Author: michael raven

  • her waters flow

    under burning skies
    and
    echoes in between
    wander as shuffle 
    grow at weary
    aching for a fall
    to wash hands in
    her waters flow

  • axis;

    Photo by Tengis Galamez on Unsplash
    we all a whorl
    turning in & out
    labyrinthine & fell
    for the internal
    shadowed twists
    allowing for hel in our
    heart bone hearts

    can you see your teeth?

    we lay down there
    at the wytching tree
    buried of her womb
    wishing we could
    embrace her dream

  • Storytime

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    I just got to the stage where my fiction subdomain is getting becoming functional. The keyword is “functional”, but it is far from finished/polished and the content quality there is. erm, lacking at the moment. Of course, it is purely for testing ideas and functionality, so it will eventually be wiped.

    It is not currently behind a “maintenance mode” wall, so if you want to see how the Fictioneer WordPress template demos on my site, you can check it out at fiction.ravensweald.com.

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  • Dumpster diving

    Photo by Shannon Kunkle on Unsplash

    I feel a need to throw a myriad of miscellanea out there to anyone willing to give it a read. This is your classic dumper dive post, where you might find something interesting, maybe even valuable, but what you find might have an equal chance of just being junk. Read at your own risk. No refunds.

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  • tossing a rune — 06jun25

    eihwaz
    we walk dire valleys
    you and i
    our bones are hearts
    for such places between

    pull me gloaming to,
    give this stonefield life

    Another rune poem of mine, where the rune is selected at random. Today’s rune is eihwaz, which has a core meaning of “yew”. Yew trees are associated with the underworld and the axis mundi (world tree), as well as liminal spaces and transformation.

  • dreamspacing

    Photo by Alice Alinari on Unsplash
    kissing at distance
    hands dreamlaced time
    drawspacing the narrows
    thin between eachwith line
    mouth to breath shared
    of lips gone surrender
    no longer bound of care
    silkslip and thigh
    that flesh dreamt skin
    pulling pastlives present
    willing you in

  • twilight eyes

    Photo by pedram ahmadi on Unsplash
    nail bitten fingers
    ragged tip raw
    all jaundice & spleen 
    her twilight eyes
    flicker flick
    a celluloid dream
    in shadow & stars
    come my lay, my love
    she hums, a song
    from her past

  • spinning stone

    standing stones
    Photo by Suzanne Rushton on Unsplash
    a twist on a turn of words
    her flower, his hunger
    they spin stone for bottle
    counting crows perched
    high on the live wire
    to see who gives what & how

    his is the spring
    & her seething gives to dance
    with her flair, her flail
    her everything & ghost
    his everything & love

    suspecting the hollow
    of the old trunk
    in the field alone stands
    they spin bottle for stone
    while crows writhe & laugh
    at how the given becomes what
    in seething this spring

  • Small talk stinks

    I’ve never made it any secret that I am not one for small talk. I’m perfectly fine with silence, either the comfortable or uncomfortable varieties — in preference over small talk anyway. It might be that it seems like an insurmountable task to engage in small talk now that I don’t have a drink or cigarette in one hand, the other, or both. It’s really a thing for me; I lost my ability to natter on about stuff when I went both sober and smober. The smokes and the glass/bottle gave me a prop to fidget with, to play a persona, a mask to slip inside when social situations called for loathsome small talk.

    So, picture my dread this morning when I showed up early to a local passport office and limited DMV service center to renew my passport for some expected upcoming Canadian travel (recall those days when we could just use our driver’s license to slip over to Canada? Oh, those were the days!) and encountered not one, not two, but three individuals who thrived off of small talk. Engaging in such small talk. Loudly.

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  • Scarlet

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    Of the rubble they wandered, she and the one she called Puck; she dressed in crimson and ash while Puck was dressed in Puck, a shadow somewhere between chrome scuffed and tetris blocks that might have been mustard yellow, if not for the scorching and scratch. Azur, too, if you looked atop his aluminum pate from above or when not aloft — a rarity given the nuclear pellet fueling his eternal flight.

    Stones rattled for reasons only stones know, and fell to the scree near her feet with wonton abandon. If Puck did not have encyclopedic reference to the circuitric contrary, it might have thought the stones were rushing down from the remnants of highrises to worship the angel at their base. Puck certainly did, but that was his nature. The girl was its goddess and its life and, even if they had been programmed otherwise, it would still choose this life of servitude under her wing. Call it love, for even machines may become such things as the capacity for love.

    Puck tensed at the howl of greymalkin prowling distant, yet close enough to warrant caution. She dressed of vermillion tensed not at all, which was her nature, such as was her trust given to Puck. It was for Puck to worry while she wandered and his servos did whine at the unexpected danger lurking the shadows beyond. How far was far enough? it wondered. Almost immediately, it responded, Never enough, but was loath to leave his charge for the time required to chase the great cats off.

    So Puck did the only sensible thing and flew closer to her and did what all things must eventually consider as their final option when danger lurks nearby: hope.

    And so, Puck hoped while the greymalkin cast out more mewls and cries, suggesting the hunt had begun.

    Puck sighed relief when the sounds moved away from their location, and it embraced the momentary calm, as short-lived as it was like to be.