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  • weve gone to stone

    24Apr26 | 19.56 CDT
    © 2026

    michael raven

    c: 260424.1956
    weve gone to stone
    to stone we go to
    sit with trees all
    alone, weve gone
    to ground & gone
    to home under the,
    under the oak alone

    blind weve gone
    and also the blind to
    see the winter winds
    to dance the moon
    under her skins
    pale the endless
    song.

    tagged:

    poetry, rewilding

    filed under:

    poetry
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  • Episode 4: Elsewhen, Part 3

    24Apr26 | 12.00 CDT
    © 2026

    michael raven

    c: 260424.1200

    Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

    Somewhere in the dark, what was about to happen — simply began.

    All attentions shifted. Hers. The crow’s. The women’s voices, too, surrendered to sudden silence while the air in the cave grew both damp and heavy, weighing her down with a new emerging wrongness rising from within the darkness. The space turned in on itself and the fresh scent of water turned to sour and stagnation.

    It did not arrive. It was simply present, the way the water had been present before she found it — already there, belonging to the space, waiting for her perception to catch up with what the space already knew. Across the spring. Near it. The bioluminescence on the cave walls throwing its faint cerulean into the dark between them, and in that dark, a familiar shape pouring forth from shadow.

    (more…)

    tagged:

    ash & thorn, episodic fiction, gothic western, serialized fiction, vengeance my heart, web novel, weird west

    filed under:

    Ash & Thorn — Vengeance, My Heart, serial fiction
    3 comments on Episode 4: Elsewhen, Part 3

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    Episode 4: Elsewhen, Part 3

  • wood-mad

    23Apr26 | 19.52 CDT
    © 2026

    michael raven

    c: 260423.1952
    become the wode
    be as sunspecked stone
    a pond as the frozen
    while antlers tied
    at ribbons red...

    i let turnings go
    hearts carve to spades
    wergeld flows to bone
    our bloodstained hands
    kiss press of oak

    there is only knowing
    when those everythings
    have been known

    tagged:

    betwixt and between, poetry, rewilding

    filed under:

    poetry
    2 comments on wood-mad

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  • we call

    23Apr26 | 10.27 CDT
    © 2026

    michael raven

    c: 260423.1027
    it is of voluntary derangement
    in the where of eyes suture eyes
    and mouth fed on dirt from
    under ash, bone and oak

    dare you the wood at night?

    past the broken homes and
    vast underhalls gone to echo
    where have their songs gone?

    you only have to sit in
    shadow to know and

    we call it other

    tagged:

    betwixt and between, poetry, rewilding

    filed under:

    poetry
    2 comments on we call

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  • casting runes — 23apr26

    23Apr26 | 07.39 CDT
    © 2026

    michael raven

    c: 260423.0739
    nauthiz
    some bonds lack ropes
    no chains nor jailer keys
    a razor's liminal edge
    betwixt a world and me

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

    Today’s rune is nauthiz, which has a core meaning of “need”. Alternative translations have been “hardship” or “constraint”. Among other interpretations, nauthiz is seen as a indicative of a transition or transformation, a period of learning or strengthening of resilience, lacking, change, and impermanence — inclusive of other related concepts.

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

    tagged:

    nauthiz, poetry, rewilding, rune

    filed under:

    poetry
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  • Angine de Poitrine | Umm?

    22Apr26 | 18.55 CDT
    © 2026

    michael raven

    c: 260422.1855

    Okay, YouTube has been at me for weeks to watch these guys (gals?), so I finally caved and watched the video.

    These folks are off the deep end of the spectrum. Not the most experimental I’ve ever heard for music, because it is still recognizable a rock-adjacent in sound. They do some neat tricks with loops and effects on top of a microtonal guitar/bass combo with polyrhythm drums. The whole, adjusting knobs on the effects with bare feet is an interesting trick.

    And they’ve cultivated their “weird vibe” very precisely between the phallic masks and eye-melting pattern clash. They also, apparently, have their own language for interviews for which their manager “translates”.

