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.

Friday, December 31

Wednesday, December 29

Tuesday, December 28

Sunday, December 26

Saturday, December 25

Friday, December 24

Thursday, December 23

SONG OF THE DAY: Don't Hold Back The Rain


Had to go to the Family Dollar, because I was at the grocery store but them motherfuckers wanted $5 for a turkey roasting pan, and I knew it was cheaper at the Family Dollar, plus I needed more gift tags probably, so I went to the Family Dollar. Pulled up and parked beside one of them ‘80s Mustangs, 5.0, sitting on budget chrome, burgundy and black paint job, rear spoiler, looking small town Family Dollar fresh, to be honest. Go inside, and some ol’ boy is leaned up on the checkout barrier to the side, talking to the lady working the register, both of them around my age – that fine line of low life expectancy “middle” age where you’re too old for dreams but too young not to talk shit to the world at large still. I started looking for my shit, hearing ol’ boy talking the whole time.
“They let us out work early today, because wasn’t much going on no ways,” he was saying as I saw they didn’t have any more tags, but turkey roasting pans were $1 each, so fuck you Food Lion. I got two – one for now one for later to sit on top of the fridge and collect dust until another turkey showed up in my life. I got some holiday cards for presents that hadn’t arrived because we all order online at the last minute nowadays. And for some reason I had my dead dad saying, “When it rains, it pours,” in my head, which was never about the weather but about juggling real life shit to navigate being broke as fuck all the goddamned time.
Ol’ boy leaning by the checkout kept talking. “We get paid for tomorrow too, but you can’t call out today or Monday, or else you don’t get paid for it. So that’s cool,” he was going on, and she was responding, but also working, ringing people up or saying likely mandatory greetings as people popped in. I kept looking for mysterious gift tags hiding somewhere on a lost retail endcap, but ain’t find none.
“Alright then, I’ll talk to you later,” ol’ boy said and the automatic door let him out. Wasn’t nobody in line but they still had the barrier to get to the registers with a bunch of useless cheap shit lined up for you to impulse buy. The woman working had a giant splotch of a tattoo on the right side of her neck, and a weathered face, sad eyes, and to be honest I would’ve swiped right on her because I know I’m fucked up – I swipe right on anybody. She started ringing me up.
“Y’all ain’t got no gift tags hiding anywhere, do you?”
She laughed. “Naw. Gift tags and Christmas lights, they was gone quick. We hadn’t had ‘em in a while.” She stuffed my assorted things into the turkey pans and dropped it all into a big bag while I blip blooped my way through the card reader. “Merry Christmas,” she said, handing me a giant plastic bag full of cheap shit.
“Happy holidays.”
Outside, that dude who had been talking was sitting in the Mustang, feet still on the ground, taking his time. “That car is looking clean, man,” I said, dragging the “clean” into more than one syllable because it deserved more in this context, as is the way of my people.
“Thank ya, brother,” he said, in the parking lot of the Family Dollar in Lovingston, Virginia, where people like us cross paths. 
I cut on my Corolla, and “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone was mid-song on the playlist that was playing. Lives like mine, and his, and the checkout lady, and shit probably you too, are doomed in this America we got right now, and fucked, and yet also somehow still absolutely perfect. Holiday blessings to all y’all that are fucked like myself.

3Y3S 0NC3 SH1N3D L1K3 P0L1SH3D CHR0M3...


eyes once shined like polished chrome 
with hope now fogged the fuck out - 
done seen too many oil stains 

Wednesday, December 22

SONG OF THE DAY: Shackin' Up


I got an old truck now, with a sub-woofer, which mostly sits at my girlfriend’s compound, because she uses it for farm chores more than my sitting down working remotely ass would need, other than dump runs. I tried to start it yesterday, just to blast some music, but it wouldn’t turn – old ass battery in the cold. My girlfriend was complaining because the door wouldn’t shut anymore, but I knew what was up, because that had happened to me too. I fixed the door to at least shut, the way it does where it barely catches, then still has a gap like it’s open, but it ain’t. You can push it and see. Songs like this are perfect for jump starting your old ass farm use truck, because you don’t really wanna buy a new battery for it right now, cranking up some old ass jam like this one, and taking a load of assorted detritus to the dump, leaving the truck running the whole time because you don’t feel like jumping it again, even if you have to get gas, and then coming back with a barrel, some bottles, a stack of old National Geographics for collages, and a couple other things you ain’t have when you left. That’s the perfect day for an old truck, to be honest.

