THE SHORT
I AM NOW OFFERING RAILROAD HAIKU SPIKES AS A UNIQUE MAGICAL
ONE-OF-A-KIND ITEM. THEY ARE $120 (which includes shipping, but only available
to Americans, sorry – it’s a logistical thing not a nationalist pride thing).
EMAIL ME AT RAVENMACK AT GMAIL.COM TO GET MORE INFO (or read the longer story
below) AND TO GET ON THE LIST TO HAVE ONE DONE.
HERE ARE A FEW…
The Longer Story
At some point during my “construction” years, my love of
Asian poetry cross-pollinated with my desire to experience tiny moments of
escapism from the drunken laboring doom that occupied my horizon at the time,
and I started keeping notecards in my pocket at all times to jot down haiku.
This started to be a beerbox haiku plate project, where I wrote the haiku and
applied them along with collage pictures and polyurethane coat to old empty
12-pack boxes. I never finished that entirely (it’s still in my writing camper
though) but the project did lead to the Beerbox Haiku book.
Then, almost by accident, we started having the hand-to-hand
haiku events which I hosted from some point in 2013 I think (?) through a
single one recently for calendar year 2016. These grew crowds once people were
aware of the format and knew it wasn’t uptight serious poetry reading open mic
bullshit, but something you could get as wild with as you wanted to. I also
took on challengers in Best-of-25 Haiku Death Matches. But I shut the whole
thing down at some point I can’t even remember now because I got tired of
holding the necessary space.
Since I wasn’t having the excuse to write haiku for events
all the time, I started the shard haiku twitter account, jerking them out my
heart in 10-packs at work. This eventually led to scribbling them with my
shitty hand graph styles onto old pages torn from magazines or books, and
scanning that into the eternal suckhole of the interwebs.
All this time I’ve also tinkered extensively with tanka and
sonnets and writing raps and prose zines and longer book projects and on and on
and on… but haiku always occupied the background somewhere or filled the gaps
in the mundane day.
My absolute favorite output of haiku, though, has always
been the railroad haiku spikes I’ve done, where I carve a haiku into a wild
harvested railroad spike. Railroad spikes have always been used in folk hoodoo
magic, and understandably so, because they are forged with actual energy, and
generally put into place by actual physical manpower, and thus are heavily
infused with a lot of psychic energies.
The carving of haiku into the spike is a heavily physical activity
as well, and likely stemmed partially from my previous construction experience,
but also my time in a research lab giving rats brain damage with small handheld
brain damaging devices very similar to what I use for carving railroad spikes.
(In fact, if I could afford a handheld medical drill for cutting through human
skulls, I’d be using one of those for haiku spikes.) These originally were just
untouched railroad spikes, though I did treat them to minimize the rust, but
eventually morphed into ones that have been spray painted in hodgepodge ways,
because I was using them to make chaos stencils on t-shirts.
For the most part I’ve only given these away as part of zine
subscriber packages or occasionally sold them off in batches to support shit
like my daughter going to India all of a sudden a few years back. But mostly, I
hate capitalism with all my heart, and am always reluctant to take part in that
system, even though I have to daily in a “regular” mundane ass job.
Which brings me to my now… I need to start making some
supplemental income. Conventionally this would mean a second job, but being I
already have one job I don’t enjoy, I’d like to avoid getting a second job I
don’t enjoy. So I’m gonna try to art.
Thus, I’m selling railroad haiku spikes, on an as-wanted
basis, through a waiting list. They are each one of a kind (obviously) which
means not only the spike itself but also the haiku on it. Should you request
one (at ravenmack @ gmail.com), we will talk on the phone, in a consultation of
sorts, so I can get an idea of what you’re looking for or needing on your
spike. And then, during my “studio” time (which actually means setting up my
industrial rigs of hand drills and milk crates and vise grips and tie-down
straps in the back yard over by the chicken coop), I’ll start producing them.
The cost? $120, which includes shipping. That might seem like a lot to the
struggle-is-real enlightened degenerates who tend to make up those who follow
my creative endeavors, but for a one-of-a-kind piece of art, and for the effort
it takes me to produce them, it’s a more than fair price. Plus, I’m probably
going to some sort of famous dumbass cult poet freak fucker one day, so
consider it an investment.
If you have any questions, the email is above. Please spread
the word to supporters of the arts who might be interested in such a uniquely
magical item.
Peace,
Raven Mack
PS: Here are more.
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