Stream the episode now on SoundCloud or your favorite podcast player, and read along with the author.
Hi there, welcome to season 3 of Raconteuse Radio! This is your host, Guilliean Pacheco, checking in from a very, very cold Las Vegas. I wanted to introduce season 3 as something special. I’m calling the season: “Murder Ballads for the Dearly Departed,” and the season is dedicated to my father, Daniel Pacheco, who passed away in April 2022, and also to my family, and the exploration of both. I appreciate your support and I hope you enjoy the next episode that I have for you and for the rest of the season. Thank you so much for your support!
1. War is my origin story
War brought you to my doorstep
And that's where the story begins
Civil War battlefields
Conflicts in Southeast Asian countries
Wars in Middle Eastern oil fields
Every footfall brought you here
This understanding, a dance
Between the sheets
Of two people, in love
Perhaps for different reasons
Tall tales born horizontally
Nonsensical truth carved and hewn
Into a sad sack of genetic material
Love is always push and pull
Should you stay or should I go?
You're stuck with me forever
The Dance, you learn as you go
You live, you break down
You learn, you soldier on
May these wars continue
So that you can grow
Into the hero of your own story.
2. Realism is the least real thing
My daddy's legacy
Begins in the wilds
Of Michigan.
The Civil War saber
Sits pretty on the mantle
Gleaming, vibrating with history
The stories it could tell
His grandfather, Merchant Marine
Good work if you can get it
Do they know it's the Roaring Twenties?
He fell for Emilia, unmarried
Their daughter, my grandma, unmarried
Locked in the convent
Little did they know
Eldest born in forty-three
My daddy's legacy is his family
The one he built from the ground up
His legacy seeps through the words
That sputter to life
With a swipe of my broken pen
A horse with no name
Casting shadows without shame.
3. The Coldest Summer Ever
If my daddy's dying
Does that mean I am too?
Without seeing the sun rise
Over the ocean blue?
Do I have it in me
To question the lies
That the birds sing
Every morning
The sweet nothings
that hop In my ear
during lockdown
With a side of French fries
A fragmented heart
Shuts another door
Saying intention's unclear
The deluge of bloodied tears
Speaks volumes of coincidental tears.
Leave a Reply