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.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

“We are not the dreamers of dreams. We are the word become manifest.”

 

…a question of Fuel…

Introjective depression – the autonomous kind, on the other hand, is characterized by intense self-criticism and there is frequently, then, an intense drive for achievement to offset the internalized sense of inferiority and self-scrutiny.  These individuals can be extremely critical of others as well as themselves and can be intensely competitive, often achieving a great deal, but with little sense of satisfaction – no amount of external validation seems to satisfy the harsh and demanding person that they can be in relationship to themselves.
-Karl Stukenberg on Sydney Blatt’s Developmental Theory of Depression

it seems we lose the game,
before we even start to play
–Everything Is Everything

Got my walking papers.  Guess this means the gloves are off.  5 years can feel like a lifetime or it can go by way too fast on shift, on the clock and working for the man.  If it sounds like I’m complaining it’s because that’s my voice, I’m charged with it-fiery and riled and launching these missives through the barrel of a gun.  It’s because the last thing I want to do is tell you a lie or waste your time.  It’s this voice I honed and came to grips with, working for Mr. Fox.  The job gave me a bedtime, gave me the morning, still hated but doable, forced me to eat meals and sleep and watch movies and be lazy.  Above all it taught me what I need to be high functioning, and it’s hardly what I thought it would be.

I’ve published 3 books in the last 5 years, written hundreds of blogs and letters, and played more than 120 gigs, not counting spoken word and storytelling gigs, since I was hired on.  I’m glad to put it this way, and catch a rare reprieve from the inner critic.  The first sentence of this paragraph riddles the inner critic with buckshot, stuffs its mouth with gauze and sends it 6 feet closer to Heaven.  I might not be Henry Rollins but I’m gaining on him.  The pace is fucked.  I’ll never be happy with how long these things take and that’s probably because I’ll never be happy with myself.  I feel like I’m behind before I even wake up in the morning and wonder of the wisdom, sung by Lauryn Hill, in that song from days past.  But there’s so much more to it than that.

Up against it as we are, fucked and doomed to play their game should be enough to motivate, and it does.  The specter of death, terribly advancing on us from the day we’re born should be enough, and it is.  Never being Henry Rollins, never being good enough, has been fine motivation these slipshod and lean years-I know where it’s gotten me but I draw a blank when I think about what’s next.  It’s because you can’t build on a negative.  Anybody who’s ever quit anything knows that not doing it is only the beginning.  You must substitute it with something you are doing.  Quitting smoking, for example.  Of course, I had to first stop doing it.  Once I did the space opened up for something else.  Saying FUCK FUCK FUCK in my head seems to work, until I rupture a blood vessel, but certainly got me through terrible and troubling hours at the IPRC a few weeks ago.  At every step of All in the wind‘s production I was struck with the anxiety of never living my dreams-a great dread that neatly incorporates my fear of death and incredible lack of self esteem into a thorny and torrid cocktail called WHY I WORK ALONE.

Fear of dying will get you out of bed in the morning.  You bet.  A voice in your head telling you you’ll never be anything, never were anything, your parents were right and just because you left your hometown doesn’t mean you got away can also be great motivation, but not in the long run.  I’m 41 and I feel like I am just getting started.  Yogic wisdom tells me that all we are ever doing is getting started, and completing tasks with the quickness of Shiva’s wheeling hands.  The twisted cocktail of death and low self esteem, and the example of great men like meteors burning across the small town sky of my psyche can be potent, virile and all the ingredients needed for a bomb-but I feel like I’m gonna need a fire and for a fire you need fuel.

Work in media suits me.  It’s probably the only kind of work besides performing in which I feel like I am making a change.  I’m struck, sitting here, that it was just over 5 years ago when I decided to do something meaningful with my life and said goodbye to the bars with a few answered ads for Caregivers on craigslist.  In the last 5 years I was able to produce consistently as an artist by going to sleep at a certain time every night, and getting up at the same time every morning.  I had to make enough money to fund the first pressings of All in the wind and September , and have enough spare cash to fly out to the many unpaid (if not thankless) gigs in Philly and Louisiana.  HAAM paid my healthcare premiums but I was only able to get behind the trouble in my mouth with a begrudging loan against an inheritance from my mother, who sent me a check made out to the dentist.   Which is nothing I want to get into now.  It should be noted that I’m sitting on a lengthy backlog of posts, inspired by the prospect of being on RawPaw’s payroll in the Fall of ’14 and a request from Bean Maguire to recount my savage road to sobriety.  The point, now mangled and drug down this winding graph, is I only did it with a whole lot of gumption, even more bitterness and a little bit of luck.

