1NV1S1BL3 F4CT0R13S...

invisible factories 
manufacture fear for our 
hearts, around the bossman’s clock 

1T'S T00 34SY T0 V1BR4T3...

it's too easy to vibrate 
at frequencies far below 
what brings us satisfaction 

SONG OF THE DAY: Digital Devils (kudzu'd)

Beware digital devils infiltrating your stream of consciousness and causing you to think about things that have no bearing on your actual happiness of existence. One day, we will regard wireless internet the same way we do tobacco smoke. Even if we don’t, because everything is built upon that tricknology foundation, whatever this is will collapse and the next thing will know not to trust it. Balance always happens, even if it leaves the spiritually imbalanced feeling at risk.

TH4T WH1CH 1S B3L0W 1S L1K3...

that which is below is like 
that which is above... mantra 
to motivate heart higher 

SONG OF THE DAY: El Chinito Enamorado (kudzu'd)

A HO scale replica of the entirety of the continental United States would be about 19 miles long, and just over 32 miles wide. This would fill up about half of Delaware, if you flipped America sideways in the HO replica. And being in an actual state, you could excavate and grade the land to match the rough topography of the continent. And the great thing is, where Delaware is in the HO scale replica, you could have another flipped sideways replica also at 1/87 scale, which would take up just over a third of a mile by about a fifth of a mile. That’s still large parking lot sized HO-square replica of the entirety of the United States. I’m not sure if you should reorient that secondary replica back to true north-south, or have it upside down. And then, you could even have a third level HO ass replica within the parking lot, that would be about 22 1/2 feet by 13 1/4 feet – a scaled version of the United States about the size of a swimming pool. And of course, if you’ve gone this far, you might as well have a fourth level 1/87 replica done by a qualified miniaturist, that would be about 3.1 inches by 1.8 inches. And all of this would make sense since Delaware was the first state, but is basically a truck stop waiting to get turned into a Buccees. We could make it an amazing attraction now, and one where you could go piss on Ohio if you feel like it. Of course symbolic Ohio would be for real Delaware, but it would still be fun to pretend I’m a giant pissing on Ohio, in the parking lot sized replica. But the greatest thing about this is, the largest first level HO scale replica would be about 19 miles long, so you could walk across America in one long day. It’d be a hard walk, and you’d have to use a bridge to cross the Mississippi, which would still over 100 feet wide (if we are able to replicate waterways with working water). If I could get across America quicker like that, and not be so eastern bound, I might piss on Arizona instead. But that’s just me.

34RTHLY L1F3 4S 4 HVM4N...

earthly life as a human 
is a test of our spirit's 
ability to survive 

JVST 4N0TH3R N4TVR4L...

just another natural 
born to loser getting loose 
while my legs still got wander 

T0M0RR0W M4K3S PR0M1S3S...

tomorrow makes promises 
it can't keep, while yesterday 
carries weight we should let go 

JVST 4N0TH3R P4SS3NG3R...

just another passenger 
upon Earth, trapped in these times 
because my dimension's third 

4LL4HV 4KB4R 41N'T 4LL...

"allahu akbar" ain't all 
that different from what folks 
already done been saying 

L0V3 4S 4 PH1L0S0PHY...

love as a philosophy 
is never on the ballot... 
just hate and fearmongering 

SONG OF THE DAY: O-o-h Child (kudzu'd)

A great scene in Boyz n the Hood is when Furious Styles cuts this song up to sing it while driving him and the young Tre around. I took over care of a stanky yellow dog that was my middle child’s, named Fleur (the dog’s name, not the child’s name, who is grown), and you know how many times I call that dog “Flurious Styles”? And nobody is around to appreciate it, because as far as I know, the cats and dog have never watched that movie. They’re usually not interested in movies, except my one cat loves pre-code movies, really of any theme. One cat is named Ponyo, so you’d think they’d love Miyazaki movies, but for the most part, my house animals find Studio Ghibli boring. I should try old black-and-white Kurosawa flicks on them, that sort of bridges the gap between pre-code classics and Miyazaki.

