SONG OF THE DAY: Still the Same (slurred & blurred)

It is hot as fuck outside, so let me just advise you all to slow it down. In fact, with climate change an inevitable byproduct of the eternal impossible growth plans of capitalism, it’s only going to get hotter, so you should only get slower. Don’t work fast, don’t drive fast, don’t play music fast, do nothing fast, ever. Like, what’s the point? What are you in a rush for? Time is a social construct anyways, just meant to make your ass feel late when “late” isn’t even real. I do not have AC in most of my old ass house, just a small arsenal of fans of various eras pointed in different directions depending on the heat outside, side of the house the sun is on, and other bizarre life scientist calculations that I’ve accumulated over a lifetime of being broke but beautiful. All in all, it’s tolerable, but even if it wasn’t, lolol what am I gonna do? Quit existing? Fuck no. There is no exclamation point to the end times, just a long slow ellipsis. So ride that fucker out.

SONG OF THE DAY: Jackie

I think this song is about Roseanne's sister from Roseanne. They did a reboot of that show but Roseanne wasn't woke enough so they kept doing the show anyways and Roseanne was cancelled, which means she instead just gets given money by rich dumbasses who believe history moved from east to west but the world is flat and it doesn't get any further than California, except maybe Hawaii but only if you're on vacation. Nobody lived in Hawaii before vacations. Anyways, I like this song about the sister from Roseanne, and I like the old Roseanne because it was a tv show reminiscent of my own fucked up family and in fact the last time I visited my uncle Ray who used to be a biker and had a big toe for a thumb because of the time he almost got murdered and lost three fingers on one hand from the shotgun blast at close range, Ray was in the hospital and had learned how to swallow his food some weird alternate way because the normal way sent food and drink into his lungs or some shit, we watched Roseanne on the hospital room TV. The whole trip was very magical in a fucked way, because he used to ride with the Pagans MC, and then when I was leaving, an elevator was stuck but halfway between floors, and two women were freaking out, so I helped them pull the doors further open and helped them up out the elevator. Then I got on the other one and a guy got on with me wearing a shirt that said "Support your local Pagans" talking about the outlaw biker club not the people who shop for expensive crystals at metaphysical shops. Anyways, I never watched the rebooted Roseanne because it got cancel cultured before I could watch. Haha, that's not true, I just never gave a fuck; cancel culture ain't real.

MY B0DY'S JVST 4 V3SS3L...

my body’s just a vessel 
carrying stardust essence 
around, ’til death do we part 

4TT3MPTS T0 K33P MY GR3Y M4TT3R...

attempts to keep my grey matter 
unfocused on distractions, 
and rooted in the real shit 

T4K3S M0R3 TH4N Y0VR 0WN H4NDS T0...

takes more than your own hands to 
break self-destructive cycles 
your brain was trained to follow 

SONG OF THE DAY: Remember 04

I never had any outright hallucinations in my younger psychedelic dabbling days, but I often figure this is because reality has always been fairly flexible to me, so likely according to somebody else’s standards, I had a lot of hallucinations… I just didn’t regard them as such. It always felt to me like I was seeing a more subtle reality, not obviously on the surface, but also not according to how we’re trained to identity the surface. Had a friend one time explaining to me about purple, and being trained to identify it, and how his shade of purple might be my shade of orange, but since we’re all trained to identify the same appearance of reality as “purple”, we all assume we see the same color, when in actuality there might be great fluctuation in that. I kinda figure that’s how reality is too - just the accepted system of identifying what’s around us. It sucks that the blurring of reality is not psychedelic based and about how there’s deeper universal layers to everything, but instead has allowed folks to have a more shallow, selfish view of the world as nothing but a space for them to do whatever they feel like, as whatever they feel like is somehow their “right”, but what affects anybody else is a “feeling”. I don’t know man, civilization feels extra raggedy lately.

TH3 B1GG3ST 3RR0R 4 M4N...

the biggest error a man 
can make is repeating the 
same mistakes as done before 

4LL TH4T'S B33N BV1LT W1LL D3C4Y...

all that’s been built will decay; 
from decay life will blossom 
again… a repeated fact 

SONG OF THE DAY: Telling You The Future

Mostly when we think of “futuristic”, we think of flying cars and robot highways and shit like that… all very shiny and stainless steel and space age if “space” age means exploring external space as far as possible. But I don’t know, there’s a lot to see already within the small corners of the Earth (which are never actual corners) that we overlook because we get those big global eyeballs and miss all the beautifully woven details to our lives. I’d hope the actual “futuristic” my great grandchildren gets to see has more sitting on a rock by the river than rocket ships to other planets. I mean, for most of us, they’re not gonna let us go into space except as servants anyways, so why the fuck bother? Stay here, sit by the river, listen to the ripples and not give a fuck about all that other “we need to do” ass stuff. Progress is a myth. And if you think of the moral arc of the universe as a rainbow, it’s just bending back down to where it started, so might as well keep it caveman simple. That’s why I do paintings on all the walls of my house.

