• casting runes — 27feb26

    michael raven

    tiwaz
    an old warrior wearies
    of spear burdens
    trudging up northern fells
    antlers left under overhangs
    call to rest a spell

    A poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.

    Today’s rune is tiwaz, which is named after the Norse god Týr, and the second weekday (Tuesday) is named for the god. According to Norse myth, Týr offers his right hand to the wolf Fenrir, who bites it off when he realizes the gods have used the offering to distract the wolf while they bind him. The rune is typically considered symbolic of honor, loyalty and justice, as well as of sacrifice. It may be representative of discipline and faith. Some interpretations have associated the rune with the North Star.

    Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.

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  • winter hearts

    michael raven

    ‘the father saved the mountain yonder,

    i don’t suppose he was the one of yours,’

    she said smiling before she froze

    and turned an oily shade of rainbow

    opalescent in her age of old

    below they craved the market haunt

    but through skins twilight kissed i called

    down unto a sounding stained wood

    thrust out instead of shore

    this pain king rides swimming horse

    dragging out to the dust of rain

    in shattered wrists and waves’ refrain

    underground calling all winter hearts

    to strike in the below again

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  • still, a singing

    michael raven 

    i escher etch labyrinthine dreams
    & crawl my cobwebbed understair
    thumping feet on ceilings,
    pounding fists in sand
    empty-thoughted screaming
    along the promenade while
    their long gonnes fire rounds around
    bloodsoaked murder in every sound

    hammer march, hammer march
    one two and two through
    swinging scarlet soaks the gloom

    and here i am, blind corner sitting
    still singing of a time once free

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  • casting runes — 25feb26

    michael raven

    raido
    i left wide trails behind
    the straight and the narrow
    each rock felt under wheel
    jolting the wain side to side
    with joined pine creaking while
    riding down to the last ford
    from the up high

    A poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.

    Today’s rune is raido, which has been translated as “ride” and the implied “journey”. This may be spatial and literal in practice (a physical journey), or it may be more figurative (an inner/shamanic journey, i.e., útiseta). The rune is associated with cyclic motion and the movement of the sun. Some consider the journey represented by raido to be that of returning.

    Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.

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  • Me no likey the block likey

    michael raven

    Some days, you can’t win for the losing.

    In trying something out for WordPress on a test site, I saw a new block that I thought would solve a frustration of mine about the .org version of WordPress, where you have to force folks to click on the post title to “like” a post when they visit outside of Reader. I finally had a block to add to my front page for likes (on those short poems).

    Which is fantastic. Except… It doesn’t appear to be registering likes in the notifications on either of the versions of Reader (web or Jetpack App), which is where I keep track of such things. Which means the functionality is broken and I need to rework the site design to get back that functionality to where it should be.

    TARNATION!

    This is a consistent problem with the Jetpack plugin for WordPress. They push out a feature without really testing it prior to launch and it breaks things. Last year, it was the commenting system until an update. Other times, features don’t do what they are functionally designed to do. Reader regularly gets web updates that are headscratchers at best, and breaks Reader until someone can hotpatch it at worst.

    I love the folks at WordPress, but they really need to do a better job of testing their incremental updates before something goes live.

    Back to your regularly scheduled programming. I just needed a quick vent.

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