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, October 6

SONG OF THE DAY: I Need Some Money (kudzu'd)


Everything feels a bit untenable currently, in terms of economics. But even beyond the fact the news doesn’t really seem to address this, neither does our popular culture. As a kid, there were multiple struggle ass shows my broke ass family loved and related to, even though Good Times and Sanford & Son were “black” shows. At one point when me and my dad lived in a trailer, there was a UHF station out of Richmond that showed syndicated reruns of Gomer Pyle and Sanford & Son back to back. That was like the most powerful and perfect hour of television ever devised for my pops, scratched both sides of his personality. We don’t seem to have shit like that now. I don’t hear music coming from the economic struggle or see TV shows or movies like that either. They definitely got them fog machines that Chief Bromden knew about in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest cranked the fuck up. And that’s something that concerns me… The nitwits currently in power have certainly become privy to whatever actual electronic and unacknowledged psyops programs there are out there at a democratic demigod’s disposal. And I know these fucks got no real sense of thinking things through. So you know they got ‘em turned all the way up to 11. That can’t be healthy for us, and probably means them machines will break down faster. But I guess that’s ultimately a good thing, when they do break, although will we all wake up when the fog machine dies? Or will we feel lost and disoriented once the fog is gone? And it might not be a constant fog anyways, so much as a deterioration of cognitive abilities, so the fog might be coming from inside the house by now.
All I know is I actually get paid more than ever in my life, and I’m still somehow feeling tight as fuck, and actually cutting a bunch of shit out of my life. How is that possible? It makes no sense. But all the media sources I see and hear, even pop culture music and movies and shit, is just cruising along like all is normal. Them commercialized emails definitely ain’t slowing down from the place I bought a pair of flannel pajamas from once like 5 years ago. In fact, as I struggled with how much it was costing to fill my hybrid sedan gas tank yesterday, with the gas credit card getting close to maxed out, I had the commercial coming out the gas pump, which I instinctively muted, only to realize another commercials was beaming over a radio even higher in the air. Plus the normal billboards and store signs both permanent and temporary, and man, we sure built a fuckin’ clusterfuck of commercialization to navigate. Imagine if all that was gone, how serene the scenery would be, even like pumping gas across the four-lane from a strip mall. I don’t know what America was supposed to do in terms of human civilization, but it sure feels like we fucked up our chance pretty badly. Like, you can’t even reform this shit at this point.

B4RR1C4D1NG S3LF W1TH1N...


barricading self within 
our owned madnesses, hoarding 
curvatures of brief escape 

Monday, October 5

SONG OF THE DAY: I'm Coming Out (kudzu'd)


You ever see that picture of the two cholo dudes cuddled in the bathtub, looking street hard but gay? I know the guy that took that picture. This song, slowed down, was what they were bumping.

G1V3N 4N 1NDVSTR14L...


given an industrial 
purpose to "make a living", 
but it all feels alien 

Sunday, October 4

SONG OF THE DAY: Something (kudzu'd)


Practicing junkyard mind frame kung fu against the rising tide of societal failures, which are nipping at the edge of most all our rugged individual sand castles right now. I slap away each momentary emergency of an economic nature, and attempt to catch my breath between waves. Every now and then, I notice someone who had been standing around me for a long time is gone. Sometimes, I am even able to see them washing out to sea, and I skip a few of my cowry shells out towards them, hoping it helps prevent the drowning. Our human lungs were not meant to tolerate these types of conditions, but somehow the people standing on the third story deck of the palatial houses beyond the sand dunes yell down to us all that it’s never been better, and we should be happy. We’d love to go argue with them about it, debate them on the merits of their comfortable proclamations, but we’re too busy fighting for our lives, metaphorically until it becomes literal due to one slip on a seismic wave from an unguarded direction. God dam this bullshit. O' giant force of creative energy which swirled this Universe and whatever's might be beyond, please do something.

C0P13S 0F 4 C0PY 0F...


copies of a copy of 
copy of original, 
which we forget how to see 

Saturday, October 3

Friday, October 2

N3V3R L0S3 S1GHT TH4T TH1S W0RLD...


never lose sight that this world 
hides hopeful redirections 
along even most doomed paths 

Thursday, October 1

Wednesday, September 30

Postcard Haiku Blowout!!!

[click the pic or HERE for shop link]

I have slashed prices on the postcard poems by mail I offer on my site, and changed the wording to haiku, until the end of the year.