1T 41N'T 4S C0MPL1C4T3D...

it ain’t as complicated 
as we make it out - inside 
our heads, and as a culture 

SONG OF THE DAY: Hardcore Flow Expertise

(fuck it, a freestyle sonnet today, off the song title) 

Attempting to flow, though the internal prose hose 
tends to be clogged by all this logging on logged long 
hours every day, despite shortness of life; pose 
and posture for digital vultures, right and wrong 
reduced to virtue signals and dog whistles; fuck, 
ain't shit to do but lol while stuck in declining 
empire of diminishing returns, hope long struck 
down by this mundane dystopia refining 
the algorithms to channel our rage into 
page views and boosted posts... The Discourse piledriving 
dead horses through a most predictable purview, 
once again arriving at nothing, surviving 
the days in cyber daze with brain fog engineered, 
wishing civilization's set path quickly veered. 

G1V3 M3 4N 4G1NG H0T3L...

give me an aging hotel 
next to an ancient body 
of water, to do “nothing” 

SONG OF THE DAY: I'll Keep Searching

Often I think about being Time Machine True in my own personal behaviors, so that if we end up with time machines for regular people (and not just space lords), I’ve acted throughout my life in a way that won’t cause me to end up murdering myself. One of the biggest adjustments to time travel is going to be figuring out fourth dimensional consequences, and there’s going to be so many cases of time travel suicide, where older versions of yourself come into the future to murder you for being a sellout, or newer versions of yourself go back and kill older versions of yourself for being a dumbass. It seems like if you killed your older self, your newer self wouldn’t exist anymore, but that’s likely not how that shit is gonna work, and there’s going to be a whole bunch of each of us running around a whole bunch of universes, you know, the string theories. I’m honestly not smart enough to figure all that shit out, but I would like to take a time machine to like 1977 or 2429 or whatever. I mean, I figure if time machines become more common, and I actually get one, it’s likely going to be a raggedy time machine, with a cracked windshield, that can only go to like five states around here, and only go back or forward 75 years, so I’d probably have to limit myself, so that I don’t accidentally break down in 1958 Charleston, West Virginia, or some fucked up shit like that.
But even in acknowledging my own intellectual limitations when it comes to four dimensional existence, I do know it’s fairly easy to be Time Machine True, meaning always act in a way that no other version of myself would be so ashamed of he has to kill. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done some stupid and ignorant shit, but I’ve tried to learn from it, and have that be part of my growth as a human. So I have to assume, with my limited intellect, that bodes better for four dimensional existence, should that become a reality I’m confronted with at some point. I think that’s important, and often think, “What would 17 year old Raven think about this?” or “What would 79 year old Raven suggest I do here?” It’s helped me tremendously to take into consideration their feelings and input, and also know when I should give them suggestions. Shit, 9 year old Raven is way more at ease now that I’ve been telling him for a couple years that shit’s gonna eventually work out, don’t get too stressed. I wish that little motherfucker had a time machine so he could see it.

G1V3 M3 4 D1RTY W1ND0W...

give me a dirty window 
to stare out all day long, so 
I can think about “nothing” 

PS3VD0-1NT3LL3CTV4L...

pseudo-intellectual 
industrial god complex 
of mankind’s complications 

S1MPL1C1TY 1S TRVMP C4RD...

simplicity is trump card 
in the natural world - just 
figure out how to survive 

M0R3 S1MPL3-M1ND3D CR34TVR3S...

more simple-minded creatures 
seem to have an easier 
acceptance of existence 

D1SRVPT1NG MY M0ST ST4GN4NT...

disrupting my most stagnant 
energies with “let’s try this 
differently this time round” 

HVMM1NG 1 G0T TH3 P0W3R...

humming “I got the power!” 
as I trespass my way through 
an industrial freight yard 

N3VR4L 1MPVLS3S BV1LD1NG...

neural impulses building 
body of knowledge in mind, trapped 
inside ragged ass body 

0BS3RV1NG W0RLD, KN0W1NG F00L...

observing world, knowing fool 
well none of these truths are deep 
enough to last forever 