4CCVMVL4T10N 0F DR34MS...


accumulation of dreams 
abandoned or forgotten 
clogging corpus callosum 

Tuesday, December 21

SONG OF THE DAY: Wrong Crowd


Easy to forget how many obscure soul and R&B and even rock and country groups there were back in the day. But think about how many soundcloud rappers there are in every corner of the American Earth, getting cursive letter face tattoos just above their eyebrow, thinking that’s the magical missing piece to becoming the Next Big Thing. Capitalism still eats up people’s dreams, as we get trained to think our dreams need to turn into money, and somebody exploits that weakness in vision to their own benefit. This track is from an old Virginia soul compilation that I couldn’t even find to illegally download online, so somebody sent me a burned copy. Prince George is the county southeast of Petersburg, south of the James, headed down to Nat Turner country – a wonderful expanse of rural Virginia that I’ve often wandered through, and in fact prefer to the interstate if I have to go to dreaded Virginia Beach. Shit, at this point, I don’t even like riding 460, so I jump onto 10 for as much as I can. That’s state highway 10, not even a US highway – places even more littered with ancient dreams where folks sitting at a picnic table beneath LED lights on a warm Saturday night break into mythical “remember back when…” and memories of those dreams float back up to the aether, one more time, to give the night stars just a little more shine. Or maybe not. All I know is sitting at a picnic table talking shit with folks who have lived real lives is much preferable to capitalism and this fuckin’ abomination of a cultured life we have to lead now. I fell in with the wrong crowd, just by being born in America during this period. Still hoping for a miraculous recovery though, because at my heart, I’m just a country bumpkin, and a born mark. Some of us are dreamers more inclined to get exploited than connivers meant to profiteer. I'm okay with how I am and who I am.

CH4S1NG 1NDVSTR10VS G04LS...


chasing industrious goals 
on a daily basis, with 
the focus of an addict 

Monday, December 20

Sunday, December 19

Saturday, December 18

Friday, December 17

Thursday, December 16

Tuesday, December 14

SONG OF THE DAY: Scratch My Back (45s on 33)


I’ve got stacks of 45s I’ve meant to rip at 33 speed sitting on a shelf still, including a bunch of wild ass Fania Records shit, which has become one of my favorite old ass labels lately. Not to mention stacks of Christopher Cross, Teddy Pendergrass, some norteno stuff, new jack R&B… slow culture is difficult because the people who love this shit tend to be professional loungers, and it’s hard to get a professional lounger to deny the Power of Lounge, and create a bunch of digital files from scratchy ass records that’s been in a stack on one of them Ikea shelves for 10 months now. Nonetheless, here’s a Clarence Carter rip straight from the dirtgod stacks from a few years back, with a wacky video to match. I got a youtube account so follow that shit. Following it doesn’t mean anything at all, it’s all just made up numbers that equal zero.

C0NCR3T3 R3B4R M0N0L1THS...


concrete rebar monoliths 
wait to be torn down to make 
room for new pyramid scams 

Monday, December 13

SONG OF THE DAY: Word Up


The words don’t come up sometimes, like I sit here and think, “Just write some stupid shit,” which normally is pretty easy for a heart that has a steady flow of shit talk like mine. But I just ain’t into it half the time lately. Everything feels boring, mundane, and yet weird and dystopian. How can a dystopia be mundane? That doesn’t even make sense, and yet here we are, bored as fuck and waiting for doom at the same damn time. I should probably shift into hibernation mode, and read more, because mostly all I read is the words that are printed like ticker tape of conscious thought inside my mind constantly. I guess that’s still in there, but I’ve blurred it out, because I’m tired of looking at it. Tired of everything, yet can’t sleep half the time. The mundane dystopia, just occupying the boxes on a calendar, flipping the pages without actually doing anything all that notable.

