Here's the Podcast on Apple
or
Spotify so you all can listen!
I speak about Addiction, Writing, Joe the Salamander and the book due in 2023, The Best Of Timothy Gager.
The host, Chris Joseph is a very inspirational dude, who has dodged death, with his "illogical" non-wester medicine cancer treatment. I've had the pleasure to have been published by Chris in the Epiphanies Project and interviewed him myself for the Dire Literary Series.
As defined by the Oxford Dictionay:
Essential-absolutely necessary, extremely important.
Here is a draft of the Table of Contents - which should be close to the end product.
GROUNDED, New poems, 2022
Runway
Purple Robe
Although
I Never Called You Beautiful
Beach Rose
Defining Unnatural,
Non-Scientific Thunder Bolts
Reversing the Rain
Window
at the Oceanic Hotel
Shared
Bathroom at the Oceanic Hotel
The
Holy Orchestrated
365,000 Poems Written About You
A Sonnet First Seen at Walnut
Street Café February 2019
The
People of Star Island
Walk
Until The Legs Go Numb
Denouement
Addictions
At
the Farm in Elkton, Maryland In Memory of Jones Purcell
Dog
On Zoom
COVID
Fears
Deductions
and Ends
The Suicidiversary: Years and A
Day Late
Opposite
Magnetic Poles
Dinner
Party
Streaming
While Napping
Global
Conditions
Seasonal
Fire Effect thoughts on The Bootleg Fire
Thoughts
over the Deluge
Science
Political
Climate
Occupy Forever for Blaine
Hebbel
What
Dante Learned
Introduction
to a Séance at Turning Tables: Delphine
de Girardin for Victor Hugo
The Great Appearing Act
Not
Perfect Does Not Make Practice
Mutualism
In The Obituary of Paul Felopulos
The
Haunted Mile
Vaccination
Extravaganza
It
Happens in Spring
The
Attenuation of Wide Ranges of Thoughts
Somnambulism
Nighthawks
There
Once Was a Harvest
Ode to a Tree Cut Down
Can
I Fly You a Drink? a found poem from an
internet article with internet comments
How
to Be a Werewolf
Family
Silence for Sixty-Two Years
Frosting
On a Barren Field
Inlet
Sunset
We
Are the Ones Left on the Beach For
Natalie
God and You
Tuumaq
Christmas 2019
Never Heard at Home
patents held by charles h. gager and charles
fowler
Father’s
Day/Funeral
Sleep,
My Dear Poets
Jones’
Song
Living
with Rabbits
I
am Alone (Watching Bad Movies during the Pandemic)
after the movie Fathers and Daughters
(Warning Spoiler Alert)
Things I May Say
SECRETS AND COMPARTMENTS, New flash fictions, 2019-2023
Nor’easter
The
Kicker Loses the Game
Late
Night TV Ad, Summer 2020
Rabbit Care
She
Does (Doesn’t) Exist.
The
Training of Staff
It’s
a New Year
After Getting High
Can
Anybody Do Anything?
Encasements,
Compartments, Boxes
The
Resigned Life of a Condo Trustee
The
Drowning Girl
Beautiful Prayers
The
New Coach
The
Tinkerer
The
Strength of a Single Lion (A Political Jaunt)
Airport 20/20
Annual
Cookout-(sung to a nursery rhythm)
The First Four Steps
Walking up a Cliff
Kill the Baby Makers
The
Pillows of Society
Times Square During Lunch Hour
Predators
and Prey
Perfect
Crimes from an Imperfect Man
Ambien
Beatle
The Cost of Love
How
to Stop Birds from Flying Into Windows
Hey,
Benni
I
Saw Hell
The
Off-Season
How
You Met Your Husband
Up
and Atom
Iconic
Folks Talking by a Fire
Working on a Marriage
Why I am Not a Penguin
Her
Hotel
Beloved
Do Us Part
Poke
Becoming Ice
The Retired Poet Bought a Falafel
Truck
Suggestions
for My Ashes
from THE SAME CORNER OF THE BAR
Sitting
drunk on a cooler in my backyard
Arlington
Catholic
A
Do-Dah-Day
The
same corner of the Bar
What
were you doing when the Towers Fell?
Insect
My Heart
the Car
from THIS IS WHERE YOU GO WHEN
YOU ARE GONE
Rabbit Maranville
I've Drunk The Holidays
My Uncle Coming Back from Vietnam with
a Stump
Disowned by most of The Family
Waking up around noon
reply to someone who said my poems are all sad
your personal ground zero for Franz Wright’s writer’s block
from
THESE
POEMS ARE NOT PINK CLOUDS
Hit the road now Jack
Once Upon an Ocean Town
On the way home from Maine,
1970
Summer Job, Concord, Ma.
