RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Saturday, April 30

boxcutter scars and homemade 
ahnk pointing finger tattoo, 
hand outstretched like “what up, y’all?”
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EARTH SATELLITE HOVERING 
OVER OLD RURAL FARMHOUSE, 
FLOODLIGHTS KEEP AWAY DEMONS
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Friday, April 29

that nowadays chemical 
laboratory space weed 
leaves me lost in my own shit
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TOP TEN MEDITATIONS OF THE DOOMED


#1: d1rtg0d d1gz d1rtg0d/l1v3z d1rtg0d f1ghtz d1rtg0d h1d3z/d1rtg0d b0rn d1rtg0d
#2: p4n1c br34th3 p4n1c/br34th3 p4n1c br34th3 p4n1c br34th3/p4n1c br34th3 p4n1c
#3: r3p3t1t1v3 w0rdz/m3d1t4t1v3 4ct10nz w0rdz/s3d4t1v3 m0t10nz
#4: clVst3r fVck clVst3r/fVck clVst3r fVck clVst3r fVck/clVst3r fVck clVst3r
#5: m0r4l qv4nd4r13z/m0r4l qv4l1t13z m0r4l/qv4nt1t13z m0r4l
#6: mVrd3r k1ll mVrd3r/k1ll mVrd3r k1ll mVrd3r k1ll/mVrd3r k1ll mVrd3r
#7: r3v0lt v0t3 r3v0lt/v0t3 r3v0lt v0t3 r3v0lt v0t3/r3v0lt v0t3 r3v0lt
#8: f1r3 bVrn1ng br1dg3z/4sp1r3 h1gh3r bV1ld br1dg3z/fVck1ng br1dg3z f1r3
#9: bV1ld1ng d3str0y1ng/bV1ld1ng d3str0y1ng bV1ld1ng/d3str0y1ng bV1ld1ng
#10: 4ll th1ngz c0m3 t0 3nd/4ll th1ngz mVst b3g1n 4g41n/r3p34t f0r3v3r
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TOP TEN RESPECT THE BOOKERMAN INDECISION 2016


#1: all news websites are/digital era apter/mags, all quotes made-up
#2: apter mag letters/no different than comments/on news articles
#3: web full of robots/manufacturing opinions/on who's heel, who's face
#4: Top 10 Most Hated/funded by Soros, funded/by DOD grants
#5: Pulitzers, Nobels,/Presidents, Senators - all/chose behind closed doors
#6: booking the future/to keep attendance as high/as profitable
#7: who will main event/presidentialmania/two thousand 16?
#8: when will Bernie job?/will Cruz go full lawyer heel?/who will get the belt?
#9: whatcha gonna do/when Hillarymania/runs wild over you?
#10: cheer for who you want/results still predetermined/we should all riot
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TOP TEN DIRTGOD SCRIBBLES HIDDEN THRU OUT OBLIVION


#1: scribble dirtgod tags/across private property/signs while I wild walk
#2: babble dirtgod tomes/at river rapid ripples/stacking stones to truth
#3: speaking dirtgod truth/to power trash quartz crystals/to shine like earth stars
#4: scribble dirtgod words/in asemic alphabet/unknown to known minds
#5: scatter dirtgod seeds/throughout thick fertile crescents/blossoming with boom
#6: shadow dirtgod truths/within supreme code slanguage/wild style assassin
#7: carving dirtgod sword/out these chaotic words while/world crookedly spins
#8: deduce dirtgod maths/simple equation - deny/deface and destroy
#9: scribble dirtgod marks/along fossil fuel freight trains/paint stick prophecies
#10: building dirtgod born/selfless lords never master/since they know better
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TOP TEN LUNATIC FLOWS OF INTERNAL CHEMISTRIES


