The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Surviving America 035: Poems for Men

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Get my new book out on Father's Day POEMS FOR MEN!! Thanks for making my dreams come true PBN Family

You're listening to PABN. Your path back to stability. Break time PBM family. One of those gonna be one of those you hear the checky brown city walk you know it's gonna be one of those I'm a little smidgen a little period in today's show it's all I am is a little dot you know how much there's only so much seeds in the ground, rice in the bucket, ammo in the can, kind of talk you can do. What is the course of the life of mortal men on the earth?

Most men eddy about here and there, eat and drink, chatter and love and hate, gather and squander, are raised aloft, are hurled in the dust, striving blindly, achieving nothing. And then they die. Perish. And no one asks who or what they have been more than he asks what waves in the moonlit solitudes mild of the midmost ocean have swelled foamed for a moment and gone it's probably one of the finest

it's probably one of the finest collections of words on the planet to be quite honest with you that from rugby chapel by Matthew Arnold is it's amazing I don't know when the sound bite ends so maybe what we'll do is we'll just ease it out I'm the hooded poet today, okay? What you see before ye in the video, if you're not listening audio, is my new book Poems for Men, which will be out Father's Day, on Father's Day, which is, well, let's say what it is it is. OK, so how can we do this better? Actually, this is this is good, but not great. Is this better? This is probably better. That's pretty good.

I don't know if it'll convey, but then again, we can make it work, right? Yeah, let's go with that. This is probably the Father's Day gift that the fathers don't know they need This is the gift that fathers don't know they need but trust me they need it This is a gift that you can give in Kindle on Father's Day I may even open up the the date a little early so you can order it and get the physical copy in Dad's hands early. A lifelong mission for me, just so you know, right?

Poems for Men is a collection of my own writings and a collection of some of the great Victorian poets of all time who have really basically written about You read those things and you go what the hell am I reading what am I what am I reading when I read Victorian poetry Right, is it all love stories and this and that well, you know the poem I just read rugby chapel is Really just an epic about Matthew Arnold's father dying. And what you wind up reading when you really start getting into these Victorian age poems and poetry at large, you know, is men's issues. There's no real better way to

put it, you know what I mean? It's ancient men's issues that really mirror modern men's issues. It's just we've been conditioned and we've grown up in a world where they are like, you know, it's really not cool to read poetry. Poetry is something to be mocked and laughed at and all those books and all those great writings can be burnt and we can just pretend like they don't exist. So the only people that suffer that are men, right? They're the only people that suffer it. Well, women too, but everyone suffers it. But in a moment like this, in a moment of Really an existential crisis for men It's particularly young men We got to reach back into these old pages. You know what I mean? It's essential

so young men young fathers What what I really look to convey in this book is life is deeper than you think or life is fuller than you think and your problems are This is probably the most important thing that I look to convey in this book and it is that your problems are our problems Because when you're

Feeling depressed and things like that you feel like like, you know, the isolation is strong. And you feel like I've got this collection of problems and it's just not fair and it's crazy and you know, what? How come I have to deal with it? I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to deal with these things and so on. But the reality is, the deeper you dig Into even poetry of the Middle Ages

Shakespearean, right? Shakespeare is a great one for it. You know what I mean? You see in Shakespeare the all The problems that you have today are the problems of the past Right. They just have different names different technologies attributed to them, but at their core, we're all suffering the same ales that we always have been. I don't know if women get it, but I know that men get the importance of the camaraderie of suffering. Right?

Like, in other words, the burden is the burden, and that's what it is to be a man but at the same time the camaraderie of suffering is it can actually be a beautiful thing it's a necessary thing it's a it's it's brotherhood right so in in writing this over the years collecting these poems that I have been reading literally since eighth grade. This is what we've come up with. You know, this is what we've come up with. The head there on the cover is an important piece. That's a very important piece. It's worth talking about because let me let me shrink myself and we'll talk about the cover in the head. Everything is a thing, okay, with me. There's always little things and little... I gathered some of the most sort of important statistics I could

find on men, which are not easy to find, particularly the good ones, And it's sort of an alternating set of circumstances on that cover. Some good, some bad. Suicide, isolation, you know, and then the power of fatherhood, the, you know, what men represent as, you know, 75% of the first responders in the country. So it's kind of an overall look right just a little addition to the cover itself but the centerpiece is this colossal head of a Greek youth. It's literally called the colossal head of a youth and this sculpture is amazing to me because first of all all of its reasoning faculties are missing because it's like Just the phrase colossal head of a youth is hilarious, right because you remember what that's like, right?

