• 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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  • U and I, eww

    michael raven

    Thank you, whomever at WordPress rolled back the new Reader UI for browsers that debuted yesterday.

    While I can see some of the benefits, I don’t think that UI was tested ahead of time. The fonts were far too small, the whitespace far too big and it made readability a bit of an eyestrain. And dropping (without warning) likes and comments to the bottom of the tab made me have to hunt too hard for those features. Again, far too much whitespace, forcing the user to hunt for the standard features we grew accustomed to using.

    Other elements were welcome additions — if you could find them (read time is helpful, for instance). And it did not work on mobile browsers. At all. Panels overlapped, preventing any useability whatsoever.

    But this fixation across all tech with UI that uses ever-decreasing font sizes and is otherwise either too spacious or to crowded… Eww.

    So thank you WP team for rolling that back. There are good ideas in that, but it was poorly implemented. My eyes are much happier.

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  • Notice of Discrepancy II

    michael raven

    The chime promised fresh coffee. Reconstituted, and pleased to be.

    The grog was hair-of-the-dog strong — except there’d been no dog, and no drink. Just the memories, still settling, the way a hangover settles. This wasn’t a rub-your-eyes morning. Ellison sat on the edge of the bed and let the coffee burn his throat into submission anyway, as if the body’s problem were anywhere near the throat.

    He put on yesterday’s clothes, scratched his ribs, and tried to shake the memories loose. Both the scheduled and the recurring.

    The chime dropped all cheer and turned to chide. Ellison checked his watch. Half past fourteen. Late on the skip again, and his boss was past words now, moving to the file itself.

    He made a gesture for the chime’s eye. Late, and logged as such. It had decided his fate beforehand.

    Feedback, then office chatter, the voice punching through it.

    you’re late ell. again. and it looks like you haven’t done your paperwork on the jacobs write-off.

    i came in late from the skip. i’ll get to it.

    get to it now, accounting is already breathing down my neck about their assets. and…

    The and hung there, unfinished, and Ellison winced into the gap. Then the voice came back.

    it looks like recovery went tits up as well. can you remind me what i’m paying you for, ell? burning assets and dropped recoveries? that in your job profile? or did they change it?

    Ellison did not reply. It was not on-plan.

    get to that paperwork. london office asks about their asset at sixteen, and i need something to tell them. gimme a preview in case they call sooner.

    Ellison shrugged for the eye. It was logged. Brook did not care about performative gestures, but it was better to have a shrug on file. The chime rewarded Ellison with a happy ding.

    he was an idiot.

    Brook waited until Ellison could not wait anymore.

    he skipped out of shadow. the target took offense. he died for it.

    no one checked for an eye?

    Ellison thought about it. And then made it a second time.

    we scanned. nil. oldtown, though. there were windows.

    It was Brook’s turn to pause.

    fuckin’ limeys. all cock, empty cranium. gimme that report, stat.

    A last screech of feedback, and the line died. Ellison sat with a punch-list gone long and that dog barking in his head.

    So he did the only sensible thing: He lit up.

    It was logged.

    Note: These “Notice of Discrepancy” titled posts are an attempt to step well outside my comfort zone when it comes to narrative framing. I have strict rules that I’ve established for myself that I follow on these pieces, although it may often seem scattershot. I apologize in advance if something doesn’t work as intended. It is still an interesting experiment, regardless of the ultimate success.

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  • Notice of Discrepancy I

    michael raven

    He lit a cigarette. The small fire agreed to live for a while, the way everything here did — provisionally, and watching the door. Flick ash and raindrop. A siren screamed the alley red and blue. He stepped back into the dark and joined his cigarette in its watching.

    Some doors wait. This one had been threshold patient all night, and he found he could match it — let the hours stand open beside him, going nowhere, the way the rain kept not quite falling.

    goddammit.

    Jacobs back already, the sandwich arriving before he did.

    nothing?

    Ellison let the cigarette do his talking for him in drag and exhale.

    new mexico…

    Mouth full to bursting, the syllables shoving past it.

    the desert is supposed to be dry, innit?

    arizona.

    howzat?

    arizona. flagstaff. as in: not desert.

    Deli-paper crinkle as it skittered to the corner. A belch announcing that dinner was done.

    thought arizona was all desert. you yanks canna make up your mind.

    Ellison let the wet pavement and cigarette answer in hiss.

    Jacobs opened his mouth to say something. No cards left.

    He did, however, sport a new hole in his forehead.

    The door had wearied of staying shut. Someone stepped through, did the necessary thing, and the alley went back to being an alley.

    I’m trying out something new, uncertain if I will continue adding to it. We’ll have to see if it still feels good when I get around to writing more.

    Assuming I do.

    There is a lot of very carefully designed structure in this piece and I hope that it not only holds, but lands right as well. I’m purposefully writing in an uncomfortable style for me to see what happens when I do. The framing rules I used are easy to hit “fail-states” with — underdone, they seem weak; played too freely and they seem excessive in short order.

    Thanks for reading.

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