I discovered what I need these last 5 years.  What I want has never been in question, but the crossroads of dread and inspiration at the hated age of 41 has me asking other questions.  Like, how will I hit 20 major cities a year and maintain my bedtime?  How can I possibly create without seeming to be in control of what happens within my own 4 walls?  Simply, maybe I’m not Rollins.  It’s not exactly in the cards to be on the road for over 200 days a year.  Knowing what I need is a start, knowing that it’s fuel is even better, and how I can be at my strongest and even ease the grip of this dream, live a little and breathe is healthy, and necessary.  the area of pause, as Papa put it.

Bukowski, as close to an example and road as I have, lived most of his life at War, but the man knew how to rest, too, and the author’s photos on his later works showcase the hard earned, worn and warm smile of Hank-a man aware of his limitations and therefore resting fully in his own power, if not in love then at peace.

Shrieks from Paradise#26: Pitch to Writing On The Air, KOOP 91.7fm

The Office of Jim Trainer
709 Rio Grande
Austin TX

Host Joe Brundidge&Martha Louise Hunter
Writing On The Air
KOOP Radio 91.7fm
Austin TX

Hello!

I moved to Austin dejected, at the age of 34. The first book I checked out of the Library was Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life, a biography of Charles Bukowski by Howard Sounes. It was profound for me to discover that one of my literary heroes began writing poetry at 35.

I worked a string of mind-numbing jobs. I drank. Slept with women. I devoted myself to the page. It became a necessity. Those mornings coming off graveyard, when I sat at the President XII Tower with a quart of beer, are burned into my memory. Any time I start to feel like a failure, I remember a time when failure was imminent and very real-I’d never be a rockstar or anything besides a temp worker doing graveyard shifts in the live music capital of the world. I remember that I took a step then, a leap really, I wrote and I kept writing.

Since then I have had two volumes of poetry published, the second coinciding with the founding of Yellow Lark Press, my own publishing company. I’ve quit drinking and got my certification to teach Yoga. Austin has been very good to me. I fly to my hometown of Philly twice a year. The readings there are great. Great attendance and a good show. The music shows are amazing. I feel that maybe I should revisit my hopes and dreams, that I still got a shot at this. This rock and roll journalist poet dream brought into view by greats like Bukowski and another Hank, Henry Rollins and the good Doctor Hunter Thompson. I fine tune my health and try to get my head together. I need to get back out on the road.

I would love to discuss September, my new poetry collection, as well as my continuing and well-documented trek down the savage road to becoming a writer and living my dreams. Please let me know if I can provide you with a copy of September or anything else. I love radio, love KOOP and Writing On the Air, and would love to hear from you.

Thank you,
Jim Trainer
Austin TX

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

POET AND SINGER SONGWRITER JIM TRAINER RELEASES “SEPTEMBER”, HIS SECOND FULL LENGTH COLLECTION OF POETRY, AT THE 709 MANSION IN DOWNTOWN AUSTIN

Jim Trainer will perform and read from September at the 709 Mansion in downtown Austin on Friday February 19.  Also featuring Magician Jack Darling and singer-songwriter D.C.Bloom.  The Reverend Jason Woolery will host the evening.

Jim Trainer’s work has appeared in Raw Paw 6: Alien, The Waggle, Philadelphia Stories, Divergent Magazine, Anthology Philly, A Series of Moments and PoetryInk. The release of September, his second full length collection of poetry, coincides with the founding of Yellow Lark Press. Trainer lives in Austin, Texas where he serves as curator of Going For The Throat, a weekly publication of cynicism, outrage, correspondence and romance.
jimtrainer.net

Jack Darling is a magician, actor, writer, comedian and founder of magic troupe Turning Tricks with The Darlings, who were named Frontera Fest’s Best of Fest 2012.  Stirring up trouble on stages all over town is Jack’s specialty, in appearances including The Velveeta Room, The Charlie Hodge Show, Bedpost Confessions and Adriane Shown’s Hell&Back Cabaret.
jackdarlingmagic.com

