• Half-penny thoughts — 29jul26

    michael raven

    Ever get that whole, “oh, piss on it all” moods?

    No angry so much as just exhausted by trying to live in a world that doesn’t seem to much care for you or what you do? A world that insists you stay in your place at the margins because your clockwork is not in full synchronization with all the other Barbie and Ken influencers that get paid to try to turn us into a commercial product (or, at least, someone who endlessly consumes)?

    Or, maybe just weary at being the only person who believes in holding doors open for another person (regardless of gender), or letting a car merge ahead of you in rush hour traffic (typically to get the bird flipped at you because you slowed down to do so)?

    Or maybe trying to do something other than what a prompt into an AI chatbox can do: music, writing, art, opinion, philosophy, (or, I don’t know, make the sparkliest rhinestone jacket anyone has ever rhinestoned), what have you — only to see people cheer on AI slop or write a “roses are red, violets are…” composition while you are greeted with crickets? And a jacket Liberace would have envied.

    Or where someone says “It’s been a while since we spoke,” acting as if it was more like “last winter”, but was closer to 20 years? And then thinking it will be as if it were last winter indeed, when you know for a near fact that you might not speak for another 10 years after they satisfy their need to say they kept in touch, or discover that you can’t go back after 20 years with the click of twin ruby slippers and chant, “there’s no place like home”.

    You get a choice most of the time: take one pill to buy into the delusion and conform. Or take the other pill and stay beyond the pale.

    Looking at one hand, then the other. Pausing. Contemplating. Navel gazing. Philosophizing…

    Eh, fuck ’em. Toss both pills over the palings, ignore everything and walk the thin, liminal places they ignore. Piss on it all.

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  • bog bodies

    michael raven 

    why phantom chasing
    through time's forest mists --
    an echoed tether stretched taut?

    hush now, and forget
    the voices are will o' wisps
    drawing to thorny bramble 
    tangled in foxfire's decay

    leave those bog bodies to lay
    reunions come soon enough

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  • cautionary tales

    michael raven 

    if my curses frighten
    it is only because
    they are wellearned

    cast a bit of salt
    and hold your poppet
    close and tight tonight

    morning will surely come
    as it must, mustn't it? 
    oh, my lovey love...

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  • limbs and stones

    michael raven 

    limbs and stones and
    sticks and bones and
    snicker snack those
    limbs will crack and
    bones will grind
    between twin stones
    while pricked with sticks
    while you are
    hagstone peering and
    hagstone fearing
    cold iron cold iron
    cold iron cold iron
    cold iron cold iron
    cold iron cold iron
    cold iron cold

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  • Only Just

    michael raven

    There was a dreaming of that narrow living room, and my place directing from the far corner: move stage right, turn down bass, less delay, crouch as if in pain, sing it again…

    You thought some suggestions were madness, but weren’t we all actors in the theatre of the absurd? That’s okay, I would find myself saying again, I pushed too hard and I understand that you cannot see what the madman sees.

    Ignore them when they said that bass can’t sing, can’t chord, just play that thing. And so he did, like he was wont to anyway. I was both superfluous and absolutely necessarily all the same.

    What use was my lingering? Affection, I suppose. Maybe a little spite as well.

    Just like that faded dream.

    Along came a summons. Paired with a wonder: Was it only just a dream?

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  • Wandered wood

    michael raven

    I think you wandered wood with me, back before we were young — your laughter trailing out behind you in scarlet ribbons as I follow, stepping over the old deadfall log, under the lichened overhanging stone. We wore horns, you and I, mine forked fingers and yours living bone, and we tore through the overgrowth, and under ossified bone.

    Hallo, hallo, you said to me, I have become oak. And you stood tall and elder on the hill over the bog. The bone white birch laughed as they swayed under your canopy and the frogs’ voices rose to a terrible storm.

    For my part, I longed to be fox and I curled my burning tail around we for added warmth in the den you offered up for to be my home. I barked as the moon hid her face behind a mask of clouds, content to be held within you.

    And we held things that way until the autumn came and then winterfall, the burning of my tail meant to keep us warm.

    Through cruel months we held.

    It was the waking that broke the spell.

    How I hated that dismal sound. That breaking, shattering our song.

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  • drawn

    michael raven 

    i stone of bone flint smoke
    i acorn of mandrake
    mistletoe and thorn 
    i mantic the needle pine --
    can you ache of sickle moon?
    then draw me down
    into your loam
    down into your song

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  • tired long

    michael raven 

    perhaps it is only
    because i am tired,
    if so
    i have been tired
    for a very long time
    but i have not
    been able to dream
    those kinds of dreams
    in a very long while, or
    i realize those dreams
    were never meant
    for me

    so i carve them away
    with rust-pitted blades
    at the end of a tired
    long day
    watching dreams
    slip down the drain

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  • Hei, Skogkatter — 25jul26

    michael raven

    Well, everyone is settling in just fine. One of my older cats would probably be jealous that I am allowing the new guys into my office, but there is an element of training me as much as these two on that — I had a bad experience with losing electronic gear to investigative gnawing and I have to get the courage to accept that I can train them to not chew such things.

    As promised, here are some photos done on a higher quality camera with some software lighting and color corrections. They were both thoroughly played out when I took these photos earlier and they became comatose shortly thereafter. It was the only way to get the to sit still.

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  • Hei, Skogkatter — 24jul26

    michael raven

    It’s been a long day, but everyone is settling in their new home. Pictures are incoming, I just want to get a handful more to choose from before posting anything,

    Two and a half hours drive, more time than intended or expected getting to know everyone — cats and breeders —Three hours drive back (rush hour) and a full evening of acclimating. First, alone in the basement. Then doing a switcheroo and acclimating alone in the main level of the rambler.

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