#1: 3bb & fl0w lVn4r/t1d3z 0f 0c34n1c br41n/m1sf1r1ng n3Vr0nz
#2: l0w t1d3 r3v34l3d s4nd/c4stl3z s3lf-w0rth w4sh3d 4w4y/t1r3d 0f r3-bV1ld1ng
#3: h1gh t1d3z & l0w t1d3z/t3h s4cr3d & t3h pr0f4n3/pr1m0rd14l sh1t
#4: n0t10nz 0f b31ng/c0m3 fr0m 0c34n1c br41n/00z1ng n3w l1f3 f0rmz
#5: s3lf-1d3nt1f13d/4s n0t 0th3r3d 4lth0Vgh 1/f33l 0th3r3d 4s fVck
#6: wh1t3 m4l3 s3lf-l04th1ng/st1ll n0t pr3ttY 3n0Vgh f0r/01l p41nt p0rtr41tVr3
#7: 1'v3 b3c0m3 s0ft 4s/fl4cc1d d1ck; n0 m3t4ph0r/b3tt3r d3scr1b3z m3
#8: stVdY1ng w1tch3z'/s4bb4t m3d13v4l w00dcVtz/1n VncVt b1rch tr33z
#9: mY m4g1c4l w00dz/st1ll g0t n0 n4k3d w1tch3z/n0t c0Vnt1ng mY s3lf
#10: pr0Vd lVn4t1c h34rt/3nc0Vr4g3 m0r3 lVn4cY/3bbz-fl0wz pVr1fY
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Thursday, April 28

monkey ninjas sport dresses 
in disguising pink before 
popping chaos somersaults
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internet reading list of late

(triplicates of links that occupied my mind at *work* recently)

The Secret Shame of Middle Class Americans by a semi-famous writer dude who lives in the Hamptons
Well, this article's already gotten plenty of online vitriol and hype, but I should mention off the top I was pretty bummed to read this online, though I didn't know at the time, but I had gotten a subscription to the print version a few months back but you never know when they finally show up. This issue showed up the other day, BUT I HAD ALREADY READ THE COVER STORY! I was bummed. Much rather read magazines IRL to be honest.
Nonetheless, most of the response pieces that have gone off on this have pointed out the obvious flaws in the author's position, and perhaps insensitivity to those struggling more than him. I'm not gonna do that (even though it seems pretty easy) but instead mention something I talked about in a rambly talky poetry reading thing tonight. We all live in a giant pyramid scam - all of us. It is the system we are living in. It is a giant pyramid, and all of us are on that pyramid somewhere, and we all look up (because all of us are not at the top) and we get mad at somebody up above who has shit, born with privilege, doing shit we want to do, and we get mad. They are standing on our heads, holding us down, and it is unfair and it pisses us off and god we hate them.
And yet at the same time, all of us (this means you, if you are reading this online then you are not at the bottom of the pyramid, I don't give a fuck what you think) are above someone else on that pyramid, through no planned intent of our own. We likely were born there, but we are standing on those below us, holding them down. We don't realize it probably, don't do it malevolently, but we are fucking doing it nonetheless. That's the nature of the pyramid scam.
This has gone on forever. The actual ancient pyramids of Egypt were not just somebody being like, "Whoa, let's make these awesome big ass pyramids for no reason." They were tombs for THE FUCKING KING! They were built by slaves. When the king died, he was put to rest in the pyramid tomb, servants sealed up with his ass because even in death, kings need somebody to clean up their shit I guess. So the pyramid scam existed 4000 years ago, and will probably exist 4000 years from now.
So instead of getting mad at the guy who wrote this because he is standing on my head, holding me down, and he gets long-winded pieces in the Atlantic and I never will, I'm gonna just say, he probably doesn't mean to sound like an insensitive idiot. And even though people are born with privilege above us on this pyramid scam (I am likely above many, below many; we all are if we are being honest - although I def fall into that "couldn't bust out $400 for an emergency" group, and to be honest, always have been in that group other than when I sold drugs), they are still in the same fucking scam that consumes and mostly crushes us all. CRUSHES US ALL.
So with that in mind, I will forgive this dude for having a 5000 word essay of personal revelation of what seems fucking obvious to me, and has seemed obvious since birth. If you know the struggle though, you gotta realize, that shit is not so obvious to everybody. That's how the pyramid scam works - keep the majority deaf, dumb, and blind. So if my man the movie review bad part of the Hamptons house dude is having a personal revelation and is ever so slightly less dumb, less deaf, and not quite so blind, then I can give him the benefit of the doubt. But being this has been going on for thousands of years, something's bound to give at some point. And if it does, and shit pops off, he better be ready to rock for these personal revelations, and not just stand there on my fucking head, telling me I'm doing it wrong.