Singer-songwriter D.C. Bloom has released 3 full length albums and one EP, including his latest, “The Rest Is Commentary”, debuting in 2014.   This former speech writer for the FBI will talk about mortality and open heart surgeries, friendship and the love of a good woman, and the many things he’s learned whilst streaming Ferris Bueller’s Day Off over 800 times.
dcbloom.com

Reverend Jason S. Woolery teaches full time in the College of Education at Texas State University, and divides the rest of his time between acting, songwriting, and writing…always writing. He’s also the father of 2 girls, a 6 year and 6 month old, and a 2 year old boy.  When he’s not fostering the healthy writing habits of his students with the Central Texas Writing Project, he manages to read an awful lot of comic books, which he’d totally blame on the aforementioned kids, but that’s just not true.

about September:
“…tough as crucifixion nails, with a switchblade wit and as sensitive as a Geiger counter.”

Jim Trainer could easily be writing about his scrappy past as a day laborer, a tempestuous old romance or even the muse itself. All appear and disappear throughout September, leaving Trainer in turns marveled and stumped, sitting at his typewriter at the end of summer. He’s hardly mournful. His past and his love and even the muse may have gone but the wonder of Trainer and the poetry in this collection is that he’s able to make an altar of their graves, and find repose in the Autumn of life.

“Every single poem has the teeth of a 20 year old, tempered with the wisdom gleaned from twice that much time living the life.”
–Central Texas Writing Project (CTWP)

 

“September” Austin Release-An Evening of Poetry, Spokenword and Magic

with

Jim Trainer (SWAMP EP/Farewell to Armor, September/Yellow Lark Press)

Jack Darling (Turning Tricks With The Darlings)

D.C. Bloom (The Rest Is Commentary)

and host Reverend Jason S. Woolery (Central Texas Writing Project, Texas State)

Friday February 19, 2016

at the

709 Mansion

709 Rio Grande

Austin TX 78701

8pm

Poster pressed and perfectly bound copies of September available for $15.  Cash only.

CONTACT:

Jim Trainer

512-203-6288

jamesmichaeltrainer@gmail.com

jimtrainer.net

 

 

Stranger Than Fiction

it seems we lose the game before we start to play.
-Lauryn Hill

Christ with the hem and haw.  I fucked the silly minutes staring at a screen, they stacked into a pillar of days and now I’m up against a tower of years.  I fucked the time away and now it’s fucking me.  It’s true that all the strides I’ve taken against depression have leveled the playing field.  There are no more advancing ranks coming to whittle me away and usurp the mission.  But the true enemy is revealed and he is within.  Anxiety.  I feel lucky to uncover the REAL bugger, a fly in the ointment that pulls me back from the brink of living fully.  My shrink warned me.  I was diagnosed with a moderate to high level anxiety disorder.  But I was wrestling with the bull of depression and putting out fires.  I was dealing with such a high frequency of pain that I couldn’t afford a long range solution.  I needed it to stop now.  I needed to stuff the sun back into its dirty hole, drink away the nights and lie in self-loathing throughout the day.  Maintain my identity as a hard-drinking halfmad who couldn’t come through with the strong verse unless I suffered for it.  Thank Christ that’s over with.  But now this can of worms.  Point is I can’t believe how far I’ve come but I’ve still got so much further to go.  Not particularly blue, but stuck here waiting…for?  Anxiety’s a real bitch.  It’s insidious.  Takes your time.  Gives you nothing back but an excuse, some lame rationale for you to fuck off, not make it.  Well I’m over it.  I’m renewed and ready.  Punch a hole in the ceiling and leap out to where the wind blows tall.

Obviously my flow’s been backed on here.  I haven’t exactly posted in a straight line.  There are some things I’ve had to gloss over, and more than persuasive reasons to stop posting altogether.  What can I do but pick it back up and resume where I left off?  August, the terrible summer, dealing with Caitlyn and taking sojourns to Pensacola in a Honda 2 door.  I saw the bitch on Friday, standing by the glass doors like a golem.  And Crazy Rainey was behind the bar when I got there.  I texted Caitlyn, told her I missed her and I couldn’t walk two feet in this town without tripping over a corpse.
“Who’s fault is that?” , she asked and I still don’t know.  Just sucks to spend the day looking at hundred dollar flights to NOLA and bumping into an ex-girlfriend as I’m leaving only to be greeted by an ex when I get there.  We had a good run, a good summer.  It’s almost February and I’ve got 2 poems accepted in the mags and twenty-five copies of  September‘s first run.  She’s gonna have a go at him, see if she can make it in Vegas.  She’s young and in love and she should be.  I can only hope to be here when it all falls down, get a little residual non-comittal in the high rooms, pretend my days aren’t numbered for a hot night or sticky afternoon before I have to get back to work.

