• Revisiting Syd

    michael raven

    Since last week, I’m been very much in a Barrett mood.

    It’s been a while since I last listened to Madcap Laughs and Barrett, and I was only slightly surprised to see that they had been pulled from my streaming service. It seems like albums are chronically coming and going, especially when they are from acts “across the pond” [Syd Barrett joins Jesus and Mary Chain for albums I can’t listen to… at the moment]. Without super-simple access to Syd’s solo albums, I opted for Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn album to tide me me over until I could either pull up my MP3s or find time to find a quality upload of the complete albums up on YouTube for me.

    Listening with “fresh ears”, it strikes me just how much Syd indirectly and directly influenced some of my tastes in music.

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    Revisiting Syd

  • halcyon days

    michael raven

    sunlight shining through old growth woods
    Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash
    those halcyon days
    we slipped beneath
    wrapped in wave
    and calm, in the before of
    those days we summered
    tangled in locust drone
    in high elms lagging
    speaking softly in
    summer fade with
    our ghostselves in haze
    waiting for to begin

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    halcyon days

  • Half-Penny Thoughts | 23jun25

    michael raven

    Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

    I used to be really proud about how clever I could be and how much information I was able to amass in my cranium.

    The past decade or so, however, I’ve been discovering how liberating it is to be the one asking questions instead of being the one who “knows” stuff. And how freeing it is to let “knowledge” slip away when the information does not have an immediate and proven need. I can always ask the questions, or read something, again and — sometimes, even — I learn something completely different when I learn something “from scratch”.

    That means I can often reread books, for example, and see the story or the information with completely new eyes. Or find a new technique to troubleshoot a problem.

    Forgetting doesn’t have to be the horror that some folks make it out to be. Memories are not something that require preservation. They may give you joy or feel useful, but there is no real reason to cling to memories, or that joy, just for the sake of remembering. Or is there?

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    Half-Penny Thoughts | 23jun25

  • tossing a rune — 22jun25

    michael raven

    berkana
    through the pass
    we may yet recall
    all of those parts of us
    long since forgotten

    Another rune poem of mine, where the rune is selected at random.

    Today’s rune is berkana, which has a core meaning “birch”. Birch are often the first trees to populate areas after a forest fire and, by extension, are associated with new beginnings, purification and rebirth — all of which tend to be related to the eternal feminine.

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    tossing a rune — 22jun25

  • hold

    michael raven

    standing stones
    Photo by Suzanne Rushton on Unsplash
    come the drift as
    voices fade away
    the taste of ash
    'cross my tongue
    distrust, the taste
    of dream

    bone hands stolen
    of twilight childe
    hold onto me, hold

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    hold