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.

Monday, August 31

Sunday, August 30

1'V3 4LW4YS B33N 4 M1SF1T...

I've always been a misfit,
cast aside by the cool kids
because couldn't afford style

Saturday, August 29

Thursday, August 27

SONG OF THE DAY: This Is Not Possible



I’ve only ever been able to get into like five Sun Kil Moon songs, because that meandering story-telling lyrical style – while my favorite type of prose to read – doesn’t always translate into good audio. You hear it a couple times, and there’s not much going back to it you really feel like doing. But for some reason, this particular track held my attention enough I keep going back to it from time to time. Sad to hear that whoever the famous dude who is Sun Kil Moon is got caught up in some of the Me Too call-outs, I guess being another fucking creep among a million. If he ever comes out of hiding or denial to issue an apology, I guess it’s gonna be a 13-minute song with long-winded explanations to justify poor behavior as somehow being a victim himself, at some point. As men, we’re taught to never be sorry, but not really taught how to not do horribly selfish shit that we should probably end up being sorry for. Learning to apologize is a good first step towards learning to not be a horrible person. It’s a gateway act towards not being a shithead. Too many of us take great pride in being absolute shitheads though.

SONG OF THE DAY: Legendary Loser



The other night, after a day of wandering, I was making my way home – too late, yet again, having gone too far, yet again – so stopped in at the Sheetz to get my XL hazelnut creamer coffee boost. All the coffee machines seemed empty, and this old white lady worker was fiddling with the couple that had coffee, I guess trying to get caught up on making coffee. I patiently waited, masked up, for her to move along, and filled up a cup. She was working further down the coffee machine line, when an older black lady came in, with a cane, and they got to talking because they knew each other. Keep in mind, we’re all masked up, as are most people, except for some reason in this pocket of suburban/rural grey area in northern Virginia, all these blank-eyed young white men who refused to mask up, proudly ignorant, more than a couple of them in freedom style shirts supporting guns and cops and eagles and shit like that. The old white lady says to the old black lady, “how have you been?” Old black lady goes, “Not so good. You’re never doing too good when you just been to a funeral.” The old white lady says, “What? I couldn’t hear you,” as she keeps making coffee, way the fuck past retirement age, making shitty Sheetz gas station coffee (which I love) on a Saturday night in nowhere America. The black lady is louder this time, “Not so good. You’re never doing too good when you’ve just been at a funeral.” I’ve moved over the creamer machine, first one broke so had to go to the second, pushing buttons for that hazelnut diabetes juice. “I’m sorry honey, I can’t hear you,” goes the old white women. Unmasked pairs of angry-eyed white dudes in work-ish clothes are poking at the ordering machines nearby, and the old black lady is still leaning on her cane, masked, both the old women overweight and not looking in prime health, out here in this suburban Sheetz on a Saturday night. The old black lady is loud as fuck now, in that strange way you can be loud but still friendly, going, “Not so good. You ain’t ever doing too good when you just been to a funeral.” And the old white lady still can’t hear her, and the old black lady is looking at her – they obviously know each other – and I just wanna go over to her and say, “I’m sorry about your loss,” but it would’ve been weird. And there’s all these white men walking around with anger in their eyes, not giving a fuck, so even masked up my bearded white man ass might not have been all that comforting.
So I got on my red square marking six feet distance, and some unmasked meathead redneck and his dyed blonde unmasked girlfriend get behind me, way off the next red spot, and she drops a bag of chips right behind me. I turn around and give them the hillbilly murder eyes my people have always been known for, and the judghead goes, “sorry, buddy” in a way that I couldn’t tell if he was serious or condescending. I wanted to smash him, just in case he was being a dick, but instead got a dog treat for my girlfiend’s hound dog in the car, and after the old white lady rung me up, having moved over the register – I guess done with the coffee machines and hopefully having heard her old black friend finally – I stared the dude off on my way out. He didn’t make eye contact, looked down immediately – beta broken gaze of a faux alpha persona. And as I twisted around in the car to convince the hound dog named Hank that the treat was okay, not poison, I thunk to myself how the race war America might be building up to ain’t really a race war at all, but a battle between white men like me and all those other dudes, about whether we want to give a fuck about anything other than ourselves in life, or not.

