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.

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 

M4K1NG SVR3 BR34K1NG CYCL3S...


making sure breaking cycles 
ain’t just a false blossom during 
times of internal hardship 

Thursday, November 11

Monday, November 8

SONG OF THE DAY: Don't Worry


Timely advice from the Smith Brothers, although that word “timely” falsely suggests time is necessary and real. Wealth, time, productivity… all this shit our entire life has been built around is completely abstract and a fucking waste of a good heart that beats rhythmically without even trying.
By the way, I have not died. Just vibing, and getting caught up on my chill. Daily pics and gambleraku will resume soon enough. Don’t worry.

Friday, November 5

Thursday, November 4

SONG OF THE DAY: Afrique Victime


I didn’t love this last Mdou Moctar album as much as the other ones, but it still was better than most shit I accidentally listen to. I guess they’ve blown up more now, which is good for them, but also I’m glad I got to see them in the nasty ass basement of that club in Harrisonburg with a limited crowd. That was dope. Also the night before Ramadan began a few years back at the old Strange Matter/Twisters in Richmond. Good shit. I never really dance, because I’m a goofy dancer, and super self-conscious about it, but both times I got to bouncing up and down enough it was like dancing, and I appreciate music that somehow is able to get past all my conscious anxieties and shit like that and trick me into flopping around rhythmically lol.

1 F1ND MYS3LF F33L1NG M0ST...


I find myself feeling most 
fulfilled when on long wanders… 
pilgrimages to nowhere 

Wednesday, November 3

SONG OF THE DAY: Tragico Destino (45s on 33)


White people seem to be up in arms about how white people might get replaced by non-white people, but to be honest, look at the accordion. White people had control of that shit forever, and then non-white people had it for like what? A couple decades? And absolutely fucked up everything a white person had done on an accordion. Now instead of working in a communal sense, and thinking, “Oh shit, who knew all my accordion needed was a horn section with a little bit of flair?” instead the type of white people being up in arms (all too often literally) about this type of shit get mad, and don’t want nobody else to play an accordion. What the fuck kinda shit is that? Who benefits from that? Just a bunch of lame ass fuckers sitting around with musical instruments they ain’t even learned nothing new on. The shit pisses me off to be honest. Loosen up a little bit, stop being afraid of every goddamned thing. Here’s a new 14 Words for y’all: Sit your stupid ass down, and listen to someone else for like twenty minutes.

G1V1NG 4BSTR4CT QV4NT1TY...


giving abstract quantity 
dominion over our heart 
has somehow left us empty 

Tuesday, November 2

Monday, November 1

SONG OF THE DAY: Burning Shit With Dried Up Dreams For Kindling


This is another Boogie Brown Blue Globe Beats track. Brown remains prolific as fuck. I took some news footage of a junkyard fire, with burning Cadillacs, to make a video for it. Then today I was feeling pretty shitty about everything, so I wrote a depressing fucking freestyle sonnet. For such a large world, we sure did build a system that crushes people's spirit. What the fuck? Anyways, did something different with this sonnet, with a pair of 4-line stanzas, then threw a 2-line stanza in the middle, technically rhyming knot with not, like I'm Bushwick Bill or some shit, then flexing into a different tone for the last 4-line stanza, which recognizes everybody out here struggling. This is a poem, which my mind wrote in the very moment, posted into the digital oblivion that is a blogspot in 2021, thus will never be published anywhere else, and only you and the few other eyeballs that actually read this will ever see it. Making tiny ripples in oblivion.

Dreaming of relaxation and actual rest 
without incessant testing of whether I’m bad 
or good enough to deserve to not feel compressed 
by constraints, depressed by position, wanting pad 

around the struggle to fight well-designed riptide, 
wishing for a safety net hammock as I punch 
the lottery machine, hoping my stars collide 
into big bang of that bank balance number crunch 

not still twisting my insides into anxious knots, 
trying to remember my haves more than have-nots. 

Just simple fatigue growing into exhaustion, 
definitely physical, perhaps meta- too; 
thus, listen to expressed frustrations with caution, 
as I can imagine the same is crushing you. 

TH3 HVM4N M1ND C4N B3 D4RK...


the human mind can be dark 
cavern, easy to get lost 
in; I try to keep it light