When is your head more colossal than when you're a youth particularly like your late teens, right? the colossal head of a youth is a sculpture from Greek Greece second century Looks like this still to this day beautiful And I think the name and the imagery of it is just perfect for what I'm trying to convey in this book you know what I mean like for what I'm trying to convey in this book. You know what I mean? Like, just look at it.

You know what I mean? I think it's perfect. But we go from that sort of colossal head of youth. I remember, like, I just remembered so vividly going from this colossal head of the youth mentality. You know, I know everything. I am gonna do X, Y, and Z. I don't care how irrational it is. I don't care how impossible it is, whatever the situation is.

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it all and no one's gonna get in my way and so on. And this is the way it's gonna go down and I'm getting control of everything and, you know, so on and so forth and Then all the sudden you wind up getting whacked with like Reality, right the colossal head of the youth gets smashed just like this one and you realize oh This is what life really is. Okay, and some people change up strategy some people fall into

Degradation some people fall into addiction whatever it is, you know, whatever it takes Every man's path is his own right? But Yeah that this is Fundamentally, what's a fire wolf? this is fundamentally the My best way to convey what's inside the book. And inside the book, you'll find some of the greatest.

What you'll find, for those of you who have followed me along for a long time, I think probably the greatest gems, if you like my writing, then of course you'll like the poetry. The poetry is good. I mean, I've done it a long time. It should be good. It's not like I'm patting myself on the back saying, I've really done something. It should be good. I've read poetry a long time.

I've written poetry a long time. It shouldn't be garbage. You know what I mean? These are like simple expectations from a writer. But what you'll find in there that I think is really of note are not only the poems that I've read all my life, but I started reading through them and some of them are long, you know what I mean? So what I decided to do was to go in into bold and the sections that mean the most. What I read you from Matthew Arnold's rugby chapel at the beginning of the show

That's in bold. You know what? I mean that section is in bold. There are a lot of things that are in bold Every poem that's not mine has a bold section to tell you kind of like James shows up to this poem. He reads the poem for his enjoyment, but then there's a section in there that Is fundamentally like a guiding light in my life You know what I mean? Like these sections that are bold in in this book of these Victorian Age poets are Their guiding lights, you know, they really there are things that I have used for my most of my life to Gauge direction to navigate as a man to be able to say like am I going in the right direction? Okay, am I what am I being weak about what am I being too strong about all these things?

They're bold in here so I was gonna read you one. We're not gonna do a long and drawn-out poetry show. We're not gonna talk about prepping at all today. It's gonna be a short surviving America. It really is a day to take a break from all the chaos of the world and debut the the new book which will be out Father's Day. So if you're into it, even if you're not into it, I think it's well worth getting into it. You know what I mean? It's well worth exploring this because this is a man's thing. This is a dark part of history

that you have to understand, but like women weren't reading until the 18th century at best, at best. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, en masse. It just wasn't a priority back then. You know what I mean? It wasn't that that's the reality of it. It's dark. It's crazy to wrap your head around. It's insane that you'd have to bring a letter to your husband and be like, what the hell does this say? You know what I mean? But that was that was the situation and the reason I bring that up is to say All through the mid middle ages and I'm not many people were reading period in the Middle Ages But all through most of the Victorian age The consumers of poetry and literature were men

So it boggles my mind Right that we wind up in a situation where here we are in this day and age where literature, new books, I feel like men read like newish books with with new age ideas and you know that kind of stuff. Modern political books, modern you know lifestyle books and stuff like that. But but literature and poetry That was a man's game for a long long time, you know So I'm always blown away by why why we decided let's shoo that away, right? Let's shoo that away out of our life. Oh No, that's not you know what? I mean? That's not masculine enough. And what I found over, you know, half a quarter of a lifetime-ish, something like that, reading

these poems and buying expanded poetry collections on some of the authors in this book, is that if we do exist in an isolated world for men, and really it's an isolated world for most people, but in this sense we're talking about men's issues, if we exist in a world of isolated men, what these poems do is I think they really fundamentally remind you like what you're thinking is what I'm thinking. What you're dealing with is what I'm dealing with. More importantly than that, it's what men throughout history have dealt with and struggled

with. That's the best I can do. You know what I mean? It's deliver that sort of sense of community, and not community, but legacy even. Like your depression is a legacy, you're welcome. You know what I mean? Your struggle with women, a legacy.

Right? We've been at it for so long. We've been doing the same things for so long that there's no reason to think right that i don't know jor-ade and i'm a vampire today jor-ade um jor-ade says is it just me or does james look sick now you might be right you might be right you might actually be telling the future because i do have a sick kid upstairs What it is is the lighting plus the hood?

