• No more excuses

    michael raven

    I takes a special kind of arrogance to unleash your child upon the world and expect everyone else to just deal with them when you haven’t bothered to teach them acceptable behaviors because they are “on the spectrum” (often self-diagnosed and over-diagnosed) or “have ADHD” (also frequently self-diagnosed and over-diagnosed).

    I have dealt with children in the world who have clinical evidence of these issues, so I know what the problems can be. And both are overwhelmingly popular excuses for when a kid acts up.

    And yet, somehow, parents of children with these issues manage to teach them how to behave in public and in other people’s home. I suspect it has more to do with the permissiveness at home (or lack of constraints when they are allowed out of the home) than any functional issues with their mental well-being.

    (more…)

    tagged:

    filed under:

    9 comments on No more excuses

  • casting runes — 09nov26

    michael raven

    uruz
    trimming away all selves
to sit covered, quiet and lean,
within the mists of life's
chill november rains

    A rune poem, based on an Elder Futhark rune selected at random.

    Today’s rune is uruz. The rune is named after the now-extinct aurochs, a wild ox and has become associated with standing up to challenges, having both confidence and courage, stubborn tenacity, and boundless strength and health. Uruz is alternately associated with the more raw elements which include rain, primordial potential, and the slag/dross cast away during the making of iron.

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

    tagged:

    , , ,

    filed under:

    No comments on casting runes — 09nov26

  • break delta

    michael raven 

    leaving night to the night
    washing day with the day

    bone dragging dirt for
    all the shouting that
    should be soft whispered
    waiting on venus to break
    delta under dew stained dawn

    tagged:

    filed under:

    No comments on break delta

  • Bones

    michael raven

    I was going to post something today. Not sure what. Not much into posting lately, though. Can’t say why for certain. I just am not up to such things.

    But I intended to and I guess that’s what matters.

    I think if I could do things differently I would really like to fail forward. It’s early yet, so I just might.

    I legit got distracted today.

    First it was the “oh bother” honey locust leaves. If you know, then you know. With the twins doing D&D with their friends, the leaves needed to go before the gremlins arrived.

    Then there was the apple tree branch that couldn’t find it in itself to finish falling off the tree. For a year. So I helped it.

    My eldest works at a second hand store. Someone donated a Roland TD3 electronic drum kit. It’s old school, circa 2000s. But it has a midi in and out. She plugged things in and they seemed to work. Which means I can play synth with the snare if I want to play synth with a snare. Or I can use any samples drum sound I please.

    I got it, nat. Used, it runs $400 and up, $1500 if in mint condition.

    I got it for $43.

    It needed TLC. Massive amounts of TLC. Buckets of TLC. Oil tanker levels.

    It’s mostly there.

    Tomorrow, I’ll hook it up and see if it needs a new brain. And take inventory of what little bits and bobs need to be replaced (mostly drum screws used to assemble it and a drum key absolutely). But the bones are there.

    And that’s all you can expect, I suppose.

    tagged:

    , , ,

    filed under:

    18 comments on Bones

  • half-penny thoughts — 06nov26

    michael raven

    While all of the good people out there are celebrating this or that tribal victory, I’m just paranoid enough that I wonder what fresh hell has been triggered while the celebrations go on.

    I mean, everyone is acting like the rules have not changed from a dozen years ago. The bottom has fallen out of “normal” — whatever that would once meant.

    And I definitely don’t trust the quiet calm and the shifting of levers. Outrage, bellicose rants I expected. Quiet calm means someone is waiting. There is always a calm before the storm.

    Those who know what I mean will know what I mean. It’s not wise to say the obvious part out loud right now.

    All of the tension I was holding inside started leaving me. Until the quiet came.

    Now my muscles have clenched as if granite and I have grown deeply afraid.

    tagged:

    filed under:

    25 comments on half-penny thoughts — 06nov26

  • ghosts

    michael raven

    We all are ghosts.

    Some burn bright in the fog.

    Others burn low.

    Wandering these empty city streets, in the shadow of sleezebag hotel scenes, seeing the way back to the place we came from. A propped door gapes wide open, waiting for a single step to lead to a fall, friable brick walls crumble around.

    This is the sum of all our pasts, shrouded, shattered, torn.

    Gone we now, to fade the gloam.

    photo ©2026 by michael raven

    tagged:

    filed under:

    1 comment on ghosts

  • useless

    michael raven

    I grow ever towards the useless tree.

    Gnarled and twisted, ignored there as carpenters pass the road alongside me. “What is the point of that tree?” they might ask sitting within in my shadow.

    I sigh with the winds. Grow sunwise. Reach outward. Deepen.

    The stones may know my use. As will the wind. Bird will have a place to talk and shit from.

    My words are like leaves in the autumn, cast to the ground and left rot into soil.

    Perhaps mycelium will know what use my leaves might be.

    tagged:

    filed under:

    18 comments on useless

  • casting runes — 04nov26

    michael raven

    ingwaz
    long nights return,
can you keep the
hearth fires burn,
a brand pressed to hand
for lies left to unlearn

char bones brittle &
seek marrow sweet

    A rune poem, based on an Elder Futhark rune selected at random.

    Today’s rune is ingwaz, a rune named after the god Ing or Freyr. It is representative of a channeled energy or transformational process. It is also be seen as the male component of life, and therefore a symbol of sexual passions and the contributed “seed” of life (and, therefore, an aspect of one’s ancestral ørlǫg, or fate/destiny). Some interpretations conceive the rune as a symbol of darkness, solitude or dreaming.

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

    tagged:

    , , ,

    filed under:

    No comments on casting runes — 04nov26

  • Dirges for nightfall

    michael raven

    Stumble drunk, a fool’s path ahead, a fool’s path behind, reality roots grabbing at fumble feet in the steady rains. Falling phantom, fading frail for the light of new dawns rising — what jokes so many I have become, they jest.

    Unable to disagree, I laugh with crows as I grow closer to water ways.

    You see: even pain can amuse with eyes set scattered and unfocused. So, seek fog and sojourn; give to cataract eyes.

    I seek to hitch a ride with sticks riding rain rivulets from forest floor to river as they carry me carry me home.

    Crickets fiddle dirges for nightfall.

    tagged:

    filed under:

    4 comments on Dirges for nightfall

  • in alone

    michael raven

    Wood and wode. Calling.

    Cut wire singing the winter winds. Let the barbs dance the fall behind and wander along the dark tall. Pine, they call them. That is not their name — so say the moss; so say the mould. There, across the fallen brown, barefoot.

    I’m given of stone, both the black and the red, the grey and the scorned. Lake there, standing, the wilder lands below.

    I am pale the bone. Without meat to carry.

    Gone wēstengenga — in shadow, of wode, in alone.

    tagged:

    , , ,

    filed under:

    3 comments on in alone