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 12/23/15

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 12/23/15
Moonstone Poetry Presents
“September” Philly Release, An Evening of Poetry&Spoken Word

January 7, 2016, Philadelphia PA
Jim Trainer will read from September, his second full-length collection of poetry, at Fergie’s Pub on January 7.  Also featuring Poet Charlie O’Hay and multi-media artist Bevan McShea.

-Charles O’Hay is the recipient of a 1995 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship in poetry. His poems have appeared in over 100 literary publications including Gargoyle, South Carolina Review, Brooklyn Review, West Branch, Mudfish, and New York Quarterly.  The author lives with his wife and daughter in eastern Pennsylvania. Far From Luck and Smoking In Elevators, O’Hay’s full-length collections of poetry are out now through Lucky Bat Books.

-Bevan McShea is an artist, musician, and poet from Philadelphia. His journey into poetry began while living in New York City’s East Village, where his spoken word performances earned him a feature presentation at NuYorican Poets Cafe. Bevan’s style has continued to evolve as he weaves his spiritual reflections, lyrical mysticism, and his love for cities and travel into his poetry. His first collection, “The Contour Lion,”is out now through WragsInk Press.

-Jim Trainer’s work has appeared in Raw Paw 6: Alien, The Waggle, Philadelphia Stories, Divergent Magazine, Anthology Philly, A Series of Moments and PoetryInk. The release of September, his his second full length collection of poetry, coincides with the founding of Yellow Lark Press. Trainer lives in Austin, Texas where he serves as curator of Going For The Throat, a weekly publication of cynicism, outrage, correspondence and romance.

-about September
“…tough as crucifixion nails, with a switchblade wit and as sensitive as a Geiger counter.”

Jim Trainer could easily be writing about his scrappy past as a day laborer, a tempestuous old romance or even the muse itself. All appear and disappear throughout September, leaving Trainer in turns marveled and stumped, sitting at his typewriter at the end of summer. He’s hardly mournful. His past and his love and even the muse may have gone but the wonder of Trainer and the poetry in this collection is that he’s able to make an altar of their graves, and find repose in the Autumn of life.

“Every single poem has the teeth of a 20 year old, tempered with the wisdom gleaned from twice that much time living the life.”
-Jason Woolery, Central Texas Writing Project (CTWP)

September Philly Release, An Evening of Poetry&Spoken Word
with
Jim Trainer (Farewell to Armor, September/Yellow Lark Press)
Bevan McShea (The Contour Lion/WragsInk)
Charlie O’Hay (Far From Luck, Smoking in Elevators/Lucky Bat Books)
Thursday January 7, 2016
at
Fergie’s
Philadelphia, PA
7pm

CONTACT: Jim Trainer: 512-203-6288
jamesmichaeltrainer@gmail.com
###

Willamette

get off the 4 at Division
face as blank as a cueball
I walk away from the sun
and toward the bridge.
prints I made shook out
the subtler hues
but the broad and gaunt
blacks cut down the page
in relief
blue emulsion in the nails
filling my lungs with shag
drinking Ford Food coffee
with cream
before I go back in and
close the building
box up the rest and head
out into Oregon Indian Summer

the West Coast is a lover
with stars in her hair
and a ring around the moon
when it rains

I step out, and into it,
my 40s
and the valley opens its heavy hands of clay
the secrets of the streets just as precious
the night an ally, a black rose, a blade
cleaving me lean the lie of time
free as a ghost, alive as a memory.

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Jim Trainer’s second full-length collection of poetry is out now through Yellow Lark Press. To pre-order 1 of 83 poster pressed and perfectly bound, black on yellow copies,
‘Like’ Yellow Lark Press’ on Facebook and tag the page on a repost of this blog. Thank you very much.

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