• Torture update

    michael raven

    close up photo of yawning cat
    Photo by Serena Koi on Pexels.com

    Well, that went much more like I was used to in terms of experience before Annie showed up to make dental visits living hell.

    It has been five years since my last regular dental exam and cleaning. In spite of needing some pretty intensive maintenance on my teeth for staining, tartar and plaque, my gums were in much better shape than they had expected on Monday and I don’t need to come in for any additional “special” treatments for my gums. I have one surface cavity, which I suspected and is scheduled for repair, and a bit of a groove on one outward facing tooth that they are going to preemptively fill for cosmetic and protection reasons. Other than that? I’m golden.

    My pain appears to have been due to clenching and gum inflammation.

    Was it torture this time for my regular checkup?

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    Torture update

  • catnap

    michael raven 

    longing catnap spells
    both eyes draw heavy
    sunlight warms
    my aged face

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  • nightclubbing

    michael raven

    Photo by Michael Starkie on Unsplash
    dreaming hazy
    shadowed clubs and
    all smoking cigars...

    you look sexy as hell
    wearing that smirk
    with a stogie in hand

    Don’t ask me who this is supposed to be or where we were clouding up the scene, but this dream lingered with me well after I woke up. Much better than the one about my daughter’s giant pet centipede she talked to in hisses, which is another dream I can’t explain.

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  • Torture

    michael raven

    close up photo of yawning cat
    Photo by Serena Koi on Pexels.com

    I probably shouldn’t reveal this in public, but I think I found the torture that might push me over the edge and confess to being an accessory to John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Lincoln, should anyone want to force me to make that claim. I might even believe I was part of it, if someone were to focus on one tiny part of my body.

    No — not the lower unmentionables.

    Something much less in the manner of “naughty bits”. It would be: My teeth.

    Yes. My teeth.

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    Torture

  • forest of spirits

    michael raven

    Forest of Spirits card from the “Oracle of the Morrigan” card deck
    even dead things have their wild—
    campfires hold no sway over their
    bone whispers shrouded in mists

    should you shadowwalk with me
    we will slender through feral spaces
    to find our the names and faces
    we wore before we were born,
    or we may lose our myriad selves
    in the fog

    Disclosure: My use of those tools most often associated with divination are largely as randomized writing prompts, often with the intent of personal alchemy. They are not intended to be representative of traditional divinatory practice. My personal interpretations (and methods) will likely not agree with those found in popular culture.

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  • all we need know

    michael raven

    standing stones
    Photo by Suzanne Rushton on Unsplash
    she is twin crests
    her rivers run free
    that is all we
    need know

    she is the green
    her cleft draws in
    into the womb
    under cairn

    stone is all that matters
    all words just
    nattering on like
    whispers on wind

    she is wellspring
    that is all
    we need know

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  • forgetting

    michael raven

    Photo by Janke Laskowski on Unsplash
    shocked at the shock
    whenever i make the claim
    that forgetting might
    actually be a desirable thing

    or when i claim
    to be forgotten might
    be much the same

    what is memory anyway?

    ephemeral and fleeting
    like a cloudburst in july
    or that first vagrant snowflake
    on a chill october day

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  • lacuna coils

    michael raven

    a blue face glowing
    Photo by Merlin Lightpainting on Pexels.com
    maltrusting and skirting
    penumbral lines blurred
    against falling rain
    cutting lacuna coils
    into the night

    oh mortal you
    trapped outside these
    chalked white hills
    a song in your head
    given to bone

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  • Winter

    michael raven

    red poppy flower field
    Photo by Elina Sazonova on Pexels.com

    “I told yer ma, that’s a season — tain’t no name for a girl,” her father used to tell her when she was young, before he had choked on all that ash that started falling from the skies and died. He was never one to wear a mask, and refused to cover his face after the Ashfalls began. The particulates, buried deep under the earth until recent years, made quick work of his cigarette-ravaged lungs.

    “I n’ver did know why she gone did that, but she made me promise to name y’that after you was born.”

    “Maybe it was because my hair was white as snow?” she would always suggest, knowing the answer even as she said it. It was a game they played, this conversation of theirs.

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    Winter

  • grendel me

    michael raven

    Photo by Abishek on Unsplash
    grendel grendel grendel grendel
    grendel grendel me
    marsh water bog body
    brown water me
    pierce me liver, piece me gut 
    feed me liver, burning rut
    grendel, grendel me, grendel
    hunger on the night

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