• may i comply

    michael raven

    I walked through crowds to get there, the far end of the bookstore only to have one person tie me with metal, the other to tie me with promises of dream — a waterfall crashing laid claim to tether. They argued in pitted knives and sharper stares and with a sigh, I waded against the current flowing out behind them as they wandered the stacks full of shouting and yell.

    I sought to slip away and couldn’t see a path until you, fey and slight, stepped along the twilight edge with feet but bare, a slip of shadow in the light as the two [remember the two?] argued on ahead. Sidestepping, you pressed your cheek to mine and promised an escape in exchange for a kiss in the growing night.

    Foolish perhaps, but may I comply said I and kissed those lips pale and wan. You call that a kiss? asked you with a smile. That’s hardly a kiss worth an exchange on escape.

    I leaned, did I, and leaned full into lips, stealing from you a bit of a sigh. Much better, you exclaimed and rolled in thunder by way of a reply. We fell as the rain leaving gold and falls in the behind as we rivered to loam — which was all too happy to drink us inside.

    Stay, you said and May I comply, said I.

    Until even the stones themselves might die.

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  • evermore

    michael raven 

    'could i, a slip between cracks
    would i find to the narrows'

    'go sleeping on those hills,'
    she suggested, offered, obliged
    the moorlands her finger drew

    'lichened stone to rest a head;
    a blanket of peat to cover you
    and heather to tincture your sleep'

    i did as bid, grew antlers thorned
    as i slumber a top that tor
    i fell betwixt place and moor
    having given self to evermore

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  • call in Storm

    michael raven 

    feral you, on petite, lithe and narrow
    dancing on the edge of betweens
    with stolen kisses on slender promise
    while others argue, deaf to your muse
    bound within the must and dust of
    parchment giants lining every room

    a wink, a smile, and a theft once more
    then,
    we raise twin hands, call in Storm

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  • Forfeit

    michael raven

    Here’s another short bit of fiction based on writing prompts from Jolene Rice. They are the following four items with the only rule being that you cannot kill off your main character

    1. attacked by squirrels
    2. what nobody wants to talk about
    3. mascot for a professional team
    4. animal psychic

    Apologies offered in advance.

    I do lost cats, mostly. Colic in horses if the vet’s backed up. Twice a year somebody’s parrot stops talking and I sit with it for an hour and tell the family what they already know, which is that the parrot wishes they would ask for more than “Polly wants a cracker.” One, in particular, had a secret habit of shouting “Fucking hell!” whenever the house was empty, it told me. Practiced it all day long, most days, by his reckoning.

    (more…)

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  • three o’clock moon

    michael raven 

    she ghosted me through
    with otherside push
    and we danced 
    how we danced 
    all bone and lithe
    under the three o'clock
    moon 

    dead man's bells singing
    as she fell to arms weeping
    laughter staining corners 
    of eyes

    "what will you do? 
    what do you say?"

    "yes, i agree," replied i
    and slept on the mound
    given myself over...

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  • 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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