Day two! Observing myself respond to these songs to which I do not have as much of an emotional connection is interesting. This song is one that I don’t think I’ve ever listened to before. It’s a lot more abstract than the usual hyper specific situations that the Mountain Goats are so good at portraying. I have a strained relationship to Sigmund, so my skepticism runs very parallel to how I perceive these lyrics.
New year, new projects. Near the end of last year, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats released the annotated lyric book This Year – A Book of Days. Their music has accompanied me for a large part of my life and I thought it would be a fun project to work my way through this book of days (one song for every day of the year) as a daily writing exercise for poetry. So here it goes.
Here’s a poem for you about trying to find the language to talk about the world we live in and if that is even possible or worthwhile. In the face of climate disasters, fascism, surveillance Capitalism, ongoing genocide, and indifference in the imperial core, we cannot lose sight of what we are fighting, and how to fight it.
“There will be no need to fear or hope, only to look for new weapons.” -Postscript on the Societies of Control, Gilles Deleuze
Another poem for y’all. This one is from the start of this year when I was homeless for a few months and couchsurfed at different friends’ houses. There are a few of these where I’m not quite sure into what project they fit. For now I’ll share them with you here.
In a Home Not Yours
If you consider the floorboards
you tread on in a stranger’s home
as yours for just a second
and feel the push of them
on the pads of your feet
the splinters dig themselves
into your callouses like
the pinprick of a unforgotten
memory digs itself out of your
mindgrave.
Unearthed layers of skin
thick ridged scar tissue
with furrowed landscapes
in the lines.