H0VR-L0NG BVS R1D3S 4S 4 K1D...

hour-long bus rides as a kid
spent catching up on sleep, and
avoiding confrontation

Wednesday, August 26

S3D1M3NTS 0F H1ST0RY...

sediments of history
bury a lot of truth, but they
become crystallized with time

Tuesday, August 25

D3LVS10N TH1NK1NG H4S...

delusional thinking has
become commonplace as fuck;
strike a line through history

Monday, August 24

Sunday, August 23

Saturday, August 22

Friday, August 21

Thursday, August 20

SONG OF THE DAY: Te Queria



The advertising dude who allegedly came up with the “yo quiero taco bell” campaign using a chihuahua has parlayed the wealth he “earned” as a brilliant advertising type into a role as local arts gatekeeper, who allows shit he knows about to thrive while shit he has no clue about continues to exist in the margins. The Columbus discovery metaphor of these types, who have to be exposed to good shit, in order for good shit to have access to all the spaces they hold the keys to, remains too true and annoying as fuck. Anyways, he recently posted a nude selfie of himself meditating or some shit, on social media, to show you just how easy it is, at least for an economically comfortable 50-something white man, to remain calm in these trying and terrible times. Also, he is an artist, the authentic kind that has access to shows (because of the aforementioned holding of keys), so if you’re a young physically attractive femme-appearing local artist, look out. I bet he’s got a photography project you’d be perfect for – artistic sexy pictorials taken in his studio. One time, I did a reading or some shit at a lady’s teaching building thing, to “expose” myself to new people. This dude’s ex was one of the attendees, and I was supposed to be excited to meet her, because of the opportunities such meetings opened up. That whole method of people becoming considered valid and supported artists is bullshit, and full of ways for those with the power (like ol’ yo quiero taco bell dude) to exploit that power to their own benefit. So as we burn everything down, I ask you to not just think globally, or nationally, but also burn down bullshit locally as well. Because it’s a lot of shit local that needs some fire.

