1. |
Matty's Coming Home
02:09
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Day five; still got granola
Strategic Yogurt Reserves fill the cooler up
Matty’s coming home today
And man I hope he’s alright
I shudder to think what an airport would look like now, right?
Been on page 65 of this book for days
Spinning lazy from no task, to no task in a haze
Hard to get a thing done when there’s nothing to do
Hard to kick back and relax when you keep up with the news
It’s day five, I’ve still got some granola
As my downstairs neighbors cough up a lung below me
They’ve been leaving the house every few hours like it’s alright
They trashed their census forms with the envelope still sealed tight
What can I say, it’s a selfish world
But perhaps a little less so now
I hope soon my cynicism feels played out
(But it won’t)
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2. |
New Year! Pt. 2
03:25
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On New Year's Day, the sickness took hold my fragile body
Some time away from my routines // a little acetone to break apart the bonds of me
So I’m a pile of inflamed mucus membrane
Lymph nodes tender
Sinus headache
It’s been four days and I haven’t accomplished goddamn anything
Meanwhile on the world stage:
The Empire slaps a stamp on the End of Days
Licks the seal and sends it away
With a press report saying “Drone Assassination’s Okay!”
False pretense for to unbalance in favor of NATO the regional powers
Intervention’s back, full throttle, man
Thanks Obama for the Libyan model
What does it look like to live against Empire?
What are the metrics of efficacy?
‘Cause there are people who’ve been at it for decades
And here we are on the threshold of war again
State Department talking heads yell in every American kitchen
Hateful xenophobic dipshits hold hands tight
WIth imperialist warhawks, left and right
And the self-righteous liberals show their true colors
Approving state terror
But questioning the plan for what’s coming
So here I am, on the couch again
Elderberry effervescents
Final Fantasy VII [the PS1 original, not the remake]
Trying to go to bed by 6:45pm
For the energy to kick it with Milner for the last time
Tomorrow we dine!
Breakfast at Steve’s, 8:30am so we beat the line
As thousands of people pour into the streets
I’ll be nursing my sick ass to health for a week
And hopefully when I can breathe again
I can do my little part
To halt
The storm
That’s coming
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3. |
The Social Wage
03:24
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What’s the opposite of a Lobster Bucket?
I want to hold my friends up high
I want cooperation in the workplace
I want a trade union membership drive
Keep your politics of the vanguard
Don’t want to waste another minute of my life
Trying to salvage historical figures
Flex my library to justify taking lives
So tired at the end of the work day
I want to fall asleep at nine
But we gotta build a durable movement
To demand for all a dignified life
Ethnonationalists and their apologists
And their paranoid Cult of the Gun
Will bleed the institutions of the Social Wage
‘Til their militarism has won
In the Philippines in 1899 we learned that
Empire is a management strategy
Foreclosing all possibility of constructing a Just Society
(Just keep defense contractors hiring!)
Make the myopic many identify with the heroic nation personified
Boots tight on the necks of the global south
Made of sanctions or food aid or shrapnel now
So I care about healthcare costs
But our solutions go nowhere unless we are
Ending the fucking war in Yemen
Prioritizing refugee resettlement
Making sure Pittsburgh don’t feel like Bremen in goddamn 1937
The maintenance of preponderant power on a global scale
Political interference everywhere, everywhere
Denying malevolence from the seat of the Empire
And scaling Catastrophe up to The Entire
So I don’t have a spare word to waste on
Mayor Pete style Song-and-Dance-Nothing-Talk
And I don’t want to waste my time
With your concupiscent, flag-waving, delirious imperial pride
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4. |
||||
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My conspiracy theory neighbors
Have a lot of opinions
About Bitcoin, Guns and The Government
That are not coherent
But
My conspiracy theory neighbors
Are kind to me
When I leave my house
And pass them on the porch
Or ask them to close the back door when they’re smoking
Once, my neighbors asked me for a ride to Braintree
A favor repaid with a $100 bottle of cologne that they gave me
I don’t use cologne and it was really suspicious
But they always say hi and they’re okay to live with
Except for the yelling
And the loud music
And the fact that there are absolutely more than two of them living there
And there’s supposed to only be two of them living there
(But what do I care?)