TH3 C3NTVR13S 4DD VP, BVT...

the centuries add up, but 
we the people still stumble 
along beneath same blue sky 

4B4ND0N3D SP4C3S 4LL0W...

abandoned spaces allow 
for feral cultivation 
of real world autonomy 

SONG OF THE DAY: Parrty Part I (kudzu'd)

Today was Election Day, I couldn’t make myself vote for either dude in the biggest election on my local ballot, so I scribbled the Write In bubble full and wrote in NONE OF THE ABOVE. I do that a lot. Feels stupid to even go vote if I do that, but I remain hopeful one day I will get to look at a ballot not filled up with assholes. But I enjoy walking from the house to the voting precinct, which is in The Waltons Mountain Museum, an old school turned into museum for the old TV show my mom used to love. There is no actual Waltons Mountain, it was a creation of the books that led to the television show. In fact, there ain’t even no Waltons around here; that wasn’t even their name. This all seems relevant most of the times I’ve had to vote since I’ve lived here, that we’re living in a false representation of reality that doesn’t look like what I just saw when I walked here, up the road. On my walk today, there were workers doing the last bits to hook the hydroelectric dam back up to the grid that is down below my house. One dude was up in the bucket truck, working away, and I could hear “Hey Joe” by Jimi Hendrix blasting up the hillside, traveling unencumbered up the power line kept clear every other summer by immigrants or out of towners with chainsaws and woodchipper truck. Last summer, I got them to dump off four truck loads of mulch. That dam got washed out during the floods of Hurricane Camille in ’69, and just been sitting there all this time. I’m glad they’re hooking it back up, but I doubt it’ll make a difference on my electric bill, what with all the data centers going up everywhere around the state. I guess they can’t manufacture that false reality as easily as they used to.
As I walked back, the sky was a wonderful blue, with a single solitary jet trail slicing the blue in half, blowing out like the top end of Philly graffiti because it had been there a minute. I looked up at the sky, same one that’s been stretched out overtop humans since before an American flag got dreamed up and even continents got all tectonic into separate land masses, and I thunk, “All of the above.” How wonderful it would be to actually have something you felt good about voting for, like that. But all we actually get is assholes.

M3T4PHYS1C4L F3NC3S...

metaphysical fences 
erected all around us, 
but love will lighten the way 

SONG OF THE DAY: Sacalo, Sacalo (kudzu'd)

If the world ends tomorrow, remember that it didn’t really end, no matter what your enculturated inputs are telling you. Walk outside, sit somewhere until you hear the birds making noise. That’s the same stubborn spirit of song that your ancestors used to walk into the future when it was still the past. If the world feels like it ends tomorrow, remind yourself this ain’t nothing new. It will come to be past as well.

G0TT4 G1V3 TH3 VN1V3RS3...

gotta give the universe 
thanks for the shine it puts in 
my eyes when I'm feeling right 

JVST 4N0TH3R W34RY M4RK...

just another weary mark 
navigating false end times 
they keep manufacturing 

PR4CT1C1NG BLV3GR4SS F1NG3R...

practicing bluegrass finger 
rolls while singing thirty three 
alhamdulillahs, with twang 

TH4NKFVL T0 TH3 CR34T0R...

thankful to the creator 

for any and all magic 

I'm able to conjure up 

SONG OF THE DAY: Cry My Tears Away (kudzu'd)

I’ve been trying to shimmy dance on the kitchen linoleum a lot more lately, even if it’s a slow slide shuffle at night. Always been self conscious about dancing in front of other folks, because I got way too high one time at a young age and overthought about the ridiculousness of shaking your body around in a rhythm. But anything is weird as fuck if you overthink it. If I get to clapping and sliding, the dog seems to like it, but I think she thinks it means we’re about to go for a walk. Sometimes, I try to pick up a cat and dance with them, but generally my cats ain’t about that shit. One of ‘em will tolerate it sometimes, but mostly they just wanna get let back down and watch me anxiously from underneath the kitchen rolling island thing. Makes me sad none of these animals wanna dance. What kinda miserable compound have I built here? Anyways, if you know of good dancing animals, put 'em in the comments. I might get one or two.