    Looks fun. And they appear talented (from what I can hear, but there is an emphasis on disruption and subversion, so I might not be hearing it quite right).

    But.

    For me, it started to sound clever but samey after a point. More gimmick than hook, if you know what I mean.

    I jumped to a song above, but feel free to start and the beginning. Give me your read on this. Is microtonal (other notes than the Western chromatic scale) the future? Do you think they’ll be around in three years? Or just a flash in the pan?

    Seriously, though, they make Zappa sound relatively grounded. Makes me long for Diamanda Galás and her Steak Knives experimental (opera-trained) vocal/screaming routine, honestly. Wait. Maybe don’t listen to that link. It may give you reason to judge me.

    Meh.

    Curious if you think they are good, bad or if you’re indifferent to the whole thing. Drop me a note.

    tagged:

    what did I just hear?, what did I just see?

    filed under:

    listening
    8 comments on Angine de Poitrine | Umm?

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  • Campfire Sessions — 22apr26

    22Apr26 | 13.30 CDT
    © 2026

    michael raven

    c: 260422.1330
    Campfire
    Photo by Ville Palmu on Unsplash

    We haven’t sat for a while, them and I.

    At first, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I would go to the usual place, sit down and wait for the fire to light itself. It remained stubbornly unlit. Without fire to draw them, nothing was drawn. I might have taken it upon myself to light the flames but, in the strange rules of the place when it comes to starting fires, I am entirely ignorant.

    (more…)

    tagged:

    betwixt and between, campfire sessions, campfires, rewilding

    filed under:

    writing
    2 comments on Campfire Sessions — 22apr26

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  • Episode 4: Elsewhen, Part 2

    22Apr26 | 12.00 CDT
    © 2026

    michael raven

    c: 260422.1200

    Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

    The dark within was unsullied by Dusk. It stood apart from the twilight standing without.

    The understanding was immediate and absolute. It came before her eyes drank in the faint bioluminescence rising from the stone walls beyond the entrance, casting a faint, ghostly cerulean into a dark that drank in light with a fullness. It came before the smell of water betrayed its location within the hollow space between the stone. The burden that rested on her neck since the shootout at the camp three or five days before, was simply absent. Not lifted. Gone — the yoke had never existed, never had been slung across her neck, never pushed her body to the ground.

    It was in stillness that she stood just within the threshold dividing the entrance between the gloaming and this new, fresh darkness, letting the feeling wash over her in waves.

    She crossed over in fullness.

    (more…)

    tagged:

    ash & thorn, episodic fiction, gothic western, serialized fiction, vengeance my heart, web novel, weird west

    filed under:

    Ash & Thorn — Vengeance, My Heart, serial fiction
    5 comments on Episode 4: Elsewhen, Part 2

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  • casting runes — 21apr25

    21Apr26 | 11.39 CDT
    © 2026

    michael raven

    c: 260421.1139
    mannaz
    with eyes returning
    to campfire's flickering
    old grey relations welcome
    back without performance
    to sit without a word to say

    sharp skull the tap
    wake up wake up
    he croaks today

    A poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.

    Today’s rune is mannaz, a rune that translates to “man” in the sense of “humankind”. The rune is associated with family and the social order, and in trusting the intuitive process or seeing clearly — both from within and from without. Mannaz influences relationships of all kinds, including those of a romantic nature, and encourages compassion, for oneself as well as for others.

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

    tagged:

    mannaz, poetry, rewilding, rune

    filed under:

    poetry
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  • stones become doors

    21Apr26 | 10.15 CDT
    © 2026

    michael raven

    c: 260421.1015
    strange days when a fiction
    confirms a reality and
    stones become doors in
    the heather on the heath
    and ravens give to crows
    on the edge of bedsheets

    there is not-song in head
    and not-fire between
    and everything's burning
    at the crux of the seams

    blink becomes stutter
    we give fat, we give bone
    we skin give to we

    tagged:

    betwixt and between, poetry, rewilding

    filed under:

    poetry
    4 comments on stones become doors

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