Author: michael raven

  • feast

    paper tiger encouragements
    feast on the ghosts of we
    entangled in our entitlements
    tethered by our broken dreams

  • down that back hall

    woman posing with music keyboard
    Photo by Vladislav Nahorny on Pexels.com
    we are all piano fingers
    now, tickling ivory hours
    slipping to oblivion
    down that back hall

    dust mote whispers ears
    in the golden autumn sun
    twining fingers under shadow
    down that back hall

    the notes faded ivory
    lace dusted yellowed
    photo moments slip away
    down that back hall

  • Half-penny thoughts | 29aug25

    Takes one to know one, absolutely… But I’ve grown weary of the cynic.

    It’s easy to be a cynic. It takes almost no effort at all to be one. Decide that the world is shit and there’s simply nothing that can be done about the matter. People who have a more positive spin on things are Dreamers and Sheeple. Those “in on the secret” walk into an echo chamber of like-minded cynics and we see a devil hiding under every bed. And, in that echo chamber, we tell each other that the devils are in cahoots and they are out to get us. To make matters worse, those devils are also between the sheets and every bed has multiple sheets and, just because those sheeple can’t see them doesn’t mean the devils aren’t at work making the world even more shit than it was to begin with. In secret. Then we remind each other: if you are not with us, you must be against us and you have therefore self-identified as The Enemy.

    What claptrap.

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  • For better or worse

    standing stones
    Photo by Suzanne Rushton on Unsplash

    The old notes I found have gotten my thoughts pointing back in the direction of those kinds of studies again. This is probably obvious to some of you. While it can be difficult to find reliable, scholarly texts on the matter, I find that I learn something new almost every time I read the few texts out there that are supported by scholarship. And there is always those untapped journal articles out there that are less about meeting sales quotas than they are about serious scholarship.

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  • at the center

    Photo by Alberto Arroyo on Unsplash
    in the cauldron season
    reconciling liminal me
    standing bíle and center
    both eyes to boiling sea

    born of raven and apple
    kin to the stone
    thorn prick'd and blooded
    given to bone

    riding the crests,
    sailing to home

  • coming home

    Photo by Harald Pliessnig on Unsplash
    waves — lands — skies
    center standing, i ash
    holding to wights
    & to wraiths
    & to the very small

    a headful of pastfall
    hearth gathering
    in the myrk & gloam
    waiting for their coming
    home

  • boundless

    Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
    let us go beyond naming and
    enter the spirit of the matter—
    tear down the fences that divide

    this bone is not bone, it is bone
    this flesh is not flesh, it is flesh
    this stone stands beyond stone

    wash away the scarlet boundaries
    cast by the plough, hewn by scythe
    listen to the small known by "night"

  • fabric

    Photo by Tengis Galamez on Unsplash
    needlethreading the dream
    fragile in porcelain pale
    stitching her fabric close

    shift skies on the flint
    slip steel on white
    a twist, a turn, on veil

    shadow scrim moving thin
    shadow unmine, carry
    beyond this windtorn coil

  • tossing a rune — 27aug25

    gebo
    "we sacrificed all the things we love
    to get more of nothing"
    cry the echoes of november in the empty
    of this autumn head of mine—
    gates dissolve by way of drifting snow
    revealing the only thing that's real

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

    Today’s rune is gebo, which has a core meaning of “gift”. This relates to all forms of reciprocity, transaction, generosity, hospitality and sacrifice (in the sense of giving up something).

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

  • Sorry, but…

    Well, I knew it was likely to happen.

    I can’t decide if I should be surprised that it finally did happen or that it took so long for it to happen.

    But I got my first email from a fan who thinks I am an adult film director from the late 90s/00s who also went by “Michael Raven”. For the record, I was using the pen name well before he was directing films in the, ahem, genre.

    They wanted to know where they could get a legit digital copy of a specific film. And a song title. Did this fan check to see if I was who he thought I was? Absolutely not. But that did not stop the fan from asking all the same.

    What added to the surreal nature is that apparently it was a movie (very) loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland.

    For the record, there is another author who goes by the name and writes nonfiction and has been published well before I was. I’d almost rather have gotten an email from one of his fans because then I could just say, “Sorry, wrong chap” and be done with it. But with adult entertainment, it could just as easily be a phishing expedition — so ignore and block is my method for handling those.

    Sorry Brian, wrong chap.