K33P F4T R0LLS 0F P0STC4RD ST4MPS...

keep fat rolls of postcard stamps 
in possession at all times, 
and ain't afraid to use 'em 

SONG OF THE DAY: Mainstreet (kudzu'd)

My dad had a crazy uncle or two, as all quartz rock solid rural archetypes do, and they used to congregate on a fringe corner towards the south end of Main Street, near what used to be a pool hall, which became a video store when I was a kid, and had arcade games too, in the back, until Nintendos came out. Then they started renting video games and the back room became the adult rentals. 
I had my own crazy uncles, as all quartz rock solid rural archetypes do, and when they were coming up, they’d built a bypass around downtown, a new four-lane with two smooth asphalt lanes going both ways, and folks had measured a near perfect quarter mile from just underneath the bridge that Nat Turner Road passed over, to the end of the guardrail headed west. It was just right for illegal drag racing, back then, but they built a Wal-Mart and a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Food Lion and a Valero and a Comfort Inn and then that doubled and tripled, and downtown became obsolete and the four-lane got slow and had some stoplights thrown up. One uncle died early, as half of all quartz rock solid rural archetypes do, and the other one was briefly lacking a home base, so he’d be hanging around some of those stop light intersections.
Them stores been in decline, too. We’ve got a Big Lots where the department store was, and I think there’s a church that meets where that other grocery store used to be. The Wal-Mart is still there but it’s a sad and doomed place to be. Downtown is mostly empty, but there’s a smattering of boutique businesses that make no sense to people who lived here for more than one generation, run by folks who came from elsewhere, where they couldn’t afford to have a boutique business. They mostly get mad at us, for not spending money we don’t have to sustain their fantasies. I’d support them if I could, but I don’t often need $12 knick-knacks or $23 suppers.
They hadn’t figured out how to build a bypass around the bypass, so we all just get stuck at stoplights with the same stores they have in every other shithole nowhere to everybody else but us. Some dude who said he’s always been from here, but I’ve never seen, who wears polo shirts with his grandpa’s last name on them, is fixing up the old tobacco warehouse downtown, and turning it into a microbrewery or some shit. He was on the news from the city an hour away, talking about how they wanted a road that went around the bypass and came right to the quaint end of downtown he was doing this at. I think his wife runs the $12 knick-knack shoppe (extra letters to show you how it’s laid out inside). They was trying to get a roundabout built there, and have a historic downtown shopping district.
That’s the other end of Main Street from where my crazy great uncles hung out, and the video store was. That building is still there, too, all fucked up and rotting back into the earth. But the building had good solid bones, from before any of our time. I dream about owning it, and having a flea market there, or something. But I can’t even pay the bills I got, and it’s getting cold, and that means heating bills about to be crazy, so we gotta limp along until we hopefully see the redbuds again. And maybe something magical happens and it all gets better, and making a living don’t feel so goddamn much like somebody slowly choking you to death, with hands you can’t see, which is letting just enough oxygen in you can keep paying your bills, but not letting go enough you can do anything better with your life. But what are you gonna do? Not that much you can do, if there ain’t no oil paintings of your great grandparents nowhere. At least that’s what I tell my nephew.

K33P1NG L1F3 4FF0RD4BL3...

keeping life affordable 
by scribbling graffiti all 
over ambitious downtown 

TH3 SP0RT1NG G0DS K33P VS DRVNK...

the sporting gods keep us drunk 
on dogmatic statistics 
that add up to more nothing 

JVST 4N0TH3R CL0WN SHVFFL1NG...

just another clown shuffling 
around this mortal coil, as 
foolish foil for perfection 

4 SM4LL T0WN S4TVRD4Y N1GHT...

a small town Saturday night, 
buzzing with the chaotic 
energy of feel good types 

TH3 CH4R4CT3RS W3 P0RTR4Y...