3ST4BL1SH1NG C0NN3CT10NS...


establishing connections 
wherever possible - skin 
on skin heartfelt connections 

Sunday, December 12

Saturday, December 11

Friday, December 10

SONG OF THE DAY: Woman Be Fire


Sometimes I can’t think of anything clever to write, so I just put my shopping list in here.
  • Ace rust stop gloss aluminum spray x2
  • Ace rust stop gloss allis chalmers orange x2
  • Ace rust stop gloss john deere green x2
  • 25 lbs whole roasted unsalted peanuts (crows)
  • *see if chicken thighs are on markdown for quick sale
  • hazelnut creamer
  • check markdown mushrooms
  • markdown mustard greens
  • milk (kids coming back Monday)
  • see if those fuckers finally got wet cat food
  • chicken thighs (even if not on sale I guess)
  • more panko just in case
  • fuckin laundry detergent (DON’T FORGET AGAIN)
  • drive that one way back to see if ol’ boy’s got burn barrels rn

W3'V3 0RG4N1Z3D PHYS1C4L...


we’ve organized physical 
space with little regard for 
our metaphysical needs 

W4LK1NG D0WN TH3 GR4V3L R04D...


walking down the gravel road, 
and cutting through the woods to 
gawk at the forgotten graves 

Thursday, December 9

SONG OF THE DAY: What Condition My Condition Is In


Was gonna try to write something short, clever, whatever, but my shoulder is fucked up, and it’s cold, and it was just 4:30 but now it’s already like midnight but it’s only been about 20 minutes, and what the fuck man, I don’t like this time of year at all. Counting down the day ‘til solstice, and then I’m gonna worship those tiny little longer slivers of sunlight, until it gets too summer and I’m like, “Damn, it’s hot, ain’t it?” Lol, people.

4 S1MPL3R L1F3'S P0SS1BL3...


a simpler life’s possible, 
but our brains are trained to lust 
for material clutter 

Wednesday, December 8

Saturday, December 4

Friday, December 3

SONG OF THE DAY: Keep Going


Lol what a ridiculous song, but I love it.
The record company that puts out these Habibi Funk comps said they found more records in a warehouse, but they were still too expensive. Why did y'all make records more expensive than bitcoins? What the fuck?

M3M0R13S 0F 1GN0R4NT...


memories of ignorant 
bliss - blurry at best - confuse 
my current mind with old daze 

Thursday, December 2

SONG OF THE DAY: Going Back Home


This song features one of the greatest gimmicks in modern music history – using an electrified guitar to mimic the sound of a bunch of chickens cackling in the yard. I maintain a Heavily Researched and Highly Informed list of the Top 100 Songs of All-Time featuring this technique, although that title is misleading because it truly only covers the era of electrified guitars being played. But this song has been in the Top Five for nearly six years now, ever since the Back to the River (More Southern Soul Stories 1961-1978) Kent Soul release from late 2015. This is as close to a Spotify Wrapped as you’ll get from me.

SVRV1V1NG TH3 PSYCH1C M1N3 F13LDS...


surviving the psychic mine fields 
leaves you trapped behind feelings 
of guilt, simply ‘cause you lived 

Wednesday, December 1

R04DS WH1CH P4SS W3LL-M4N1CVR3D...


roads which pass well-manicured 
facade’s front, zipping between 
stoplights with great impatience 