SONG OF THE DAY: Legendary Member



Walking along the train tracks gets in your blood, somehow, where you think about it all day long. Whenever my life has been my shittiest, I’m always inclined to disappear along some tracks for a few hours, and reclaim some sanity somehow. There’s a 69th mile marker along the James River where I used to always wander, and I’ve often said that’s where I want my ashes scattered when I’m dead. That’s not a lie. During my worst period, at my most suicidal, that’s where I would’ve killed myself when I was envisioning it then, which sort of worked into a self-check to be honest, because it’s like a couple mile walk to get to the 69th mile marker, and after walking along railroad tracks by the James River for a couple miles, with crows yammering at you and the river rapids whispering prayers of lounge, who’d want to still die?
As you wander beside that many giant hulks of steel that are the various freight cars found on 21st century tracks, it’s impossible not to fall in love with graffiti – both the big bright spray painted blasts most folks know as graffiti proper, but also the weird little often single color paint stick scribbles called monikers. I never had the patience to learn mastery of spraying paint, plus I’m more of a wordy motherfucker anyways, so the world of monikers spoke to me, where often times simple poetic phrases get scrawled along with a crude but sometimes elaborately beautiful character. Not sure when I started, but I’m sure it was on those wood chip cars by the 69th mile marker, probably some Sunday morning, that I started fucking around with “dirtgod” as a blessed character that gets to travel places I’ve never gone. I always say it has infinite outlook, because the glasses for eyes on the character is always a haphazard infinity loop.
The infinity loop has a long history in monikers. Probably my favorite living artist is buZ blurr aka the Colossus of Roads, an old dude from rural Arkansas, who has scribbled thousands upon thousands of his simple character with little phrasings underneath. buZ’s Colossus of Roads is – according to buZ - homage to Bozo Texino, the old school legend of railyard monikers, and is a character wearing a cowboy hat where the brim is an infinity loop as well. The Colossus of Roads character is a side profile of Bozo, which is a front on oval intersected with the infinity loop, and a dotted face with a cigarette stick blowing a few bubbles of smoke into the æther.
Well, recent life has gotten me battling depression, so I blew off work yesterday and disappeared down to the end of the line somewhere in southside Virginia, at a secretive location we don’t share because sanctuaries are easily ruined by too many people knowing about that shit. But while walking through the scrub pines of another southside Virginia dead end, looking at all the boxcars, with assorted tags old and new, I got to a weirdly blue colored one, and I was about to scribble on a blank spot when I noticed just to the left the faded remnants of a Bozo Texino. It was the first time I’d ever seen one in the steel flesh. Wasn’t hard to remember the old blue boxcar to check the other side on my walk back up the other way, and there was a Bozo Texino on that side as well. A true miraculous blessing in the middle of nowhere that made my day.
Western discourse still tends to have these man vs. nature binaries employed, which on one end justifies rampant unchecked industrialization, and on the other is used to suggest eco-fascism is appropriate. Man isn’t against nature; we’re just a fucked up part of nature, that hasn’t learned to be part of it better. I think about that a lot when walking the line by all those boxcars, because each car itself is a giant behemoth of industry – steel melted and shaped into a huge container far too huge for any man to lift or maneuver by their own muscles. And we have giant strings of these containers, just hooked up and moving around the continent. Many of them end up trickling down to these dead end lines, sitting in the middle of nowhere, used sporadically. But there’s also this long history of people walking by and putting their name on the steel. My little paint stick markings on these giant hunks of industry are so temporary, so impermanent. And yet it makes me feel seen, or known, even if only to other societal vagrants. And honestly, there’s nowhere on Earth that feels more peaceful to me than walking through a train yard almost always at the edges of civilization, usually bordering nature in the form of a river or creek or abandoned industrial edges of a city or town. It’s impossible for it to not feel natural, completely in opposition to that man vs. nature binary. Nature reclaims shit pretty fast, and as it reclaims it, you can’t really say it’s still separate. So scribbling on trains feels like solidarity with mushrooms and kudzu, honeysuckle and mullein, saying, “I’m with y’all” to the whole universe, and being more productive at fucking off, because men aren’t machines. We’re just fucked up chunks of impulses and energies forgetting to take care of ourselves, in the name of some delusional ideas of progress we need to get to. Fuck that, for infinity.

1N 4N 0BSCVR3 N1GHT, F3V3R3D...

"in an obscure night, fevered
with love's anxiety...
went where all things quiet be"

Tuesday, August 18

SONG OF THE DAY: Overcame



Teaching poor children to dream is almost unethical at this point. This wonderful era of intimidating big truck paramilitary boiz flying Dear Leader flags, and online school where the children of those who can’t pay attention constantly, or even have good enough internet, is going to widen the gap that was already a pretty gaping chasm contributing to American inequality. Oh well, hopefully there’s enough digital opiates to keep us all placated. When the internet actually does get broken, it’s gonna get real ugly then…

K33P 1T B3TW33N TH3 D1TCH3S...

"keep it between the ditches"
my father often said while
navigating the edges

Monday, August 17

Saturday, August 15

WH3TH3R P0V3RTY 0R P0MP...

whether poverty or pomp
and circumstance, life can get
stiflingly suffocating

FRIDAY NIGHT SLOWDOWN - a Sovthern Gothicc Fvtvrist Mixtape #001

45 rpm 7-inch singles slowed down to 33, with some random vocal snippet spices added while it slow simmered in purple lights on a Friday night. Here's the link on my patreon. SUPPORT YOUR BOY DIRTGOD AT HIS PATREON!

Friday, August 14

Tuesday, August 11

Monday, August 10

Sunday, August 9

SONG OF THE DAY: Luv


Everything I thought to write about love seemed corny as fuck so I ain’t write anything. Except this. Shout out to Boogie Brown, as always dropping the Blue Globe Beats flavors, with prolific abundance.