C0NSVM3D 1D3NT1T13S - 0NC3...

consumed identities - once 
spent - stacked behind us; often 
we pretend they don’t exist 

C0MM3RC14L D1STR4CT10NS H4V3...

commercial distractions have 
been erected every 
direction; seek deeper truth 

SONG OF THE DAY: Hot and Nasty

Black Oak Arkansas is the soundtrack to me not giving a fuck, hopefully blasting outdoors, with regular clangs from horseshoe pits, and the smell of a barrel fire going somewhere nearby. Barrel fires are highly underrated ambiance, in the country or city. Much respect to all those unthanked warriors who somehow distribute burn barrels throughout America off weird trailer loads on Facebook Marketplace. Y'all are doing God's work.

PH0N3 4PP R3M1ND3RS T0 PVLL...

phone app reminders to pull 
purple amethyst tasbih 
out of pocket, speak dhikr 

SONG OF THE DAY: Polk Salad Annie

Elvis Presley popularized this song, and is well-known for ripping off black artists. But in this case, he ripped off a white one, although I guess the originator and composer of it - Tony Joe White - probably got paid, so it wasn't necessarily a rip off. I'm sure Tony Joe White's raggedy swamp ass lived off the royalties of Elvis for the rest of his life. Mostly when I hear this song, I realize how much I've forgotten from reading Euell Gibbbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus back in the day. One day wild foods will be our only foods. Then again, Euell Gibbons famously ate a bicycle one time, so the future is hard to really figure out. Shit, the present is hard to figure out.

FVLL C0L0R V1S10N MVT3D...

full color vision muted 
by mirrored sunglasses to 
only see what you wanted 

F0CVS1NG MY GR3Y M4TT3R...

focusing my grey matter 
on the shapes the outlines give 
life to, not the lines themselves 

1NDVSTR14L M0N0L1THS...

industrial monoliths 
can’t maintain permanency; 
decay’s inevitable 

SONG OF THE DAY: Riding High (chopped and screwed)

At some point, I’d like to do a deep dive into all the funk classics (or reggae) that made DJ Screw mixes. A friend sent me the new DJ Screw biography, and I enjoyed it for the information it had, though it didn’t really reach a good conclusion (symptomatic of academic-style books according to another friend). It inspired me to start fucking around with my record collection again. Simultaneously, I’ve been on a hardcore Rick James kick lately, so really having a Rick James jam riding slow with its wings fully stretched off a grey tape has been an absolute constant in the dinky Corolla soundtrack rotation. In fact, I might have to blast this bama this evening after work and go to the train yard, for a little me time, down by the river. It’s what Rick James, and DJ Screw, would’ve wanted for me on this day. And any day.
The amazing thing is, much like "Be Thankful For What You've Got" being mislabeled as the more popular Curtis Mayfield instead of William DeVaughn, "Riding High" is not even a Rick James song. It was done by a group (or dude) called Faze O. But damn if it don't sound like a really great Rick James song. 

W3 M4NVF4CTVR3 0RD3R...

we manufacture order 
from the visions we possess, 
regardless of whether right 

SONG OF THE DAY: Ordinary Guy

Joe Bataan is key figure in Fania Records and the Latin Soul sounds of New York City in the late ‘60s. Bataan, who had been in a Puerto Rican street gang and grew up in East Harlem, was actually the child of a Filipino pops and Black mom. Please note, I’m just cribbing from the Wikipedia page, because mostly I just know Joe Bataan because of all these Fania Records retrospectives I’ve been playing the past couple months. But apparently he had a falling out with the owner of Fania, and left the label, but while still there, secretly started his own label – Ghetto Records – funded by successful criminal. Kinda want to hear all that stuff now. Anyways, Bataan helped coin the term “salsoul”, and that dude is still doing shit to this day, and should be considered a national treasure. Why the fuck did we end up with Hamilton’s Starbucks drive through ass cultural event, and not Joe Bataan doing something real? Oh yeah, we hate real in America, and love the superficial. This song is a banger though. One of my faves by Bataan.

P34C3 1S N3V3R P3RF3CT3D...

peace is never perfected, 
as conditions remain in 
flux - chaos and order 

SONG OF THE DAY: Stage Fright

A weakness of mine is shitty ‘70s rock that definitely was solid American step between British Heavy Metal and metal blowing up officially in America as well. Shit like Legs Diamond that sounds like you’re trying to get genital warts. It’s just a wonderful genre that sadly was murdered by grunge, and at the time, all the shitty dirtbag white people were shamed out of owning guitars, so started rapping instead. Now, all we have is bourgeoisie indy rock left, and it’s all so Trader Joes-y and there’s zero chance you’re gonna do anything fun enough to risk an STD.