The Internet Really Has Changed Everything. Here's the Proof. by Rex Sorgatz
This suffered from similar seemingly obvious delusions, but Rex Sorgatz's bio says "creative technologist" so he's made delusion a CV bullet point, so I'm not gonna fret that. His premise for this piece is great enough: I was born and raised in a shitty little town in South Dakota, but back when there was no internet. Now there is internet. Let's see how my shitty little town in South Dakota is different.
There's a lot of Holden Caulfield in this essay, and though it's pretty easy to flip out on young men getting all A Catcher in the Rye misty-eyed, I can say as a kid who had grown up in a shitty little town, that book spoke to me when I was 13 too. It seems less amazing now that I'm older, and I wouldn't weave it into an essay about *digital natives* (he didn't really use that term, but I hate that term so I used it), but whatever.
This is not a great essay in sense of it's going to change your perspective on life on earth; but it is a good story somebody tells you while waiting for your ride to show up sitting on a bench together for 15 minutes. The premise is pseudo-scientific enough to warrant the meander, and the photography is pretty nice (glad they sent the second photographer!), but it's mostly this Rex Sorgatz guy realizing the call was coming from inside the house the whole time.

The Smug Style in American Liberalism by Emmett Rensin
This is from Vox, which falls under an umbrella of "popular but untrustable" major websites for my personal bias. But I read through this, because it felt relevant enough with all the Hillary hype which will soon consume the Bernie Sanders love, once the primaries are over and everybody who is hardcore political shifts into their MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN HISTORY OF AMERICA and IF YOU DON'T VOTE FOR LESSER OF TWO EVILS YOU ARE ESSENTIALLY VOTING FOR WORSER OF TWO EVILS twin arguments, neither of which really matter half a fuck to me. But it's coming.
I am no pundit, but to me this election - should it end up being Trump vs. Clinton - feels a lot like Bush vs. Gore when people who supported Gore were on coast mode because they couldn't not even fathom Bush winning. Like that shit wasn't even conceivable in their world. And then he won. Sure there was hanging chad bullshit, but every election is probably fixed. (Ultimately that leaves me to wonder about whether Trump will get fixing shit support like a normal Republican candidate. I assume both parties engineer as much shady shit as they can behind the scenes. That's the "ground game" they always talk about.) But there's a lot to this. The whole condemning poor or lower middle class whites who vote against their own best interests because they are stupid to know what's good for them which is discussed at length in this piece is something that we will hear a lot of if Trump is the candidate. People will not reason with others and say, "You know, Donald Trump's making some pretty big promises. How's he gonna do that shit?" They will go, "ARE YOU A FUCKING IDIOT? HOW COULD YOU VOTE FOR HIM OVER HILLARY? OH I KNOW... YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT!" Honestly, even by pointing this out in this brief write-up, somebody is reading this and wondering if I'm an idiot for not just outright agreeing that anybody who would vote for Trump is a fucking idiot.
Mostly this essay reminded me of a Right! Now! less-researched and not as well written version of Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting with Jesus. You should check that book out if you can. It is a worthwhile read. But basically it has the same premise - that liberal America overlooks the huge vast portion of less-than-privileged white people because liberal America figures they're all too stupid anyways so why bother. And again, I imagine somebody reading this might be thinking that way too. But guess what? That's a lot of fucking people you're talking about, and you still have to live with them. I mean, we do a pretty great job of clustering ourselves up in geographically reinforced filter bubbles, but we're all still landlocked here together in a larger American sense. Somehow some shit's gonna have to change. I don't know if it will, and actually it's probably gonna get way more hateful (by both those too fucking stupid to know better, as well as though too fucking self-important to realize how they too are stupid in their own more cultured ways) and probably pretty fucking ugly before it gets better. But that's okay, sometimes that's how it has to be. We'll survive.
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this house we've been calling home 
watched over by elder oak 
who’s seen it all… like, for real
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Wednesday, April 27