Somewhere South
my dear god, we are all so small
Night in New York City
The
Things I’d Say
from TREATING A SICK ANIMAL
Mangiare per vivere e non vivere per
mangiare
Hidden Hoboken
Your
Vasectomy Journal
Punchless
Jimmy Collins
The Top of Grace’s Upper Lip
Just
Dessert
The Short Marriage of a Bride and Groom
ESSAY
Experience, Strength,
and Hope
from
ANTI-SOCIAL
NETWORK
When It is Still Winter
at eleven-fifty-nine
ESSAY
A Bit On The Bombing
from
THE SHUTTING DOOR
Walking Out of the Woods
I have mostly Nightmares
The
Shutting Door
Missteps
You Knew Me Before
The
poems at my House
Meeting with Father Vincent
When you live by Yourself
from
CHIEF JAY STRONGBOW IS REAL
Throw Certainty Out in the Air
like a Lasso Reflections on Alton Sterling
Didn’t
see it Before I Stepped in it
Prayer By a Stream
Sobriety
How We Exist
This is where I Am (when
here)
A
Poem For Forever
Unfit
Father
Cross Country Family Vacation
When I Think of my Childhood
Hot Biscuits, Country Ham at The
Loveless Motel
There’s A Fly in My Soup
NOVEL EXCERT from THE THURSDAY APPOINTMENTS OF BILL
SLOAN
Inside the Mind of
Brad’s Therapist
NOVEL
EXCERPT from GRAND SLAMS: A COMING OF EGGS STORY
Kayak
Kenny
from
EVERYDAY
THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT ELEPHANTS
Jack
How Penguins Break
What Are The Reasons They Hang On?
I Look At You Through Glass and Water
Full Moon
If We Don’t Think, We Will Sleep
Everyday There is so Much About
Elephants
from SPREADING
LIKE WILDFLOWERS
Bromley’s
Funeral Home
The
Miracles of Recovery
Still
There Are Boxes
Faith
At
a Cookout for Poets
How
to Unring a Bell
from 2020 POEMS
21
Lines / 2020 / Covid 19
Guesses From a Stable Genius
Kleptoparasitic
Unformed
Relief
reply
to someone who said you should write a poem about her
When
You Have This Connection
Long
Distance Thinking
Ballet
of Surrender
ESSAY
It Sucks Getting Old
NOVEL
EXCERPT from JOE THE SALAMANDER
Adrian’s
Prologue
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| These are my actual chips. They can be yours |
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| This one not mine, but it's pretty fancy |
I also had some medical shit, so there are changes around that too. I'm tired both physically and mentally --- I'm fucking lonely a lot of the time.
Would I like these things to be different? Of course, as they all cycled up and had an effect, but even though it was a challenging year for my sobriety, I made it. Yes, 2022 was an asshole! Relief was hard to find, especially after years of finding it in unhealthy ways.
So, woe is me?
I didn't take a drink or a drug over any of it, nor do I want to because I now have a good life--something I didn't have on November 6, 2010. I have a roof over my head, I have food, I wrote a book in the last year, Joe the Salamander, which I'm proud of--and may have another life in another streaming form. My kids are healthy, my son got engaged, and I took a few trips too. I have a therapist. I have a sponsor. blah-dy-blah-dy-blah
I have a lot of gratitude for my life. I hope the next year is better, but if it's not, I have 365 days until I post about 13 years, because there is no guarantee that I can go even one day if I decide that my solution to stress, anxiety, a dick of a year can be found in some Johnny Walker Black.
Here is my progression (in metaphor) of my drinking:
It all used to work--even when I was still using the way I did in college years later. (Sign Post: If you are 10-15 years out of college and are still drinking the same way or worse, it might indicate something).
1) It's still working: I go out wearing a coat, bringing my keys and letting myself back in.
2) I think it's still working: I go out sometimes wearing a coat, sometimes losing my keys, and have to bother people to open the door at the end of the night.
3) It's not working and I don't give a fuck about anyone else: I go out never wearing a coat, and now it's freezing, always losing my keys and banging on the door, sometimes for a long time and people are tired of letting me in.
4) It's not working and I cannot stop doing it while not giving a fuck about anything: I go out, no coat and it's below freezing, no keys and people are no longer there at the house to let me in. I find it to be ok sleeping outside on the porch, after all, I deserve it.
Twelve years ago, on November 6, I decided against the next number. Number 5
5.) Hospitalization from frostbite or death by hypothermia. No coat, no keys, no people, and this strange feeling of warmth...all I have to do is close my eyes.
Finally, I had Hope. There is some hope for anyone who could use some There are people out there, many needing help. Some of them I care about, and I've been saving a seat right next to me. Besides saving seats, my people all are willing to help. I heard a story from a friend who knew someone struggling and they couldn't believe I would be willing to point them in the right direction. But it's not only me. There are thousands of us out there willing to help, so if things are getting out of control, please find someone you know who knows what to do---and if you don't know what to do, reach out to me, I'm available unconditionally.
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| \This one is not me, but note the faint resemblance |