Plus no Sun outside because it's actually gloomy rainy day Is turned to me vampiric in appearance? Yeah, that's really what it is. But that's why I'm staying small the lighting's all Fooked up, so it is what it is. But I'm going to read you one. And then we'll probably call it the day. It's going to be a short day here today, all right? But I thought I would pull.

So I was going to pull something completely different. And then I said, if we're talking about Father's Day release, which is June 15, there will be a pre-order for the ebook and all that kind of stuff, probably next week, beginning next week. But if we're going to talk about Father's Day release, I pulled one that was more touchy feely. My favorites are the hyper touchy feely nature driven sort of poems. But I said if we are going to do a poem out of the book written by me today, Poems for Men, we probably should do one that's a little more manly and masculine, right, in its sense.

And you know, there's a sacrificial kind of element to fatherhood and even manhood. That's really like, you know, it's bordering, like kind of whiny. Do you know what I mean? It's bordering almost whiny, right? Like you get on social media and you see things that are like, there's let's legitimacy to the struggles of men. Look, I don't think anybody's got it harder than women.

That's my personal view. I really think that being a woman, like like if you look at the full duration of life with all the things that women have to put up with, deal with, I do think it's probably a much harder go. But again, I'm a dude. I have to write from this perspective. And I know that men are struggling. I know that the statistics on suicide and things like that,

particularly in young men, are unbelievable. On the cover of the book there, suicide is the second leading cause of death amongst men 15 to 24. Second leading cause of death. It's wild. So anyway, I thought we'd do something that sort of lends itself to, I don't know, to the opposite of that. Right?

It's a poem called A Father's Rewards. Short, easy, nothing too dynamic, crazy, right? But for many years, it's been a question of mine, like, you know, what are the true rewards of being a man in the modern age? What are the real, real, not monetary, you know what I mean? Not like, I made a bunch of money this week. What are the real real not monetary you know what I mean not like I made a bunch of money this week oh fuck I got rewards. Like what are the real rewards and and these are all pulled from my life. These are all moments of my life where I went like I made the right choices. Do you know what I mean? So a father's rewards

Wood crackling in the hearth heat radiating into the home a Child of eight wrapped snug in his bed December winds can only peek through the window Her head on your chest, her eyes meeting yours. A pantry of options, slices of warm meat, good cheese on a plate. A peaceful words, her dreams taking shape, her safety. A boy becoming a man, a boy becoming himself, seeing the best pieces of you and her within him. A father's rewards So they're not all like that

But that one I think resonates the most with men I think that's or at least in what we're talking about in today's podcast You know what? I mean because I know a lot of people out there kind of Suffering struggling people out there kind of suffering, struggling through what just normal life. You know what I mean? And well, you know, it's not without challenge. It's crazy out here. It's absolutely great.

I mean, we are at like, I was watching hockey last night with my wife and the sports betting apps commercials, just like one after another every break every and I just started thinking to myself like how could there is there there's never been a time of temptation like now right never for men probably for women either but I'm just saying from a men's point of view there's never been a time of temptation like now right you? You've got the drugs everywhere, booze everywhere, sex everywhere, bedding and gambling everywhere. Like it's, it's crazy. And every day you wake up that that's riding on your back, you know, that's part of the game now. And you just

have to pretend like it's normal. Oh, this is fine. This is all normal. This is just like it was all those years ago, right? So there are some standout things. But the guiding principles, you know, sort of what makes life great and all the what we're really fighting for, what we battle through all that temptation for and avoid all that for, fighting for what we battle through all that temptation for and avoid all that for largely hasn't changed, you know? So I'm going to give you the sort of the breakdown of the book and, uh, then we'll call it a day. So the book itself opens up with an entire section on manhood poems built

around manhood, then we roll into an entire section on manhood, poems built around manhood. Then we roll into an entire section on fatherhood, poems built on this concept. And like I said, some of them are mine, some of them aren't. Actually, in fatherhood, I think they are all mine. Yeah, fatherhood was a... There's some bangers in fatherhood. I'll tell you that even a Halloween poem of all things called 13 Hard times or good and evil

Might be no, it's not my favorite section. It's the realest section This is a section that kind of expands outside of the manhood fatherhood thing you know what I mean, it gets kind of bigger like there's a poem called a pricey date and that's a real good one big section titled women right big section titled women of course you can't have man without woman and then the final section is called seeing and experiencing life that's probably my favorite Or at least there's some of my favorites in there. The Tonic of the Wilderness is the subtitle. A lot of stuff about nature, a lot of stuff about the world outside of our four walls.