There are 5 postcard styles available:

  • vintage motel postcards
  • vintage Native American themed postcards
  • vintage railroading postcards
  • Greetings from Greater Appalachia postcards
  • Welcome to Southern Gothicc Futurism postcards

There are also 3 amounts you can get:

  • single haiku postcard (for $5)
  • 5 haiku postcards (for $23)
  • 10 haiku postcards (for $40)

The multi-packs, you can send to one address over time, multiple addresses, or whatever. If sending to someone else, I'll also give you the option of receiving an email picture of what I send before I send it.
I am doing this for a number of reasons. Here are those reasons:
#1: MOST FOLKS MAY NOT REALIZE I DO THIS – because I am a horrible marketer by nature. I attempt half-heartedly at times to point people to my online shop, but both those words “online” and “shop” are two things I do not necessarily have an abundance of love for. So it is like getting psychically double dropkicked by a reality I’d prefer to ignore.
#2: PHYSICAL MAIL IS SOOOO REFRESHING – Look, we are deep into the digital age, to where we no longer get fun mail for the most part. But now we don’t even get fun electronic mail. Our joy has been minimized little by little, as efficiently as possible, without any obvious moments where we had the chance to say, “No, please don’t make it this way.” So this is a small chance to get (or give) physical mail, with no purpose other than to hopefully create a little joy in life.
#3: SURVIVING CAPITALISM – I could use extra money from a part-time job, so I read the advice to dress for the job you’d like. As I sat on the back porch naked, I realized I could write haiku on postcards pretty easily in that chair.
#4: SPREADING WORD ART – We all need more art in our lives. As they try to turn everything into a business investment, it is very important we counter that thinking with things that serve no business interest whatsoever. None of the greatest things about life are business investments. Business has nothing to do with the things we love most, usually (if we are healthy-minded human beings). So hopefully I make a cheap option for you to send something to your friends who you love. (I will include a “compliments of [your name]” on the postcard as well, if you choose.)
#5: PRACTICING RELEASE OF OWNERSHIP – I am pretty good about letting writing go. But I also try at times to share a lot of it. I’m going to practice these as a one and done, not copied down by me anywhere, send out to the world freely version of writing haiku. Surviving capitalism, and hopes of future business successes, tends to cause even us creative type people to archive or track everything we do. This is not a healthy practice on our part (though I fully recognize the economic need it is built upon). So I hope to scribble out haiku, and mail them out, and never think about them again.

I will also half-heartedly make social media posts about this. But please feel free to forward this post, or the shop link to postcard poems, or help let all the weird literary freaks that still exist out there in this world in great abundance, that this exists.

GL0R1F13D J0BB3R W0RK1NG...


glorified jobber working 
class born to loser, but I 
bring a bright stubborn assed shine 

Tuesday, September 29

Sunday, September 27

Saturday, September 26

SP4C3S 4B4ND0N3D BY M4N...


spaces abandoned by man 
quickly reclaimed by the wild 
(which is far more orderly) 

Friday, September 25

Thursday, September 24

Wednesday, September 23

TH3 G4M3 H4S 4LW4YS B33N R1GG3D...


the game has always been rigged, 
since humans first began trading 
one thing for three shiny coins 

Tuesday, September 22

SONG OF THE DAY: Hey Leroy, Your Mama's Callin' You (kudzu'd)


By Wikipedia’s last count, Jimmy Castor has 10 grandchildren by his two sons and two daughters. I hope to all that is good and tricksterly in the Universe that one of his grandchildren is named Leroy. As far as I can tell, there are no bronze statues of Jimmy Castor on this Earth, and that seems fucked up to me. All these localized Burning Man edgy hippie dudes taking naked pictures of naive women all over the country, and running their little arts communities from executive director positions with boards made up of casual co-signers to all sorts of clueless behavior, funding stupid fuckin’ public scupltures all over the place. And nary a single statue for Jimmy Castor.

B0RN T0 W4ND3R 41ML3SSLY...


born to wander aimlessly, 
and wonder why we ended 
up settling the way we did 

Monday, September 21

P4TR10T1SM M1SS3D M3...


patriotism missed me 
because all its best myths lacked 
people who lived like I do 

Sunday, September 20

Saturday, September 19

SL1D1NG THR0VGH L1F3 KN0W1NG 1...


sliding through life knowing I 
was born to lose, so I can’t be 
tricked otherwise easily 

Friday, September 18