The Coarse Grind: Part 27: I Woke up with the World on Fire

by Jim Trainer

Go time. Windows broke and buildings on fire. The police nationwide getting exposed as violent thugs who only need sanction or silence from their superiors, chiefs and mayors, governors, senators, reps and the president. On one hand my city council approved of a $430,000 grant for the APD; but on the other I’ve got friends out there with cameras in gas masks and as horrible as it’s been bearing witness I couldn’t be prouder. I’m doing it from home, so you know. I lamented on what a horrible reporter I’ve become, at Going For The Throat on Thursday. It’s true enough but reporting from the inside is a very hard dollar these days. I got into Personal Journalism for reasons of mental health but now all I’ve done to get by has only got me sick. As any of us should be as to what’s happened to our humanity and how rigged and lethal surviving The America has become. I just assumed it was all over a long time ago, called it a day and hung it up in an empty apartment save for a french press and writing desk. I thought I’d ride out the rest of my days conquering a world of my own. It’s nice to have the option, and the privilege to hide out like I do but the truth is I been sick Good Reader and have been since ’16. It may be impossible to stop what’s coming now but it’s become unbearable to sit by and watch and wait either. I might have the privilege but I don’t really have the option, do I? Except to re up and re-devote and anyway go all in for journalism and reportage, take my own advice and do everything I already do but more and with a wider scope. I have no reason not to be out there and with them some 13 blocks from my apartment, other than my health. I’ve had to run to the john since starting this which is enough sharing for now. I’m not making excuses—I am saying explicitly, the state of the world and my country has got me sick. It’s keeping me indoors and from swinging on them and bleeding out there and something has got to change, well, with my health first. I’ll do what I can from in here in the meantime, of course, and that is what I am doing writing you, today, Saturday the 6th of June in this Year of the Rat—2020.

There’s the steady hum of choppers circling overhead but otherwise it’s hot and quiet at the writer’s desk. Sides have been drawn and these worlds should collide. If their response to the film of a man being murdered is “Yeah but . . .” then there is something of equal or more importance than that man’s life to them. He is either not a man, deserves to be murdered or isn’t even murdered if the police are doing it and they should have a right. If they cannot see the police are responding excessively to being confronted on being excessive, by the reams of footage of them beating, kicking, macing, shooting at, clubbing and tackling peaceful reporters and citizens, protesting or not, then there isn’t anything concrete or based in reality that can be offered is there? The proof is glaring, hand-delivered and undeniable. But the proof has not changed their minds. The police neither serve nor protect and White America and Candace Owens continue to give them their blessing and even help brutalize and intimidate fellow citizens and reporters like they did shamefully in my hometown last Monday. It’s a strange turning that the worse it gets and the more outraged I become watching these pigs and listening to their defenders and benefactors, the more I know the cause is just and that this is right.  It could end badly but it’s already bad and so—what the Hell, am I right Good Reader?

I could continue eking out a living as a starving writer and still get mine. I could continue getting 600 words off every week and another 1,200 here every month, self-publish and perform. I could drive my car to work hoping it won’t break down and that my health holds up for another forty years writing poetry and surviving a major depressive disorder as a columnist at Into the Void. I could go after everything I’ve ever gone after and watch as the marginalized get consumed, sidelined, footnoted, lynched, murdered, starved and policed right out of history. I could—except the marginalized have become more and more of us. Living on luck isn’t romantic anymore and for most of us the luck’s about run out. Years ago, I set out to hiding, and I did OK.  But these pigs have too much power, they’re getting away with murder and only sanctioned by the oligarchs and owners. Anyone not rebelling now doesn’t have to but for those of us on the ground we will and very soon. We’ll need water and gas masks and milk of magnesia in a bottle and most importantly we’ll need to bear witness. I could go on like I’ve been but The America has got me sick. See you on the streets motherfucker.

PERSONAL JOURNALISM, PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY.

JIMTRAINER.NET

 

Jim Trainer Author
Jim Trainer’s The Coarse Grind, a column on the creative life, has been published monthly at Into the Void. Jim was curator of Going For The Throat—a weekly publication of cynicism, outrage, correspondence and romance—and publishes one collection of poetry, and sometimes prose, per year through Yellow Lark Press. “KEEP BLEEDING IN THE ANNO FINEM” is his 7th.
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