master's degree in planet 
rocket science bestowed by 
Bambaataa and Rammellzee
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1st of The Month Rojonekku WFA support drive

So I am about to drop another two new issues of Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts zine (V and VI), and also about to mail about all the back issues of the first two issues I have left out this weekend as well, so wanted to throw this rock into this empty digital creek in the middle of the fogged out cyber-woods here… (so quiet, the birds are making noise, though you can hear them boys on their dirtbikes roaring off in the distance, at least it’s not hunting season, at least not legal hunting season).
Essentially this is me reminding and encouraging you to support Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts, which is a way of saying subscribe to the zine, except along with four issues of the zine you also get:

  • free copies of the ebooks versions of whatever I put out
  •  chance to be the one person a month who gets a railroad haiku spike
  •  plus your copy of each issue of the zine will have a personalized haiku
  • probably other shit too


THE LINK FOR SUBSCRIBING

Or you can paypal me direct to ravenmack at gmail.com - $30 for US ppl for 4 issues (plus all the other stuff), $40 for international for 4 issues (plus other stuff - a dude from Australia won the April haiku spike).
As for the free ebooks, I just started a new endeavor of $2 ebooks called N.E.W.tourneys a couple weeks back. The first one is called Sumo of BOOM! and is a sumo tournament, sort of, which takes place on New Earth, which is just like True Earth but also nothing at all like it. The second one (hopefully out by the end of April) is Mountain MystixXx, and is also a tournament but a poetry competition between mountain recluses as judged by crows. Each N.E.W.tourney will be a tournament of 8 entities, and the style is uh hard to explain, not really experimental so much as no fucks given. But you also get ebooks (as supporter) of all the old shit I’ve released too. It’s there for the asking if you subscribe/support Rojonekku.

(exhibit 69: railroad haiku spike)

The railroad haiku spikes are this thing I love to do where I wild harvest railroad spikes from alongside the James River where I power my spirit during these depleting times, and then I carve fucking haiku into the spikes. I am likely giving myself some horrible form of future cancer using the processes I use to engrave these things, but what is not giving us all horrible future cancer at this point? And if everything’s gonna give us future cancer, I’d rather make art than hot dogs, know what I mean? I used to sell these, and people have always loved them, but I decided to just do them for supporters, one a month, drawn random lottery style from the list of subscribers. In other words, it’s pretty much the only way to get a railroad haiku spike, at least from me. And anybody else doing them probably ain’t doing them right.

The Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts zine itself is one of my favorite things, but also fairly obsolete. I mean zines themselves are archaic, but my zines in particular are text heavy and I don’t really give a fuck about comics. The text is likely going to be broken up by cryptic images I tore out of some old book, or something worse. For example, this upcoming issue VI, I was about to lay out old images as the background for the text as I was literally cutting and pasting (actually taping – paste is for eating) and thought “man, taping old cryptic images is played out” so I took them outside and spray painted them with stencils and railroad spikes and scrap metal and shit. The master looks beautiful, and once depleted by inferior photocopying techniques it’s gonna be even more beautiful.
Ideally, if I could get ten new subscribers/supporters, it’d cover over half of how much I blow on two issues. (Previous subscribers can also re-up whenever they want.) I know it would make sense to be like “I’D LIKE TO GET ENOUGH NEW SUBSCRIBERS TO SUPPORT THE ENTIRE THING” but realistically, people don’t necessarily support things like this too easily. It’s not traditional, like you can’t be like, “Oh I gave $20 now I’m gonna get a comic book and a thank you card” like a traditional crowdfunding. Not even sure I’d consider this crowdfunding. But there are only 150 copies of each issue, and I’m subscribed out at like 30 I think? If I could get 20 new subscribers or re-uppers each two issues, I’d have that part covered at least. But I’ll be lucky if nine people have clicked the link to this page, and even luckier if even three of them read this far. Of those three, I bet two are already subscribed and the other one is broke.

