N0B0DY 1S B0RN P3RF3CT...

nobody is born perfect, 
and in fact we often times 
must unwind early traumas 

SONG OF THE DAY: Blaxploitation

my real name is not my government name 

government names are considered 

the source of truth and the only real answer 

by assholes or cops or bosses 

or cop bosses or boss cops 

and unfortunately we live 

in a horrible age of boss cops 

which is why it is important to have 

less official real names 

more important than ever in fact 

the more real names you have 

the less authentic your government 

name becomes and thus the less 

power boss cop culture has over you 

so long as you keep it moving 

one of my many monikers was 

one thousand aliases because 

one can never have too many aliases 

this became one thousand feathers 

as each alias is a facet of the whole 

and to rely on a government name alone 

as official source of truth 

to properly answer to all these 

boss cops and cop bosses 

that is to no longer be free 

to not be who somebody thinks you are 

which you likely ain't 

any more 

PR1M1T1V3 4N4RCH1ST R3D...

primitive anarchist red

and black viking banners with

one thousand feathered ravens

CL0S3T FVLL 0F 1R0N-0N...

closet full of iron-on

lettered t-shirts with cryptic

messages lost to past thought

majestic crow captured just...

majestic crow captured just

as launching from heat pipe perch,

feathers like middle fingers

ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS SUPPORT PACKAGE

Haha, oh man I hate those SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL ALTERNATIVE RADIO STATION/NPR things, but I guess I’m about to do exactly that, although I don’t feel good about it, at least not on the internet. I’ve built an online presence more than once over the years, and have learned that it’s something you have to constantly attend to, constantly respond, constantly provide free content, click refresh, click refresh… it’s a pretty demanding beast, to be honest. I don’t get as much out of that as physical interactions in the real life. I used to, perhaps because I had less of a sense of self, less confidence in my own identity, so the online attention meant more to me. Now, the effort feels like yelling into a void, and the returns of actual quality interaction are so few and far between, it makes the effort feel not worth it.

Mostly, I’ve been enjoying the One Thousand Feathers pamphlets, which are physical not digital, because I can leave them places, send them to people who I’d like to build connections with, which then gets physical not digital things back to me, and hopefully infuses my life with the little bit of soul I fucking need, because goddamn it feels like it’s not there a lot of times. Problem is these little pamphlets cost me a lot more than I have to print, especially when I – like many of you – am in the slow-draining process of bailing out half of what floods in on me each time I get paid. It’s a process I hope to escape one day, but that’s gonna have to happen through cultural change, not my own financial exploitation. I am not a marketable commodity, and don’t get along with the program well enough to ever be able to be turned into an actual professional writer. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this in following my writing or knowing me, but I’m pretty fucked up, but honest, and good-hearted, and doing what feels right.

So I’m putting this offer up, asking for support of One Thousand Feathers/Rojonekku, to build my physical presence, to print up these pamphlets and leave and send them to all corners of the world. The offer is this: for $100, you get a 12-issue prescription to the One Thousand Feathers (or an extension of a current prescription, if you are already on board). You also get a 12-issue prescription for a friend (or enemy, or anybody really, just another human). You also get to go to MY WORKINGMAN SHOP and select a railroad haiku spike. Being I’ll mail that to you in a flat rate priority box, I’m sure I’ll stuff some additional trinkets and treasure in there as well, but that’s hard to predict or promise. Unfortunately, at this time, I can only offer this $100 support offer to people in America. Overseas shipping of packages is too expensive since they moved to flat rates. If you are non-American and want to subscribe, you can still do so, RIGHT HERE. Normal American prescriptions can be established there as well.

For every one of these support packages I can get, I’ll be able to print one pamphlet. It doesn’t cover mailing them, as I scrape that together however I can. I’m moving the circulation and display of the haiku spikes and photography offline as well, because there’s no real interest in those things digitally. It’s hard to see the power of the railroad spikes unless you actually see them. But I’m hoping putting all these physical things together can entice some digital action in my direction. If you are fluent in Paypal enough, I’d prefer you login to their site, and send the $100 marked as a gift to ravenmack at gmail.com, which will avoid them taking their skim. But if that’s too hard within the digital realm, there’s a button right below you can click too. This post will only be up if I’m back up on printing and need the support to make those things happen in a timely fashion.