An old, old, old poem I used to read online called A Run Through Tired Woods is in there. This is the book, guys guys this is what it is, you know I do think it is the Father's Day gift that fathers don't realize they need and I think they can settle down into some of these great writings from poets past and Maybe even fall in love with some of my own work Because it's all from this standpoint. You know what? I mean, it's all from the standpoint of some Dude some dad, you know what I mean?

but I thought I'd give you a 20-minute break. What up Jake the snake? Sorry. I haven't been paying much attention to chat I thought I'd give you guys a 20-minute break been paying much attention to chat. I thought I'd give you guys a 20 minute break from Putin and Trump and war and Israel and Gaza and who's mad at Israel now UK Canada Qatar Qatar what what you know the economy and tariffs and this and that like this is what I've used poetry for in my life always Always as you know what saturday afternoon Maybe I worked around the house all saturday morning made breakfast got lunch done. Whatever the situation is, right yard work

whatever kind of shit and It's a brilliant idea firewolf forage brilliant idea I should definitely do that fire wolf forge in chat ask you gonna do an audiobook yourself yeah I have to now that you said it I have to that's an essential hmm as if I didn't have enough crammed in right before a vacation which also happens on Father's Day but we'll make it happen we can make it happen maybe I don't know that's a lot 50 pages of Poetry, I think I have thus far. I

Don't know what it is actually And I'm talking not even layout like not laid out just Yeah, anyhow, that would be kind of fun though. That might have to come later That might have to be released on July 4th Something like that something fun. I only release books on fun dates now This is my if I'm in control the release date if I'm gonna commit to self publishing and all that I'm only gonna release them on fun dates my birthday kids bird, whatever fuck whatever it is You know what? I mean have fun life is short. You. You will die. No doubt about it, right?

So while you're here, you better enjoy it. You better have fun. Poems for Men is not gonna make you New York Times bestseller list. You know what I mean? It's not one of those things. I don't even know if a guy like me can get on the New York Times bestseller list. I know some can, right? Some guys are big gigantic audiences. They can't be denied even though they like sneer at them anyway. Some guys are big gigantic audiences. They can't be denied even though they like sneer at him anyway um But anyhow, I thought I'd give you a break enjoy the day Remember that's a lot more to it than just negative suck headlines And likes and follows and subscribes and all this and that and the other thing

So That's it for me folks surviving America episode 35 Time flies when you're having fun. That's all I can tell you Patriot power hours on last night phenomenal show. I'm gonna be digging into some new stuff over these next few days I'm gonna try to get it on to both platforms You know what one one will will put these items into the inside the cache for the podcast. That's a good idea. But I think there's some stuff that warrants some members reviews also, some family gear reviews. I've got stuff piling up. There's

a lot going on. It's all good news for you guys all fundamentally good news for you guys. Okay, so All that said support our great sponsors lima tango survival all your survival kit needs the prepper's medical handbook Everybody another book for dad. Let me get that a cool book the preppers medical handbook on Amazon, too and Of course food storage pack fresh USA comm the best in the mylar making biz made in America the you know, it's There they're the place that I use at a place that you should use you should be doing DIY food storage it's the best value for the money and We got a great guest coming up on the cooking side of things too. You probably know her once I get a

verification I'll let you know more but Yeah, it's good man. The proper broadcasting network is It's a beautiful little thing. I'll tell you the truth Talk to you guys soon. All right. I hope you enjoyed the show and you the truth. Talk to you guys soon, alright? I hope you enjoyed the show and Father's Day gift, okay? Poems for Men, Spread the Word, Tell the World, I'll get your link soon, probably next week the pre-order will be up. If you want the cover image, I can get you that too, if you want to spread the word for me that way, it all helps because, well, I don't know. Yeah, I guess it all helps for other reasons. This book being written and created with this beautiful cover truly is all I need.

It tickles my creative fancy enough it wouldn't even matter if I didn't sell a copy, you know what I mean? Because it's just all out there, it exists, I'll hold it in my hand and say oh my god look at this culmination of Life over Well since like I said eighth grade this this is a project that began in eighth grade And that's crazy It's only really come to life because of you guys

Otherwise, it would just be a personal little thing and I wouldn't have the gumption to put it together But because I have an audience people who care Otherwise, it would just be a personal little thing and I wouldn't have the gumption to put it together But because I have an audience people who care um Yeah, you make my dreams come true, all right Thank you. Talk to you guys soon See you