So if you don’t want to or can’t subscribe, spread the word. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PAGAN MC (which is my way of saying if you can support what it is I’m doing – financially if you got it, but spreadaliciously with the word if you can’t).
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freestyle sonnet #041: UPON REALIZING THE IMMENSITY OF THE WACK ASS CONTENT PPL CREATE FOR THE INTERNET THINKING THEY'RE CLEVER AF

So much internet content is yawn, motions gone
through, hitting all the key taught elements of what
*good* writing is supposed to be; nonetheless yawn,
homogenized progressive type points - longform butt.

Your content sucks, internet; it is sterilized
pablum of sheltered packs patting each other's backs
with shares and likes and kickstarter strikes - well-disguised
version of what already existed, net wax

to wane away the mindless (heartless?) minutes while
being productive at work, or else remaining
idle while un- or under-employed. Writing style
seeming like thought nutrition without containing

more than a trace of source sustenance - RETURN
TO SOURCE, BURN GENTRIFIED INTERNET, LURK AND LEARN.
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Tuesday, April 26

"before the apocalypse" 
some dude interjected while 
reading T.S. Eliot
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naked trees touch grey skies like
electrical impulses,
like neuronal synapses
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Monday, April 25

as teenagers, we stared at
bright lights; some of us lost heads
in drunk driving accidents
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internet reading list of late

(triplicates of links that occupied my mind at *work* recently)

How Green Was My Valley at Roads & Kingdoms
Roads & Kingdoms used to be one of my favorite sites because of the photo-heavy pieces on far-flung places, but it kind of morphed into this corny Anthony Bourdain wannabe where young writers write short pieces about drinking alcohol or eating fried shit in some city most of us can't afford to go to. If you are exposing me to something completely foreign to me - that's one thing; but drunken travel tips? Fuck that.
But good shit still flows through, and this piece on an old dude who seems somewhat obsessed with fruit trees in Tajikistan is pretty great. Some guy just tapped into fruit tree nature, to where he can't not think about it, so it becomes his life's purpose, that's some beautiful human interest type story I will read all the fucking time. But then again one time I got sexually aroused by picking cherries at peak ripe season off a tree on my land and was pretty sure the cherry tree was seducing me.

Farm-to-Fable by the food critic at a Tampa Bay newspaper
This made the internet rounds, but for good reason. I figure pretty much anywhere in America, if you started pulling the strings on claims like "farm to table" or even "organic" it'd all come unraveled, unless somebody in charge has paid the proper government organization for the proper government certification to be able to "legally" make the claim. So this expose is kind of like having John Stossel investigate whether pro wrestling is real or not. Still though, I appreciate the GOTCHA! effort, although there is a website mentioned in the article that's supposed to be where we the people can keep track of these things on our own, but I know a number of the local to me spots listed as kosher on that website are bastard places likely to be fake as fuck as well. Oh well, everything is fake now. The Age of Facade.

