From the First Row of a Poetry Reading

“No doubt about it. If you had stayed on the path you were on when we met, you would most certainly be dead by now.”

The girl had a point. My downward spiral during the Never Ending Summer of Evil Kanevil veered dangerously close to the other side of life. So much so that I eventually had to pack up my world entire into a Ryder van, cross St.George’s bridge and ride on down to the slower-lower on New Year’s Eve 2007. There were too many close calls, even for someone born in the Year of the Rabbit, like I was. Too many blank nights and too much Jersey off-roading in the Sentra, too many sad and angry walks of shame home from the Republican in the wee hours with nothing but vengeance on my mind. Philly will only let you push your luck so far before you’re standing on the corner of Passyunk East with a bike lock and a broken nose, no cash and a 20 bag of baking soda.
We were having dinner at Raphael’s when she brought it up. Natalie and me. I remember this part of our conversation well, but little else. The night devolved into too many pale ales at Rembrandt’s and the next day I was on a plane to Houston, so I don’t remember much else, except for our drunken writer’s pact. Aho, it was over the aforementioned too-many pale ales that me and Natalie made our vow. We would publish the blogs we had been holding on to. We would outsmart our shared and most hated writer’s block with a promise to each other to post. This is her end of the deal. Here’s mine.
The reading went off without a hitch and the promotions too. The promotional machinery assembled by me and the publicist cranked out the good stuff in fine gear. I penned a 1,600 word interview with Brother Don Bajema for Philadelphia Stories and attendance at the reading was strong. The film of the reading, done by the good folks at Keystone Pictures, looks great. We’re in the final stages of editing now. But more on all that later…here is great writer Natalie Kelly’s version of events on December 11, 2013.

Farewell to Armor Reviewed by Butch Hamaday

Farewell to Armor exposes an earned beauty, present in all things, transcending muted and lost love, isolation, unflinching introspection and long days put in at pay and wage jobs. The 56 poems in the collection leave the theatrics behind. Shedding artifice and armor, Trainer takes the reader with him down bad roads of loneliness and points to a promised land of solitude. The celebration of survival is a strong theme throughout Farewell to Armor, but the collection also finds Trainer quietly lamenting what his survival has cost him.
Through a series of heartbreak and a string of mind-numbing day jobs, Trainer finds that in shielding his heart from the world he has hidden it from himself. “Don’t ever stop fighting,” he implores, perhaps suggesting that his real struggle is within, that only by revealing himself to the world can he reclaim his heart.

-Butch Hamaday, Norwester

Jim Trainer will read  from his latest work at a very special night of poetry and spoken word, presented by the Moonstone Arts Center, with Don Bajema and Maleka Fruean, at the Brandywine Workshop 728 S. Broad Street Philadelphia, PA 19146 on Wednesday December 11 at 7pm.  For more information check out the events page on Facebook.