TH3 D0M3ST1C4T10N 0F...

the domestication of
natural spirit, slowly
deferred to life's dirty deeds

Saturday, August 8

Friday, August 7

SONG OF THE DAY: Missing



There’s not a lot of desire to hear what white men say because that voice has crowded history’s book shelves so violently the past few centuries. But I think it’s important white men willing to grow and change and adjust share their internal dialogues, so that everyone else can better understand where we come from. For example, in the heart of every man, there’s a constant conversation happening, between an inner-Joe Rogan, and an inner-Beto O’Rourke. The inner-Joe Rogan wants to get high after work, and indulge in a digital buffet of spirituality, awareness, and fantasy. But the inner-Beto O’Rourke wants to go out, and make friends that aren’t just other white men, except he’s unable to do that successfully because he only goes to a set square of exactly 36 acceptably hip spots, and 12 times out of 10, does so in a clever t-shirt that’s actually only clever to other white men. So the post-modern day white man struggles under the burden of this inner dialogue, in fact argument, between the inner-Rogan wanting to get high and look at cool shit online, and the inner-Beto wanting to go out and be appreciated by others who are not just more white men. EVERY WHITE MAN YOU MEET IS GOING THROUGH THIS STRUGGLE BUT WILL NEVER ACKNOWLEDGE IT. And it is that deception of the actual conversations happening inside themselves that makes them “white men”.

TH3 P1LGR1M4G3S 1 M4K3...

the pilgrimages I make
on weekly basis - meccan
treks seeking revelations

Wednesday, August 5

SONG OF THE DAY: Brown Out



There was an article about Ruby Ibarra being a scientist working on a Covid vaccine, which you can easily google and find yourself, and it’s probably behind a paywall so you’ll have to do an incognito window or some shit. Ibarra’s pretty great, and it’s bothersome how immigrants from elsewhere that’s European get absorbed as American but non-whites don’t get that same benefit, and will always have this otherness still attached to them. I mean, it’s like that in European countries as well, and I just started reading Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America, and aside from the normal Galeano ability to have a fucking quotable sentence on every other page that I want to scribble really high up on the walls at my house so nobody can reach it to cover up or try to scrub away, it also is making me want to really re-invision how I think of America, as a pre-existent entity to the United States, and one that will likely exist long after the United States. We get too caught up in our present reality as being dominant throughout time, when really it’s just some shit happening right now. Shit, the United States isn’t even that big of a presence in the history of the Americas. But it’s certainly a problematic one now. But if you take away thinking that shit is all-knowing omnipotent over history, you also take away some of the hopelessness that comes with the bad side. I mean shit, people ain’t even been speaking English all that long here, which is probably why the frogs get quiet when I try to sing with them at the pond at night, because they’re expecting me to be speaking Monacan, but the only Monacan words that still exist are ones that people named places with. And the biggest one I can think of repurposes Rassawek, the big village that existed at the confluence of the Rivanna and the James near present-day Columbia. But the folks who did that named their big ass winery Rassawek and host weddings there. Seems weird to resurrect dead tongues for wedding destinations, but what do I know? I’m just a piece of shit from nowhere shooting words into space.

34CH D4Y 4 N3W B3G1NN1NG...

each day a new beginning,

but each night another fight

with the internal jihad

Tuesday, August 4

SONG OF THE DAY: Whiteface


Been too far into my own head lately, past present and future. Easy to get lost in there, in fact our culture by design hopes we get lost in the self-hatred and loathing of who we are despite not being able to be nobody else, because that drives us to buy good feelings, keep the abstract economy pumping with force, that which has driven the engine of progress that's gotten all of us nowhere except an entirely different part of the Earth than we would've been seven generations back. Even as the overlords talk stimulus packages, it's not because people can't afford to live safely, can't pay their rent or keep food in the kitchen; it's because it "stimulates" the economy. None of us mean shit, just numbers in a spread sheet concatenated for another's sum total benefit.

TH3 L0ST M0NKS 0F D3T4CHM3NT...

the lost monks of detachment,

wandering sadly at edge

of town, country, and nowhere


Saturday, August 1