Godmother of Soul by somebody who writes for the New Yorker
My local library has a free magazine bin where you can put your old magazines in it for other people to take. Some kind folks always leave old New Yorkers there, but they're always from like 14 months ago, and I still end up getting them and bringing them home to flip through and get mad at the stupid poetry (unless it is Charles Simic) or read a profile of something I understand well but the thing is written from New Yorker perspective, which is always kinda weird but predictable to me. When I was a lowly housepainter, this one guy I worked for/with, we did a lot of work at this one place where the man of the house was some sort of editor or writer or some shit, allegedly connected to the New Yorker. They obviously had money because they had a Liberian lady raising their children and there were fancy paintings on the walls, like those big ass ones of old white people with little lights in the ceiling pointing at it just right. Sometimes we'd finish work early and go through the field to go kick it by their river access, and the electrified fence would always hit my sweaty naked back and shock the fuck out of me. But that guy had a writing building which is near the size of my family's house, but it was just an outbuilding in a field, yet really nice. To him, it was considered rustic and slummy and rootsy and real as fuck. Hahaha, oh man, this world is intersectional as fuck but we all ignore each other so easily.
Anyways, I got some good new New Yorkers (less than two months old) the other day, but read this online. This is a profile of Erykah Badu, and it made me love Badu all over again. I sort of stopped listening to her at all (we used to listen to a lot of Badu in this house, due to the ol' lady, but I'll be honest, I wasn't complaining), but this piece had me seeing what's actually survived a couple hard drive crashes and is still on our piecemeal absconded itunes. Not much newer stuff (which I'll have to abscond freshly I guess) but "Southern Girl" rip from my own vinyl still there, as well as the first album and the Live thing that came out, so I can call Tyrone to my heart's content until I find some unstale zippyshare links.
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Sunday, April 24

ape man love ape woman much,
use danger blade to carve grunts
which represent them is one
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reading classic poetry,
making marginalia notes -
haha, not really; used book
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Saturday, April 23

TOP TEN PROGRESSES OF GODDAMN DOLLARS


#1: black mock turtlenecks/mock black turtle carrying/world's weight on their back
#2: primordial muck/red clay mud stains my bloodlines/we're all mulattos
#3: can you *imagine*/world where *wealth* is hacked equal/parts for more peaces?
#4: I be like *hashtag/late capitalism* plus/*hashtag epoch fail*
#5: I'm not quite white male/enough to be successful/*but free to apply*
#6: clean up well enough/to get probation, allowed/to barely get by
#7: submissive to gods/dictating scripture somewhere/deep inside of me
#8: devils justify/their grip on gold by sharing/their scrapped leftovers
#9: trust ancient sources/that pre-date constitutions/- *freedom* dominates
#10: basically I/write jihad poetry for/not quite infidels
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TOP TEN BACK ROADS TO CHUCKROCK


#1: fake worlds trump real one/reality's subjective/object bliss blurry
#2: lost inside my head/even though I know all ways/internal back roads
#3: connection to real/on an "as needed basis"/monday thru friday
#4: no shoes, no shirt, no/cell phone service in fake worlds/I build in real life
#5: progress comes knocking/pistol-whipping my psyche/in button-up shirts
#6: born to lose tattoos/on multiple DNA/strands I got built with
#7: born to lose but built/to survive; born to be judged/but that's our culture
#8: losers remain lost/no matter how much finding/one’s self attempted
#9: labyrinth designed/at base of pyramid scam/to leave "losers" lost
#10: seeking solitude/of fake worlds my heart can love/where I can be real
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TOP TEN DREAMS I'LL NEVER KNOW AS SANG BY MOLLY HATCHET VOICE











#1: email pitches left/unanswered, applications/rejected, denied
#2: every thing's rigged/born below success? stay there/(maybe slight upgrade)
#3: takes generations/to undo what took empires/centuries to build
#4: self-oblivion/remains so much easier/- just sink into place
#5: warm comforting rut/of existence, fog my sight/block out hilltop lights
#6: dreams are nothing more/than umbilical cord to/depression, no doubt
#7: mirrored reflections/look like failure when I see/with other folks' eyes
#8: financial safety/feels secondary at this/point - destroy; rebuild
#9: inequality/will always exist when wrong/math is utilized
#10: dreams equal failure/- don't dream, act without future/- one is not promised
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