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  • Towards the Within — New Bible

    08May25 | 13.39 CDT
    © 2025

    michael raven

    c: 250508.1339

    Confession time.

    Back in the 90s, I had completely fallen in love with Ani DiFranco based on a single album, Out of Range. If I were to be completely honest, I actually fell in love with her over a single song, The Diner, and I did so while I was sipping over-roasted coffee in some bohemian-styled converted warehouse with the brick walls and exposed support timbers in the Lowertown neighborhood of downtown Saint Paul. I fell hard for her before the song was even over.

    Ani DiFranco; Image source: Rolling Stone

    My conversation partner had gone off to take a piss, as you are prone to needing to while drinking far too many over-roasted cups of black coffee over an afternoon spent doing largely nothing in a very bohemian manner, chain-smoking cigarettes in a very artistic way in the artist quarter of a revived downtown area.

    (more…)

    tagged:

    ani difranco, towards the within

    filed under:

    listening, Towards the Within
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    28 comments on Towards the Within — New Bible

  • everyone driftboard

    08May25 | 07.17 CDT
    © 2025

    michael raven

    c: 250508.0717
    Photo by Greg Johnson on Unsplash
    everyone driftboard skates past
    these hoarsewhisperered screams
    percolating out eggshell cracks
    growing back between the grass
    wiltgreen hairs of tarball sheen

    glide tinnitus, that heartbeat
    shattermouth glass wrapped in
    barbedwire dreams as the
    everyone driftboard skates
    with only an "oh, bother"
    on lips to greet

    tagged:

    poetry, solitude

    filed under:

    poetry, writing
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    2 comments on everyone driftboard

  • at twilight

    07May25 | 12.34 CDT
    © 2025

    michael raven

    c: 250507.1234
    i invite the night
    to kiss and send
    to drift my body
    down her river flowing—

    tagged:

    betwixt and between, poetry

    filed under:

    poetry, writing
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    2 comments on at twilight

  • isle

    07May25 | 10.25 CDT
    © 2025

    michael raven

    c: 250507.1025
    Photo by Alice Alinari on Unsplash
    to gone to earth
    in the every
    to slip beneath
    the fen in early
    cross the finger
    crest the blood
    twitch at glisten
    of toothsome blade
    cut the stars
    with hands flint
    all fallen
    turn our eyes
    to the island
    apples of the
    reddest shade
    she ivory waits
    in every way

    tagged:

    betwixt and between, poetry

    filed under:

    poetry, writing
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    7 comments on isle

  • Half-penny thoughts — 07may25

    07May25 | 08.23 CDT
    © 2025

    michael raven

    c: 250507.0823
    Photo by Cornelia Munteanu on Unsplash

    Eyes chase the dust motes playing in the sun framed in shadows cast by the window frame. I wonder that they might be alive, even if we think of dust as the slag of our skin, cast off in a neverending shedding season, our constant state of ephemera we purposefully cast a blind eye toward — afraid of our own mortality. Unable to accept we are a season of dust, we focus our gaze on the verdant, the thriving as we sweep the parts of our dying under the rug for someone else to discover after we have passed on.

    Consider this: Could the “dead” cells of ourselves still be alive? By what measure have we to decide when they are finally and truly dead things? They never had a heartbeat and we cannot confirm they ever had mind — although I will argue that there is more mind than we are inclined to recognize in the world around us — much less this have an active mind.

    And yet, be it the vagaries of air eddies and their imagined whims, or dust motes at play, one has to wonder if any of this must be as it seems. Who is to say that if we look beyond the scrim before our eyes and truly see, if we might not see more than what everything seems.

    tagged:

    dust, ephemera, half-penny thoughts, seeing

    filed under:

    thinking
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    14 comments on Half-penny thoughts — 07may25

  • wordless

    07May25 | 06.17 CDT
    © 2025

    michael raven

    c: 250507.0617
    sunlight shining through old growth woods
    Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash
    those days where words
    lose all meaning in
    a dizzy haze of dreaming
    and fingers trace lines
    of morning dew across
    your pale skin under
    the rise of the sun

    tagged:

    betwixt and between, poetry, the dreaming

    filed under:

    poetry, writing
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    2 comments on wordless

  • Towards the Within — Hi Ren

    06May25 | 11.22 CDT
    © 2025

    michael raven

    c: 250506.1122

    I’ve slowed down a bit on my listening to music, trying to find something that fits this nebulous definition I have of “different like the 80s post-punk era, but newer” music. Of course, while I am watching videos of nerdy girls building out their rooms on YouTube, the site is more than happy to continue providing me with music ideas to listen to, including Falco’s “Rock Me, Amadeus” (has there been anyone more absurd and apparently oblivious to their absurdity than Falco? Perhaps Boy George? Right Said Fred?).

    Of course, there is only so much Viking-inspired music I can listen to, and Falco is not really someone I want to listen to on a regular basis — nor is that terribly “new”. So, I end up watching my videogame hype videos and largely ignore the offerings on deck.

    That is, until the algorithm reminded me of a song that Chris Nelson introduced me to a couple of years back by a chap named Ren. Watching and listening to the song again (and this is a case where the song is best as a multimedia experience), I am still really, really impressed with this song. It does a lot of things that I wish I could do as a musician, but lack the talent to be able to do — both in the guitar playing and the presentation. The song itself is reminiscent of a manic Arlo Guthrie singing about a restaurant owned by Alice. Except not done for laughs and glitched on the part where they are jumping up and down yelling, “Kill! Kill!”

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    tagged:

    music exploration, ren, towards the within

    filed under:

    Towards the Within
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    22 comments on Towards the Within — Hi Ren

  • drift, oh drifter

    06May25 | 07.28 CDT
    © 2025

    michael raven

    c: 250506.0728
    Photo by HARALD PLIESSNIG on Unsplash
    slip to dark water
    fatigued of dream
    watching branches
    play with sunlight
    & shadow above to
    drift, oh drifter
    to eversleep

    tagged:

    betwixt and between, poetry

    filed under:

    poetry, writing
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    3 comments on drift, oh drifter

  • unami

    05May25 | 21.31 CDT
    © 2025

    michael raven

    c: 250505.2131
    standing stones
    Photo by Suzanne Rushton on Unsplash
    i can't think in strawberry
    so i do not know that mind
    my thoughts are all unami

    fingers to lips to arm to heart
    drifting that ocean storm again
    acceptance of the taste i am

    tagged:

    betwixt and between, poetry

    filed under:

    poetry, writing
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    7 comments on unami

  • Rewilding: grounding

    05May25 | 13.58 CDT
    © 2025

    michael raven

    c: 250505.1358
    a path in the middle of a dark forest
    Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash

    Lately, I’ve been feeding a greater need to improve my grounding. In the increasingly chaotic and manic world we have stumbled into over the past decade and a half, I feel like I have lost some of the ability I used to have to ground myself. Chances are that it is more likely that my abilities have not changed so much as they have not adapted to the current state of affairs — they are a little off-key might be the better way to think of it.

    (more…)

    tagged:

    grounding, rewilding, wu wei

    filed under:

    thinking
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    17 comments on Rewilding: grounding

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