tonight i might try
dancing barefoot
spinning & yearning
for a dark angel dreaming
with that mark of moth
bare shoulder worn
just to see her smile
all grey the ravens
under the trysting moon
Author: michael raven
all grey the ravens
Photo by pedram ahmadi on Unsplash Collaborative yaks
Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash In case you were unaware and sat there wondering, “I wonder if this Michael Raven chap is up for a bit of collaborative something or another…” — let it be known that I generally am up for combining energies to make something bigger than I can do on my own, provided the chemistry is there.
There are a ton of possibilities:
(more…)darksky grey
Photo by Kevin Hessey on Unsplash darksky grey a’coming
rumble her clouded head
sparks sent across
flint on steel in bed
twisting her sheets
around bare calf & thigh
darksky grey a’coming
through her evernightJust Alice
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash He was minding his own business, fishing there up on the bridge and not catching much at all when she went and showed up. The only thing biting were the ‘squitoes and deerflies in the heat of the summer haze. And although he had his line dipped in the cool fishing hole swirling about in the creek below the bridge, and there were plainly river trout with their speckled bellies flashing in the noontime sun, he was not catching a thing. Not that was surprising at all to him, seeing as he had neither baited his line nor tied a hook at the end of the line for which he might bait.
The way Hank saw it, if you put a hook on a fishing line, you were apt to catching something at the end of it even without bait. He had seen it happen that the fish would get all glammed up by the shine of the sun on the metal and decide that if something were so shiny, well then it might be tasty too.
(more…)red
Photo by Andreas Haslinger on Unsplash we live these falling red leaves
on the wind turning & spin
dancing, you ask for help on dying
i have only these sundried bone
to your blade glancing moonlight
no, your night i cannot surrender
a shower in crisp scarlet skitters
i lay down these ossified arms
waiting for the thrust and pierceritual hours
Photo by Sina Bakhtiari on Unsplash ever thorn head burning
one step in the without
dancing in my devils
twist my spaces thin
knuckle bark to bone
raw red and stone
under covers counting
hours writhe of poemHalf-penny thought — 14may25
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash I sometimes ask myself not if I should write, but if I should share what I write.
Writing is my lifeblood. I have occasionally “given up the bad habit of writing” only to find myself slinking back with a scrawled bit of doggerel like a junky needing his morning fix. If I go more than about a day without writing something, somewhere — I get that janky tremor that we used to call “jonesing” back in the day.
I cannot stop. That much has been decided. And, for the most part, I like to think of it as a victimless habit. Mostly harmless… Besides, like decent person with any filthy habit, I wash my hands afterwards.
But should I share what I write? That gets trickier.
I still believe it is “mostly harmless”. But I know, regardless of the perception of “quality” (in quotes for my buddy, Ted), what I write often seems to not be (for whatever reason, perhaps due to “quality”) the kind of stuff that people particularly “get” or maybe even like. And I am not entirely blind to the qualities of the writings that are well-received, but the well-received style of writing is plainly not me.
So I often find myself asking, when I write, should I share it? Or should I hermit myself off in the woods and eventually be found as a dead and desiccated body, with stacks of scrawled within notebooks scattered around my cave that some cold hiker will burn for fuel against the cold autumn air?
Wait… don’t answer those… those were rhetorical questions. Allow me at least the illusion that someone reads and maybe slightly likes what I write, please.
Channeling non-oblique, non-obtuse writer to see if I can make something of something…
flowers
i wonder at crimson pools
of my blood i have spilled —
when will come the bloom?dreaming house
Photo by Massimiliano Sarno on Unsplash what ghosts this dreaming house
sleepwalking our sleep?
trysting our sweat-damp sheets?
giving hallow our hearth in creep?
pale her flesh, her hair raven flow
barefoot slipping through
eyes open to ever unawake
passing of room to room
gazing out to lune and hedge
through windows stained of dust
would we to kiss her lips
in that dreaming house of rust
