Chillin Tha Most at the mansion last week, and it should be on the net next Thursday.  Last week was the kind of week I’d like to have every week, with gigs and radio appearances almost every day.   I kept on pushing till the light of day.  Which is heaps different than the life I’m living in my head, where it’s never enough and I’m only a day working coward.  What’s next is complicated but simple in terms of intent.

I’m quitting this gig.  Moving out to the east side.  Minimizing.  Scaling down.  I’m not sure how it will look or how to even vaguely monetize poetry and the spoken word-but I’m full of ideas and already making half my imminent rent with the gigs I’m already playing.  It’s strange to be striking out now but hardly unlikely.  I’ve long since abandoned anything resembling the common tropes of being an American.  I don’t have any kids, don’t even have a girlfriend.  But I’ve got a passion for media and all forms of communication.  I hope to get further invested in print and broadcast media.  Before I fly out to Beantown the MAMU should be fully assembled and my next purchase will be a touring vehicle.

It took me a while to wrap my head around it.  I had to keep it to myself and it made me resentful.  I couldn’t talk about my plans on here, there was some bad blood about me leaving but there doesn’t have to be.  I’ve started paying my taxes, I got a new dentist and a healthy line of credit.  Everything is moving as it should.  My next venture will be some time researching topics for the blog, so’s to avoid the kind of soul searching pap and whine that she hates and can appear on Going For The Throat when its weekly deadline is on my neck.  Your ideas are welcome, as are paying gigs-do you have a story for me?  Can we find a way to pay my freight so I can come to your town, speak and play?  Please chime in, in the comments below, or drop me a line at: jamesmichaeltrainer@gmail.com.

This east coast jaunt will be a short one but I’m thrilled to be sharing the stage with the Reverend Kevin O’Brien, Duncan Wilder Johnson, The Droimlins, and Jim Healy in Boston.  The Philly release of All in the wind is stacked, with award winning poets Charlie O’Hay and Lamont Steptoe reading.  By the time I go back to work I’ll have played at least 3 shows on the east coast, sold some books and burned hundreds of miles.  I’ll be exhausted, which is how I like it, and plan to be in the coming months.  Into it, no stops, full bore.

See you on the East Coast motherfucker.

Grim Jim’s Last Ride

I shoulda known. I’d had more fun in 3 hours with them than I’d had the whole Fall. What a bleak time, the Fall. Bitter yellow months chomping fistfuls of black time and smoking triple 5s. Not the best basis for comparison perhaps, but this night was special.

We were at Gusto, 48th&Burnet in Hippie Town. We decided to get another bottle of wine. We drank that one much quicker and then dinner was over. We were having tea up in the high rooms when Rach asked me to go out with her for some cold beers in the midnight w/Southern et al. We trekked over to Gourmand’s and waded through the thick bario night to get there. Once out front, some dipshit was drunk and Alex and another broad discussed how he had just texted her looking for a hookup but-aho, here was out front the bar, shithoused and stupid and talking to her. We went in. I ordered a water and stood there at the end of the bar with my hood up, glowering. I observed the crowd dynamic and theatrics sullenly. Then I ordered a beer. I shoulda known. Years of alcohol abuse have rendered me curiously sensitive to the stuff. That’s the thing about alcoholism. You’d think with your increased tolerance you’d be able to handle it better. The truth is you handle drunkenness the same way every time. That is to say, you don’t handle it at all. That’s what being drunk is. But with the increased amount of time and larger quantities it takes to get there, you’ve got more time to think about it and reason it out. But even the most seasoned alcoholic like me will find his senses muted, his sensibilities non-existent and a burning desire for confrontation, or at least something to grab hold of to stop the Ferris wheel from a-spinning.
I’ll spare you the details of what happened next and just get right to the point. After 2 hours of watching young people stab each other with conversation, rope you into one and suddenly ask you to step outside to smoke about it-I was only getting angrier and angrier. Shit. It’s nobody’s fault. Being angry with the misguided and unkempt and rude-the young-is like expecting to win a bullfight because you’re vegetarian. How’s that for a mixed metaphor? What do you want from me? I was drunk. And after all these years of doing it the hardway my emotional switchboard is all-wet and shorted out. You know what my problem is? Anger. Aho. Been my drug of choice for as long as I can remember, even when I was a straight-edge skinhead. Well I guess I always smoked but anyway, yeah. Fuck it. At least that’s what all systems read when I get shitty. Which I will get. No doubt about it. Alcohol is Jim Trainer’s rainstorm in a bottle. Instant black cloud. Now, get me drunk in a dirty shithole east side with a bunch of folks who don’t know they’re gonna die and it’s a recipe for catastrophe. So anyway. I almost came to fisticuffs with the lesbian who tends bar there and I’m not looking forward to seeing her again. I don’t do well with alpha males. I mean, I get it, you’re a lesbian-but, you’re still a woman, right? The fairer sex? The goddess? I’ve been wearing white tees and jeans longer than you’ve been alive honey. And I wasn’t hitting on your girlfriend. My comments to her were some of the realest conversation I’d had all night. I didn’t realize she was so shithoused but after standing at the end of the bar for 2 hours I shoulda known. When I finally opened my mouth and said what was really on my mind, and in fact it was the only positive sentiment I had come up with all night long and not only that but found the need to communicate it, and then you come up “swoll” as you say, pointing your 20-year-old finger in my face and judge ME? Well. Here’s the thing, honey. Alpha males are a conception of the losers. You know what tough guys do? They throwdown. They don’t talk about it. Would I react that way given a choice today? Probably not.
What would be your answer to that question?
Actually it doesn’t matter because by that point, my friends were thinking that I had an anger problem and I just needed to be dropped off and put to bed and THEY WERE RIGHT. I was up past my bedtime and I’ve been hit too hard, I’ve seen too much. You don’t grow up in Hostile City and reach the age of 40 without more than a few forgone conclusions about your own behavior when alcohol takes the place of sleep, let alone in a dirty ill-lighted room full of 20-somethings after midnight on the East Side.
Fuck it. Sorry doll. I am. I think you should take a look at yourself a little more closely but, that’s me. Live your life. I hope that if we do meet again it’s peaceful and we can reach an understanding. But it won’t be after 10pm. And that goes for the lot of yas. It’s the Year of the Pumpkin and March 1st was Piscean Independence Day. No more bullshit for this old soldier. And no more a whole lot of other shit, too.

The final and lasting danger is this contentment. All my heroes are dead. I’m going dark, while simultaneously going suit-and-tie guy with the career. I may write about my life but that doesn’t mean I have to live it all the time. Or live it down. Or give authenticity to my writer’s voice by drinking like Henry Miller and fighting like Papa. What a fool I have been. And I don’t mind apologizing for it, either. If I did I’d still be a fool. 39 will be a banner year. 2014 is the Year of Jim Trainer. The Year of Jenn Spransy. The Year of Maureen Ferguson and the Year of the Pumpkin. No more deep-cuts in the lust-smothered night, no more rueing of the sunlight and no more bitters for the ingenuine. I’ve rivalled the blues, and trouble cain’t touch this. After all these years I’m like a lion tamer, and my patience-once ever lacking-has found a new fount. I know what I’ve come for. I will have no use for my own heart when I’m dead and gone. I ain’t takin’ it wit me. I’ll be leaving it here, with all of you and hopefully years before I check out.

we may have caved to tempests of lust
and hid, shut out behind walls of resentment
-Ring The Bells

Thank you for joining me in this version of death we call life. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of work to do.
Signing off, this is the end of our broadcast day. This has been Grim Jim’s Last Ride.