Use dzen2 for an external pop-up status bar.

status
    A shell script printing some strings into dzen2. In this case, it
    extracts some openbsd settings.

Config.hs
    , ((modMask,               xK_s     ), spawn "/home/dons/bin/status")

    mod-s pops up a 10 second status bar. mouse button 3 closes it
    explicitly.

dzen2 is available from:
    http://gotmor.googlepages.com/dzen