We all struggle for validation in what we are doing with ourselves, and unfortunately the online world just flips that struggle into hyperspeed. I can’t promise to give you anything online other than my silly gambleraku poems and pictures, and even that will ebb and flow. But I know if you get this One Thousand Feathers in your hands, and you hold a railroad haiku spike, you’ll be good with what I’m doing. And I’ll be thankful to you for enabling me to spread it, just a little bit more, instead of accumulating it in piles inside my dilapidated house, to be burned or curated – depending on merit – after my death. It’s easy to think we are sharing online, but that sharing doesn’t manifest into physical presences that can hold power and occupy positive psychic space in our lives as easily. Let me occupy a positive psychic space in your life.

And thank you.

Building & Destroying Something Real

Sometimes I do videos because it's all I can really do anymore. The fog is closing in, and I run away as much as I can but unfortunately my day job is in the same place every week so I can only run so far before I have to go back. Thankful for my day job, thankful for a new way once this shit all falls apart.

field jukebox gambleraku number eight

pamphlets galore in this bitch

but ain't no money in it,

oh well - do it for myself

friday doldrums

peacocks ain't buying shit no more
hardly a gamecock left in this cyber-coop
the family van busted & the washing machine don't drain
because of shoddy plastic parts on the inside
(I know, I've dug into them)
but the world keeps spinning

truck acting like it wants to die
seems like this always happens in
the 250K to 285K range
summertime usually
global warming ain't good on manmade creations
including man
but we'll cross that bridge
then burn it, when the time comes
and the world keeps spinning

work malnourishes me
but gives me money
not enough to pay for all the shit
but if I can keep bailing out water
at half the rate it floods in
I might be able to die while on paid vacation
probably camping as I can't afford a cottage
but at least I can afford to call living outside "camping" still
as the stars slide overhead
as the world keeps spinning

wishing for the past's promises is all I have left
promises of success, of people paying
for the things you like to do
of affording to do those things
without begging, harassing, asking over
and over and over and over...
but the world keeps spinning

it's just life, just work
(because that's this culture's ways)
it's just money
(also this culture's way, tied into the first)
it's just the struggle
(always present, regardless of culture)
it's just feeling compelled to scream into the void
hoping for something to echo back
waiting... waiting...
but I am alone on this ledge,
and I have to accept that shit
while the world keeps spinning

sure, motherfuckers don't care
but they never did
and never will
that's why they are motherfuckers
and there's a lot of them
most every face you greet is incomplete
on the inside, and quite the motherfucker
waiting to be unlocked or just triggered
(as most don't have locks any more)
and I can't take it personal,
it's just the world spinning the way it has always spun
be happy to be sensitive enough to feel the spins
stay grounded enough to not get yourself sick at it
no place will ever be stable in the grand scheme
(not even at the top of pyramids)
it is the way of the people flittering around on the surface
as the world keeps spinning

painting and spackling after work
in a rough country house
as youngest sister will have firstborn
in a month or so, thus we make room...
hope the truck doesn't die in transit
hope the nephew is born strong of spirit
hope he is able to grow old, comfortably of spirit
while the world keeps spinning

I am a natural born gamecock
you can see it in my walk
my shoulders have always been heavy
with chips and weight
and sensitivities to the world's spinning ways
gamecocks make noise to mark domain
gamecocks stab spurs at perceived threats
and gamecocks gonna crow
as sure as the sun rises
because the world keeps spinning

one thousand feathers
while the world keeps spinning

railroad haiku spikes

So that magic jukebox video I did - THIS THING - got me like two subscriptions. And yet I continue screaming into the void, for whatever reason, as I am compelled to share these pieces of actual fact with you...
#1: I have two new One Thousand Feathers pamphlets to print (#7, which is a Recession Proof II; and #8, which is a new flavor called Pissing In Babylon's Wind I). This costs me at the printer about $130, then at the post office about $45.
#2: In my real life, I have no extra income. Shit I don't even have like "gas money" income by the time I get close to my next paycheck.
#3: I do have railroad haiku spikes galore, which you can see here - HAIKU RAILROAD SPIKES . Each of those has a link to my Workingman Etsy that you can purchase them through. But if you just straight up pick one and paypal me direct $70 (mark it as a gift so paypal takes less if you can), pick one out, and I'll mail that bama to you, along with a stack of back issues of One Thousand Feathers. If I can slang two or three of these spikes, then I can print two more of these pamphlets.