Tuesday, November 30

SONG OF THE DAY: Introduction


People are always like, “robots and technology make our lives better!” but I have literally never in my life ever heard of a robot even once going, “You know what? It’s a beautiful fuckin’ day, let’s go to the river.” How can you trust that shit? I mean, what’s the best example of robots talking in our ear right now? Google maps or GPS shit, which is always so methodical. I mean you can select options and avoid tolls and highways, which makes it a little better, but even then, it doesn’t have important on-the-ground information like, “Oh shit, there’s that awesome abandoned hotel with all the graffiti!” Google maps don’t know that shit. Fucked up thing is, even if it collected that data from you for future suggestions (like it does with actual google or youtube and shit), it’d still have it wrong, going, “And turn left on 460 West, remember the abandoned hotel on your right 2.3 miles with all the graffiti,” and I’d go, “Man, fuck that, my boy Cody almost got stabbed there the other weekend, what the fuck google maps.” Artificial intelligence is always artificial. And shit, even in humans, intelligence is stupid as fuck half the time. Anyways, fuck robots.

C3L3ST14L D1SC0NN3CT...


celestial disconnect - 
finding full moons in late night 
unscrolling of smart phone glare 

Monday, November 29

SONG OF THE DAY: Balkan Teleskop


I often daydream in my mind how the universe inside is as big as the universe outside. Ain’t no telescopes pointed into our universes though; in fact, it often gets obscured and blurred and fogged out in order to encourage us building material identities instead, and when we get sick of a material identity, we just start piecing together a different one. Kinda fucked up actually, because there’s never satisfaction involved. I hadn’t been able to explore my internal universe all that easily lately, kinda in a fog myself, feels like everywhere I’m wandering internally is places I’ve seen a whole bunch already, and no real meandering into unmapped territory yet. There’s also spaces which I know I’ve been but I don’t got no recollection about so am afraid of accidentally stumbling back into some shit that my internal cartographer (utilizing universal magnetics) aided me in forgetting about, and I’m gonna remember some shit that fucks me up even worse than I already am. (Some things are best left forgotten to be honest – knowing all doesn’t make us more functional all the time, in fact, the history of human progress is pretty good testament to the fact knowing more actually creates dysfunction.) I don’t rightly know how to point a telescope into my self that easily – used to be substances helped, but I try to not fall down those hills anymore. Gonna try just sitting in the yard I guess, because even if nothing comes from it, sitting in the yard is good practice, especially if nothing comes from it.

WH3R3 N0B0DY 1NT3RS3CTS W1TH...


where nowhere intersects with 
nobody, I seek nothing much 
more than little bit of peace 

Sunday, November 28

Saturday, November 27

Friday, November 26

Thursday, November 25

Wednesday, November 24

Tuesday, November 23

SONG OF THE DAY: All Over But The Crying

 

Time to throw on a track suit that doesn’t actually exist, and drive a car I can’t actually afford towards a horizon I’ll never actually reach, just blasting this, until I drive off the edge of the fake earth like the Duke boys, landing in the hay barns of universal reality.

L0V3 41N'T N3C3SS4R1LY...


love ain’t necessarily 
blind, but it sees with something 
better than biased eyeballs 

