• Hei, Skogkatter — 02aug26

    michael raven

    Hei, Skogkatter — 02aug26

    It’s been just over a week since our two new family members joined us and I really wish I could say that we were all a big old blended family of felines but — as the fates would often have it — it was not meant to be. Not yet anyway.

    While the current trend of kitten introduction is to slow-walk it over a period of weeks, I had honestly planned for a weekend (plus or minus a few days), let a little fur fly and paws catch air as the older cats got used to the idea of having new housemates. The band-aid method. I assume the sooner they go through the motions, the better and the quicker everyone will acclimate.

    But… well… there was a slight issue with that.

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  • the hanging man

    michael raven 

    it is passing strange
    how a turn of word
    tugs at puppet strings
    whereas an elegant mask
    might only hang

    it is always the
    whispered words
    with the most draw
    as we dance at
    the edge of a tether
    aching for more

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  • mortal tethers

    michael raven 

    tonight, i give over
    surrender to loam & peat
    let mycelium feed while
    slumbering between
    bile & bog, briar & weed
    betwixt both thorn & stone

    slipping deeper,
    even mortal tethers
    may break

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  • nothings

    michael raven 

    everything given
    under foxfire & green
    to bramble gate thorns
    into the ghost of me
    leaving behind Nothing
    no longer even dream

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  • 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.

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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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