N4V1G4T10N THR0VGH D4RK C4V3S...

navigation through dark caves 
of civilized creation 
is piece of the seeker’s path 

SONG OF THE DAY: Lonely, Lonely Nights

Not been sleeping well lately, nor unwell really. Just your basic toss and turn with lack of comfort in any part of existence, but fatigued enough the body shuts down for five hours solidly, before waking up so that I can study the darkness with wide awake eyes, worrying about a whole lot of nothing. Life feels pretty good for the most part, if I actually think about it in that light way of thinking where you don’t go digging too deeply. Not entirely sure life can feel good within modern civilization if you go digging deeper though. Hate to think superficially, but we’re so removed from a deeper existence, interconnected with anything more than a couple days ago, that superficiality is kinda necessary. There’s a strange loneliness to existence currently, where you have the electronic impulses of being surrounded all the time – and we certainly as humans crave those connections still. But it disappears easily, and also has a hollowness to it so that when you’re fuckin’ losing your shit in the car outside the grocery store because you forgot about an insurance payment, and it triggered overdraft shit that’s got the chance to spiral the fuck beyond control by midnight, none of those digital connections can actually sit in the passenger seat and pick a song to play or just sit there uncomfortably while you freak out, and then when you calm down, go, “well, fuck it, you know?” I see sleep depictions or mattress promises where it’s like falling into clouds that wrap around you, and maybe I’m just poor and have never had a new mattress, but I’ve literally never had an experience like that sleeping. I’m tossing and turning, or my back is aching from some soft ass mattress not built for broken people like myself, so I have to sleep in my stomach because it feels like I’m tucking myself into a spoon and I better do it backwards lest I be half-crippled in the morning. The lonely, lonely nights of a rapidly decaying empire, that is going to enter the forced part of its empirical history, demanding compliance or be damned. So I’ll probably start sleeping even worse. Well, fuck it, you know?

P3RS1ST3NLY R3S1ST1NG...

persistently resisting 
these sensory distractions 
as the ultimate in truth 

BV1LD1NG 0VR MYTH0L0G13S...

building our mythologies 
with return to positive 
raw essence always in mind 

1MPVLS3S WH1CH 3NDL3SSLY...

impulses which endlessly 
tendril upwards, chasing the 
release of infinite space 

PR0C3SS1NG 1NF0RM4T10N...

processing information 
more like turkey vulture flock 
than stainless steel scientist 

TH3 P4TH T0 B31NG D1RTG0D...

the path to being dirtgod 
is relatively simple… 
stop forcing things into place 

N0T L3TT1NG MY GR3Y M4TT3R...

not letting my grey matter 
get ruled by these black or white 
binaries which don’t make sense 

SONG OF THE DAY: My God Has a Telephone

A gospel souldies revival song that I was briefly playing the ever-living fuck out of. Somehow I got sucked into the souldies trend. I think I follow too many vintage cholo graffiti accounts on Instagram or some shit. This, even though a recent song pretending to be an olden days song, is still the type of jam that makes you shimmy across the linoleum sort of like a hybrid Charles Bradley/Axl Rose/bantam rooster, while washing the dishes but taking a break to scratch the neck of the black cat pushing up against your leg when the shimmy pauses. Black cats always know what’s up.

SONG OF THE DAY: Why Can't We Be Friends?

Been trying to think of something to write for this song coming up for like four days in a row. Brain just ain’t thinking of things like I’d like it to, although that’s not entirely true, because I dropped a long ass thing at my patreon today, and am either writing or doing some sort of nonsense art constantly, reasonably so. I need more external outputs, for sure, but having a haiku slam a few weeks back helped, which I guess I didn’t even write about here. That’s sort of the problem with me – I scatter my shit in nine different places, it’s impossible to have any one space be the complete picture. Anyways, we’re having another haiku slam on Saturday, May 21, outdoors, south of Charlottesville. If you wanna come make new friends, or connect with old ones, let me know. Not so sure we live in an age of sharing everything openly and publicly anymore. Western civilization keeps hyping itself as expressive but keeps getting more and more repressive. And the weird thing is the people who claim to be protecting expression are the exact same ones actually repressing shit (like that oligarch billionaire that looks like a bleached frog). So I don’t know. Get at me though. Or go away. Maybe both.

1 R3M41N 4 B3DR4GGL3D...

I remain a bedraggled 
mess, but still upright, scratching 
another year from the Earth