My conspiracy theory neighbors
Probably think I’m a weirdo
Probably don’t understand me
Probably find me confusing
Probably wouldn’t find my politics legible
Probably wouldn’t find my news sources credible
Probably wouldn’t be impressed by my blathering
Probably wouldn’t change their minds about anything
And I hope that’s not forever (x3)
Problem is I kind of feel like I am better (x3)
And I hope that’s not forever (x3)
Cause I definitely think that I’m some kind of genius (yuck)
And that’s a barrier between us
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5. |
1973
02:04
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6. |
New Song 9
01:19
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Rules of thumb: Listen to your Marxist friends
Listen to people who’ve spent time in prisons, yeah
Some academics can talk a good line
When they extrapolate theory from the material of lived lives
Experience is epistemic!
And don’t you forget it.
I don’t take my leads from folks who do nothing
No, I don’t take my leads from folks with nothing better to do with their time
Than to look back on their lives
And defend every misstep
We’re wasting our time
“All Power To The People!”
Is a good line
All domination of each other
Is a bad time
All capitulation to coercion by the state
Of vulnerable populations
Is a violent mistake!
All right?
Make me a bet--
In a year we’ll have hunkered down like
We’ll still be Here
Make it worth my while to be different in a time
When I can barely make it through a day without a lie like
“Climate Crisis is gonna wait for me to buy a house or retire or live a Normal Life!” (yeah, right…)
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7. |
30
03:55
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What’s for breakfast?
Same thing, same thing
Homemade home fries
Eggs and coffee
Loss of confidence
Loss of clarity
A settled feeling, dulling curiosity
If Self is the things you do
I’m a thoughtlessly wiled away afternoon
‘Til it’s already time to switch to evening lights
Another day, dollar, dunk tank dip, but it’s alright
I guess you can’t feel bitter
If the world doesn’t give you what you want
When you’re not sure what you want
Can’t play-act a sideline sitter
In a world where you don’t know what you want
Are goals bad?
Maybe it’s time to give up the lists
Maybe it’s time to stop all this shit
Or maybe it’s time to get Serious
Early career successes:
Red sky in the morn’
Wait for the storm or call off the dogs
Never learned to be resilient
I can’t take it when I’m not being babied by the one in charge
If Self is the things you are
I’m exhausted and fine and a wreck and a superstar
But maybe all we ever need in life
Is for a couple other people to believe that we’re alright
Because you can’t feel bitter
If the world doesn’t give you what you want
When you’ve got Forever Want
Can’t play-act a sideline sitter
In a world where you’ll never have enough
Are goals bad?
Maybe it’s time to give up the lists
Maybe it’s time to stop all this shit
Or maybe it’s time to get Serious
Waiting around to be something easy
Some marketing dweeb who loves everything mid-century
Another image-conscious angel of the helping professions
A restless musician repeating boring confessions
Jealous of the ones who stuck the landing
Or leaned particularly hard into their branding
But all of this deflection comes to little if it’s not paired
With a basic understanding that I do it ‘cause I’m scared of failure
Man…
I’ve been doing some things for twelve years (like this shit)
And I’ve been doing some things for eight years (like teaching)
And I’ve been doing some things for four years (like flossing)
And some things I’ve been crushing much longer (parallel parking)
Hey man,
If Self is the things you leave
I’m a rambling voicemail message about nothing
If Self is the things you’ve been
I’m wrong
If Self is what others see
Man, I’m not supposed to care too much about Me, but
Maybe Self is like Everything
But in a Monist sense though, so it’s valid philosophically
Thirty came quickly
The endless future; a horizon approaching
Friends’ babies are growing
And my prospects for professional advancement are diminishing
But if Self is contingent then
I’m at least as important as You are to Me, my friend
And we’re doing some cool shit still, I guess
So what’s for breakfast?
Same thing, same thing
You fried the eggs up and
I made the coffee
We’ve got a lot of time
To sip here
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8. |
Lawn Game
01:48
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So it’s like this—
One day you wake up and realize
It’s too late to have regrets about your life
So you pick a door and walk through
And you don’t even ask about the others
Man, you’ve got too much shit to take care of in this room
Paint the walls
A color that makes you smile
A backsplash of intricate tile
A headboard
And a bedframe
And a coat rack
And a lawn game
So there—
That’s what it looks like now
And now you’ve just got to ride that shit out
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9. |
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For sale on Zillow
Right in the price range
Walk-in tub in the bathroom
Who did this belong to?
When they sold Grandmom’s house
I’ll bet the buyer said
“This kitchen’s gotta go—
It looks so old.”
Sold.
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The Michael Character Boston, Massachusetts
It's political music, whatever. Based in Boston, MA. Absolutely willing to drive very far to play for you and five of your vaguely alternative friends in your combination kitchen/laundry room. Hit me up. I'm fully serious.
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