It fucking sucks to be asking this shit, feels like I'm begging the fucking internet all the time. But what I do is valid, whether it's validated by any official taste-maker externally or not. Fact of the matter is I have a family to support and can't embezzle that much money from our hand-to-mouth bi-weekly existence. If I can sell two spikes, I can embezzle the difference. If I can sell three spikes, I don't have to embezzle shit. And I'll just ignore the money spent in the past on fucking drill bits and shit for doing the railroad spikes, or the cancer I'm probably giving myself breathing in railroad spike dust. We'll let those things just percolate in the periphery. Hand-to-mouth is hand-to-mouth, periphery facts are not present.

Paypal is ravenmack at gmail dot com. If you do it, be sure to specify which spike you want so I can take it off the Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts page.

One Thousand Feathers

One Thousand Feathers is a pamphlet zine, that comes out as my muse dictates. Here is how it works - in the field behind my house I’ve built a viking altar made of white quartz rocks. I’ve also added railroad spikes with various messages carved into them. At one point, I was building and scattering orgone generators (according to Wilhelm Reich’s research) and made a really nice conical one that sits on top of my viking rock altar, pointed towards my house. Additionally there is a white oak in the woods, an oak over top the house itself, and a red maple down in the field that form a trinity of old ass trees on my property. There is a force field between them. My wife and her Owlcraft Healing Ways herbal school have created a walking path through the woods around the white oak back there. We live in a dilapidated but beautiful house underneath the front oak. And my viking altar sits in the shade of the red maple down in the field. Additionally, I stored a broken jukebox on the front porch of the house for about six years, which recently I moved down underneath the red maple in the field, in fact plugging the electrical cord into a root of the tree. What this has created is a situation where I can walk our woodsland path, think things, sit in the house, think things, and go to my viking altar, and think things. They circulate between the three trees forming a psychic protectorate over our Bird Tribe Compound, and get absorbed into the orgone generator down in the field. Then I put blank 11x17 sheets of cardstock into the broken jukebox plugged into the red maple tree down in the field. Usually, after a few days, a new One Thousand Feathers zine will be in the jukebox. Lately though, the field has been hyper-charged, and I am finding more of them than ever (four in the last ten days). This means two things: one, there is awesome shit to read all of a sudden, and two, I have to print them. I print them at limited runs of 500 per pamphlet (and also don’t give a fuck if you print thousands - these are ideas wild harvested from the sky that my thoughts fermented - no one owns them, only assholes “own” things). But I figured I should offer people the chance to get these things mailed to them without hassle (unless you consider the government monitoring the fact you’re on a mailing list from me a hassle... lol). So here is a thing - for a $20 subscription, you will get 12 issues of One Thousand Feathers. They are mailed in pairs, and your subscription will start with the next printed ones. Old issues are available at THIS PAGE (as well as distribution boxes for people who distribute zines and shit). That is America pricing. If you not in America, it is $30. If you already receive the pamphlets as part of original kickstarter funding, don’t sweat it, you’re already getting zines. But consider buying my shit for your friends if you enjoy it. Or honestly, like I said, copy it for them. But I’m having a hard time keeping up with funneling funds out of my family’s dwindling budget for all the new shit showing up in the magic jukebox down in the field.

FOR ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS SUBSCRIPTIONS CLICK BELOW DONATE BUTTON

At this point I have the following ready to print, fresh out the jukebox:
ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS THE FIVE aka FREESTYLE SONNETS I
ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS THE SIX aka NAKED POLAROIDS I
ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS THE SEVEN aka RECESSION PROOF II
ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS THE EIGHT aka RECESSION PROOF III
And pretty much anything you buy art of zine-wise on THIS SITE is gonna go right back into me doing more art or zines. I ain't making no money, only crazy shit.
Actually, let's get blunted here. I need to sell 16 MORE SUBSCRIPTIONS (out of 20) to do this current printing batch that is stacked up from the magic jukebox, so I'm gonna just randomly select 2 of those 20 to get a haiku railroad spike. Just for the fuck of it.