the characters we portray 
to others never admit 
the masks which hide our true selves 

W1TH1N TH1S T0PSY TVRVY...

within this topsy turvy 
world, we must begin to make 
sense of where our true place is 

DVST1NG TH3 C0BW3BS 1N TH3...

dusting the cobwebs in the 
corners of my mind, five times 
a day... dhikr’s cleansing whoosh 

N4V1G4T1NG TH3 D4RKN3SS...

navigating the darkness 
of our own damned creation, 
but the light is always there 

TH3 1NV3NT10N 0F PSYCH1C...

the invention of psychic 
hamster wheels in digital 
realm ruined reality 

TH1S P13C3 0F TH1S VN1V3RS3...

the piece of this universe 
I stumble round might seem small, 
but it's my everything 

"L1F3 1S 4 C4RN1V4L" 41N'T...

"life is a carnival" ain't 
meant as justification 
for hustling other people 

34CH H0M3 B0X FVLL 0F B0D13S...

each home box full of bodies, 
each minding own universe 
of infinite potential 

1 F1ND CR4ZY S0 S3XY...

I find crazy so sexy 
because sanity seems 
an impossible red flag 

L1F3'S 3SS3NT14L F0VND4T10NS...

life's essential foundations 
concealed within even most 
clusterfucked environments 

HVM4NS S33M T0 C0MPL1C4T3 TH31R...

humans seem to complicate their 
simplicity with shame, fear, 
and unreal expectations 

TH3 TRVLY B34VT1FVL D0N'T...

the truly beautiful don't 
bother realizing it, as 
it's their innate existence 

L0V3 T0 ST1CK MY T0NGV3 PL4C3S...

love to stick my tongue places 
I probably shouldn't, but 
I can't seem to help myself 

N0 CR34T10N 1S GR34T3R...

no creation is greater 
than its creator; and with 
all things, alhamdulillah 

1 4M N0T 4 PR0DVCT 0F...

I am not a product of 
my environment, so much as 
compound accumulation 

SONG OF THE DAY: Smooth Operator (kudzu'd)

Ravishing Rick Rude often used “Smooth Operator” as his entrance music.
Briefly, Rick Rude had his sister, performing as Raven, be his valet. She (by her own admission) couldn’t handle the pro wrestling on the road lifestyle.
I am, in fact, named Raven, and have been since the day I was born.
Rick Rude is dead (may his memory be a blessing).
Thus, I am the Smooth Operator now.
I will be ironing silver letters onto a dark grey shirt which say so. Anybody who dares challenge the proclamation ironed onto my shirt will be in for a rude awakening.
(That was Rick Rude's finisher, which was a reverse neckbreaker style DDT of sorts.)
(My "rude awakening will instead be a fireball, like they used to use in wrestling way more than they do nowadays.)
(Please note, my "fireball" will be a Molotov cocktail, even though I don't drink.)

PR4Y1NG F0R B3TT3R FVTVR3...

praying for better future 
outcomes, while acknowledging 
some past failures were blessings 

T3LL1NG TH3 D3V1LS T0 G3T...

telling the devils to get 
the fuck outta here today, 
I got better things to do 

M1NDS C4N B3C0M3 P0CKM4RK3D BY...

minds can become pockmarked by 
negative experience, 
so it's best to let shit go 

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 

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 

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 

3MPTY 4BVND4NC3 T34S3S...

empty abundance teases 
our heart with false happiness; 
la ilaha illallah 

N3V3R L0S3 S1GHT TH4T TH1S W0RLD...

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

D1G1T4L VT0P14S...

digital utopias 
miss real life's strange nuances, 
where good's bad, and vice versa 

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 

P3R10DS 0F TR4NS1T10N...

periods of transition 
can feel painful as our mind 
reconnects reality 

H34VY 1S TH3 H34D TH4T W34RS...

heavy is the head that wears 
expectations of others 
to be something they are not 

1N R34L L1F3 3PH3M3R4...

in real life ephemera 
exists all around, but our 
focus is blurred on purpose