MEMO FROM THE POETRY DESK: Didn't Get Laid, Got In A Fight
Personal Journalist Announces New Weekly
If the right eye offends thee then you must pluck it out…
—Tom Waits
Writing is the loneliest profession but there’s a bad side. With little guarantee of pay I’m left to answering craigslist ads and working liquor promos but The Greatest Job In The World and life of Kings would be nothing without you. I was up by 2AM yesterday, and couldn’t shake my end-of-the-world blues so I cued up The Who’s A Quick One While He’s Away. At 5 minutes 45 Keith Moon ‘sploded out the hifi, tumbled out into the living room and rumbled through the streets of Clarksville, drowning out the drone of the firehouse next door and lighting up the boutique rooms of mansions on Enfield and further west. Yes. Rock and roll. S’ok, when your landlord doesn’t like you and anyway can’t bother to spray for roaches after a 30% raise in rent, ask you what’ve I got to lose?
Bonne Chance À Nous Ce Soir, sent out last Friday, received the most reads of Piss Pool‘s entire campaign, and much to my chagrin as I’d been strictly adhering to a weekly posting schedule of Mondays at 10:31AM CT exactly. Then I got sick, and my schedule got blown. I’d waited 2 weeks to hear back from the day gig until I finally got word from HQ to keep waiting with a $250 voucher to Drip City Vapes. I got back to washing dogs and session work and lived off the Good Witch of Tanglewood’s chicken for 7 days until I decided to keep my own hours. I quit smoking weed and volleyed a major-depressive episode with radio spots and bright hangs with Julian Isaac Root. And I wrote you then, hours after the cold midnight, like I am writing you now, and was suddenly struck with the rueful wisdom that if I didn’t have you I might as well be scrawling on a cave wall. Nice work if you can find it but are you sure Ayn Rand done it this way?
I wrapped the piece and got another coffee, sadly reflecting that I picked the wrong week to quit smoking weed. I titled the piece Good Morning Beautiful as a throwback to those nightly-posts on Myspace in the sanguine and coke-riddled days of the last decade, but settled on Countdown To Extinction. It's a working title but whaddya want from me? I’ve got 2 books to release until I’ve fulfilled my end of our pact of 10 books in 10 years, and just outside of 2 years to do it if I intend to call it a day like my Irish-American father did. Not to worry, it’s been real and it’s been fun but it hasn’t been real fun and just like my old man work is the most important thing to me. It blows out romance or TV and anyway keeps me busy while the wolf is at the door. Between trouble and the blues, how will we ever survive?
Just know I always loved you. I’m sorry it didn’t work out between us but you’ll be hearing from me on Fridays, too. You wanna keep me in Bustelo and CoffeeCake (18mg) then sign up at any level of support. You’ll be entreated to essays like this one, on forever wars and growing old, alcoholism and gainful employment, romance and the other kind—but crucially I’ll know you’re reading me. Social media ought to be charging us soon which means Your Writer will be good as dead—lest you sign up, sign on, contribute and make your presence known.
Glad to know ye but better know ye are here. I’m gonna get you at the door anyway, with monthly events and appearances that assure our meeting someday, some time out in the wild and anyway avant la fin du monde. We’ll live to see stranger things than our own mortality in the Anthropocene.
You are forgiven,
TRAINER
AUSTIN TX
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