Hand-to-Hand Haiku Tournaments a-coming

Hey great news, as I've found two local venues to commit to at least one and hopefully four Hand-to-Hand Haiku tournaments/Rojonekku Workingman readings for this year of our existence 2013, though we sort of already existed before the odometer started rolling. And both venues will be hosting their first events this month!

On Friday, April 19, around 7:00 pm or so, at Green Willow Farm, a few miles east of Charlottesville on Milton Road, we'll be holding a Hand-to-Hand Haiku tournament/Rojonekku reading on the theme of Family Traditions. Basically the theme is just a suggestion; if you come with haiku in hand they can be about whatever feels right (or wrong) to you. Thanks to Patty at Green Willow Farm, we seem committed to four events this year, roughly every two months or so, and we hope to set it off with a nice one this month. There's a $3 suggested donation, to benefit Green Willow Farm, and there will be some light refreshments (probably cornbread and beer) available, and 1000 Feathers tracts for the taking. Contact rojonekku at gmail dot com for more info, or comment below. Parking here is a little limited, so directions will not be made super-public, but I encourage you to come in packs of eager jibber-jabberers of short poems. I'll be sharing some material, including from upcoming print projects, and hosting the festivities like Mr. Rourke at Fantasy Island, so bring the midgets (meaning kids are cool).

Then on Saturday, April 27, at 7:00 pm, at Blue Padma Yoga in Scottsville, at the corner of Valley and Main, by all the restaurants, we'll be hosting the first public Hand-to-Hand Haiku tournament in my hometown, with the theme of Embracing the Spirit of the River. There will be a $3 suggested donation at this event as well, benefitting Blue Padma (I don't believe in money). I will be reading a slightly cleansed version of my tale of the Great Willie Young & the River People, as well as haiku from my forthcoming 1000 Feathers collection called Beerbox Haiku, and have 1000 Feathers tracts available as well. I hope to have four events at Blue Padma this year, and am very excited to make my chaotic beauty more known to my local community in our quiet little river town. Again, if you are interested in competing or attending or whatever, contact rojonekku at gmail dot com. Light refreshments will be available (cornbread and maybe beer) and you will be expected to take your shoes off so as to not muss up the yoga floor, so wear some chill ass socks.

Below is an in-depth explanation of how the Hand-to-Hand Haiku Tournament works, and what to expect, as a participant, judge, or innocent bystander. And it should be assumed that my fool ass will try to keep things lively. I look forward to seeing old and new faces, connecting different circles together, and spreading the joy of fighting a boring ass world with some live ass word play!

Hand-to-hand haiku is an actual thing that has existed in various forms as an offshoot of poetry slams for over a decade, but I am bringing it to the here and now wherever my chaos tornado spins because it is a thing I wish was happening all the time on every street corner around barrel and pallet fires so that I could take part. So I guess I will emcee the affair and create its existence locally.

WHAT HAND-TO-HAND HAIKU ENTAILS

A hand-to-hand haiku battle works as a single-elimination tournament, meaning eight people start out in one-on-one matches, where one winner advances to the next round, with eight going down to four, then four down to two, and so on. Thus, there will be four first round battles, two semifinal battles between first round winners, then a final showdown between the two semifinal winners. For our purposes, the first round will be a best of 5, semifinals will be a best of 7, and the finals will be a best of 11.

What does that “best of” mean, and how does that work? Well, that’s easy. There will be three judges pre-selected for the evening’s festivities. They will have two flags (different ones obviously, we’ll assume red and blue for ease of explanation). In each match-up, one competitor will have a red flag, and the other a blue flag. Red flag reads a haiku first, then blue, then after a brief moment of thought, the three judges, who hold both flags, raise the flag of who won that round, in their on-the-spot opinion. Whichever flag a majority of judges raises is considered the winner of that round, meaning if two out of three judges say blue, then blue wins the first round, and is up 1 to 0. Loser of any round reads first the next round, so red would read a second haiku, followed by blue, followed by judges’ decision, and so on, until one of the first round competitors wins 3 rounds. At most this would need 5 rounds to decide, thus it is called a best-of-5. The same process is repeated, but with more rounds, for the semifinals and finals.