Monday, November 22

SONG OF THE DAY: Shuckin' The Corn


I saw some banjo academic fucker did a song called the ballad of Kyle Rittenhouse and it was well-done but also so fucking stupid it made me sick. Then I looked up the guy that got killed that the right is like “sex predator/classic leftist” and it’s a guy who had tried to commit suicide twice, just got released from the hospital that day (was literally carrying a hospital bag) and ended up in the protest by accident, having been denied his meds because the pharmacy was closed due to shit going on. Dude goes and starts picking fights with guys with guns, because he was in mental health crisis and wanted to die, and of course the dumbass teenage guy whose mom drove him to the protests with an assault rifle is stupid enough to oblige. Other protesters see this, assume the dead guy is just a protester, so come running in, and another gets killed and one injured. And after all that, because of some guy with a documented criminal history but documented mental health issues as well, wandering the streets untreated, in the midst of a powder keg, featuring a lot of people looking for trouble, shit blows up. We’re really lucky four or five people aren’t killed more often in situations like this, everywhere. We are such a fucking stupid country right now, and heavily armed too, out in each other’s faces, mad about everything, not even mad for real just pretending to be mad because we wanna argue, and hope somebody starts something. We’re one big nation fucking around but yet to find out. Anyways, the dumbass bluegrass shithead who made a song about Kyle Rittenhouse is the perfect example of how academia can go too far, and also made me sad, because the entirety of Americana/newgrass/singer-songwriter shit is privileged kids cosplaying redneck, because all the real creative degenerate rednecks are just writing raps for their next mixtape while in regional jails. Actual white trash can’t afford good acoustic instruments, which means Americana music is now like American soccer, and only rich kids can even bother with it, which waters down the quality, and also makes it all boring as fuck. You can’t get enough quirky tattoos and derivative Americana merchandise from old logos and stereotypical visions of what America was at a Howard Johnsons in western North Carolina in 1966 to give yourself soul. Fuckin’ devils, in every goddamned direction. Y’all don’t even know what shuckin’ the corn means, even though you’re doing it. Quoth Raven, y’all are forevermore shuckin’ the corn.

D3NY1NG D34TH'S 3MBR4C3S...


denying death’s embraces 
thus far - creating nonsense 
as often as possible 

Saturday, November 20

Thursday, November 18

SONG OF THE DAY: Alabama


I still have goals of Southern Gothicc Futurist haiku slams starting up again, and getting a title belt made for our champion. Stylistically, I think the best title belt to base things off of is back when Adrian Street won the Southeastern Heavyweight title from “Wildcat” Wendell Cooley in the Alabama territory in the ‘80s, and painted it pink. That belt had giant crowns sticking off the champion logo, plus even a confederate flag emblem as one of the flags on the belt (which was not uncommon at the time in southern wrestling). Adrian Street’s gimmick was always that he was effeminate but masculine, had a female valet, and tough as shit. He painted the belt bright ass pink, which of course just infuriated the mid-‘80s pro wrestling attending demographics of Alabama, who back then would’ve hated Trump too because he was from New York City. That belt would be the basis of a Southern Gothicc Futurist Haiku Slam Championship belt, without a doubt. Might go lavender in color, but pink is always a bold choice, and good for challenging simple assed people with their brains full of poisonous muck.

TH3 M4J0R1TY F33L L0ST...


the majority feel lost - 
digital smoke and mirrors 
keep everything in place 

Wednesday, November 17

"H3LP W4NT3D" W0RDS P3RV3RT3D...


“help wanted” words perverted 
by what work means - struggling and 
juggling to survive each week 

Tuesday, November 16

SONG OF THE DAY: All For You (slurred and blurred)


My man Brilly sent me a whole bunch of slurred and blurred Janet Jackson at one point, not sure what we were gonna do with it but I know I downloaded the zip file and bumped the fuck out of this song for a good part of the summer. I miss the old music blog styles with download links. Even I gave up on this and do youtube videos now. My kids don’t do shit but stream, and they’ll skip through the same 19 songs to get to the one they’re trying to have me hear. And when we hit dead zones, it blanks out. I guess what I’m saying is steal music, download that shit, so that if your streaming service eventually goes bankrupt (even after not paying artists), you can still listen to the shit.

R3TVRN T0 T3RR3STR14L...


return to terrestrial 
paradise as simple as 
letting go of all this want 

Monday, November 15

SONG OF THE DAY: I'm The Only Hell (My Mama Ever Raised)


A little known fact is Johnny Paycheck’s birth name wasn’t Johnny Paycheck. It was actually Zachariah Paycheck. He assumed the name Johnny after winning it in a cribbage match while on tour in South Wales in the early ‘60s.

1MM0R4L SYST3MS L4VND3R3D...


immoral systems laundered 
through these “cream rises to the 
top” meritocracy myths 

Sunday, November 14

Saturday, November 13

W1LD H4B1TS C0M3 N4TVR4L...


wild habits come natural 
to some folks - skulls thickened  by 
bad breaks for generations