• Dares

    michael raven

    I feel I am crossing liminal spaces of late — between dusk and shadow, slipping between night and day.

    I’m not sure if it is the hours, or maybe it is these days. But there is a persistent tug of flux, a drawing in and release. I grow disinterested in the machinations of the embrace of doing things the same way day by day. It seems much more interesting to drift and fade, and it is a mistake of mine to expect my object to all subjects to feel the same.

    Snip. Snip. Snip. A painfully slow arcade of cutting the linen laid bare before me, watching with wry, droll amusement at times as supporting threads give way to unraveled snapping instead of waiting for Atropos to come by and give a release clean.

    Into the mists, then. Who dares follow? Who dares dream?

    Fox cries razor through white, quickly filled in. Crows announce the edges of dark with cacophonic chatter as they discuss the next and the next and the—

    Lost, who dares remain unfound?

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  • Voyager | PJ Harvey

    michael raven

    New music by Miss Polly Jean was released yesterday. Different than her “usual”, which just means different.

    last note, last sign
    Neptune, Triton
    fading signal
    choose light...choose love

    Voyager, look back
    at a pale-blue dot
    all we don't know
    a flake of snow

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  • Bookstore blues

    michael raven

    Henry, he walked all jazzy like he was ceiling tall. But he was only French and overqualified to sell books at the bookstore for minimum wage, as he liked to remind us regularly in his French accent. ONree, he would correct anyone looking at his name badge. Why can’t you American’s get it right?

    But maybe it was just some of us. Not all Americans. I couldn’t say. Besides, for all of his self-imagined height, he was five-foot-nine. Just like me. I suppose he would have said it was 175 centimeters, which is not wrong. Just very Henry.

    And while his primary goal while working was to avoid working, he did like his jazz and got mortally offended when you told him, okay, it is Saturday evening and it is time to play something other than jazz because, well playing jazz doesn’t sell Top-40 CDs, playing Top-40 CDs gets people to buy Top-40 CDs.

    (more…)

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  • Campfire Sessions — 23jun26

    michael raven

    Campfire
    Photo by Ville Palmu on Unsplash

    Sometime I don’t feel very raven.

    You know how it is. Sometime you just feel a little more crow, is all. People think you have to feel raven all of the time, but piss on that. Occasionally I feel more crow.

    More than usual, lately, to the point that I wonder if I am maybe crow pretending to be raven. Or, possibly… a sideways shift…

    I might be fox, but three of them woke me up with their screaming last night under my window, so I’m not so certain I am not fox. Seems mighty rude to wake someone up when they are sleeping just to tell them they are fox. Yet — I feel more fox because of it and that’s because they’ve made my full yard their hunting grounds of late. Not that I can complain, except when they wake me up to say, “Hey, fox brother, come hunt with us after midnight. A juicy mouse for you if you come outside.” Except in blood-curdling scream in the voice of an 8-year old. And not in English.

    Crow is laughing at that this afternoon. “Goodness, kid. They got you to thinking they were just some neighborhood younglings when they woke you up. Best. Joke. Ever.”

    I flipped them off. More giggle fits.

    ”You know, I was meant to be working on being Stone. A spider told me so.”

    ”Yeah. About that. Fox, you see, had other plans.”

    ”Obviously.”

    “Well, sweet dreams. I hope the fox screams don’t keep you up tonight.”

    And they flew off, laughing.

    ”Well maybe I don’t feel very crow either,” I shout out at them. “Maybe I feel more fox than Raven, Stone OR Crow. How does THAT make you feel?”

    ”Sounds sensible to me,” muttered Mr. Waddles, the resident possum as he waddles away. “Fox has always got something up their sleeve. I’m not sure you can ignore them. Even if you try.”

    And then he crawled under the shed and munched grubs.

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  • healshake

    michael raven 

    healshake the bone
    rattled with seed, me
    emptyhead & healshake
    blackfeather, boreal wind

    my stone, my stone, my stone

    dive ice of waters blue
    deep into the through
    healshake these bones
    rattle them with seed, me

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  • at stand

    michael raven 

    i am drawn to water
    to stone rising above
    my winter rimes here

    gone to crow to feather
    myself in shimmer & kohl
    a turn to the north
    to the water to flow

    this slipping at moor winds
    could you ever hear?

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  • Kissing the tortoise shell

    michael raven

    This is not a review of the Echo and the Bunnymen concert from their last show on their 2026 US tour in Minneapolis. I enjoyed myself. They played enough of their old songs to satisfy me, although I would have liked a few deeper tracks from Ocean Rain. It is no secret at all that was my favorite of their albums and the last one that I enjoyed 100%. Crocodiles was excellent, as was Porcupine, but I merely liked those albums “a lot”, whereas Ocean Rain was a near spiritual experience for me the first time I listened.

    The performance aside (old guys playing old music well enough to justify the cost of admission), it was the people watching that intrigued me while waiting for the lads to come onstage.

    (more…)

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  • shake shake shake

    michael raven

    I’m trying new things, not all of them visible. Some, right now anyway, are exclusive to me. They are not secrets, just not established stuff.

    The story I’m playing around with, for example. That’s a bit of early chaos theory applied to writing. As I tried to explain in my comment is that the sentence structure is like driving in rush hour traffic and, at the very last second, swerving to take the exit. From four lanes over. Swerve fiction, if it has a name. It might have teeth. Probably not, but it had an interesting set of premises when it was brainstormed out and I like interesting challenges.

    I’m also getting back to physical media instead of digital writing. I’m playing around with mixing freeform writing with doodles. I’m no artist, but I’m trying to shake up the old thinking processes by messing with around with the mechanisms to break out of deeply ingrained habits.

    Other things as well. I need to shock that monkey mind.

    What do you do to shake things up?

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  • slip

    michael raven 

    i sometimes walk a line
    to slip crow or slip stone
    and shed names calling

    hollow temptations
    i slip to fall, burnt bright
    above the wishing well

    cutting up the pieces
    to scatter to the wind
    my lips press a final—

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  • Echo and the Bunnymen

    michael raven

    First time seeing them live in about 40 years tonight. Hope it is mind blowing as the first time I saw them.

    It should be interesting, either way.

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