This means for all people reading haiku, you may need up to 23 different haiku, in the off-chance the first round, the semifinals, and finals all go to their maximum amount of rounds, and that you advance accordingly. Thus, I say you need a minimum of 23 haiku, although if you are eliminated early or win rounds quickly, most likely very few of you will actually use 23 haiku, perhaps even using as few as 3. No worries; save what you wrote for the next one.

Here is the thing though: you select which haiku you read for each round, rather than reading them in a set order, so to have a larger, more varied arsenal of haiku gives yourself the freedom to choose ones that might fit your opponent or the moment more easily, to tap into the flow of the evening, or which one you would assume might strike a favorable mood with the judges. I look at it as each haiku is an arrow, and the more arrows you have in hand, the more likely you are able to find a sharp one. So come equipped as you see fit.

On a personal aside, as a man who has literally written several thousand haiku over the past decade, a method I use is writing them one per index card. This is a good method for a hand-to-hand haiku battle, as you can have your handful of index cards, mark out ones you use, and shuffle them around and use them accordingly. Just a tip; you can use it or ignore it as you see fit.

WHAT ABOUT HAIKU?

Ah yes, the terribly pretentious question us westerners are forced to ask ourselves with regards to a Japanese literary tradition based on a language of characters while we speak syllables. Haiku traditionally was tied to the seasons, and the most common western translation has been a three-line poem of five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables, which is often times seen as the truest replication of the Japanese poem. For the sake of our Hand-to-Hand Haiku purposes, to keep everybody on even ground, we are going to go with this. Now somebody may say, “Wait, counting syllables goes against what haiku actually is, Raven Mack!” Well, let me tell you, I know this form on a deep and personal level, and could tell you that haiku is not even a poetic form on its own, but is part of a larger group form of poetry called renga where the first part was called hokku and became the title of famous renga poems, thus it became its own thing as literary time passed. So haiku is not even technically what the hell it is supposed to be. So for all haiku traditionalists insulted at counting syllables, once you are holding mass parties where groups of people compose poems as a group with 100 verses per poem, you can hold your complaints to yourself. We cannot accept part of a tradition but pretend the rest doesn’t exist and call ourselves traditionalists. I mean, we could, and in fact that’s what most people do, but I’m not supporting that.

So for our sake, our haiku will be three-line poems, preferably of 5-syllables, 7-syllables, and 5-syllables. I will not count them though, and if you feel overly confined by this structure (form is good for you though), you can stretch the definition of haiku to mean a short poem of 17-syllables (or less).

Also, traditionally, these have been tied to the seasons, or nature, but I regard the act of haiku as more a meditation or habit of observation, which means all the fucked up parts of the world made by man are as natural as nature, and more than perfect for haiku. You can go traditional or you can go with observing the world around you or you can go experimental. Whatever’s clever.

And obviously, you should write your own haiku. If you have competed before in a different Rojonekku Hand-to-Hand tournament, you're expected to come with fresh material. Obviously there is no haiku police who will count syllables or be like, "Didn't she read that one before?" We, as the viewing community, will police ourselves, so if you are in the crowd at an event and it seems someone's gone long on syllables or repeating themselves, I encourage you to chatter amongst yourselves about it to create that uncomfortable buzz thing that happens in public events. If the competitor repeats these shady activities, hopefully the buzz will turn to outright booing and jeering. In fact, unlike your standard poetry reading, I encourage the crowd to make noise and respond. This is not to be a silent awe affair.

BUT HOW WILL THESE BE JUDGED?

A valid question, as none of us wants to be judged, and yet judges will be involved. Honestly, there is no right or wrong way to pick a winner, and this method will always be subjective. Always. But I am going to have three judges, and attempt to curate each of them from a different angle of cultural sensibilities. Judges’ decisions will be final, and also subjective, so never take it personally. This is meant to be fun, and will be fun, so nobody needs to get all, “Damn, why wasn’t my eternal creativity of poetic greatness not properly recognized in this damn hand-to-hand haiku thing? This is bullshit!”

Judges: You will judge as you feel appropriate. Like I mentioned above, I’ll pick you because I'm thinking you'll observe from a certain perspective, but I might be completely off on judging your personality, so feel free to toss that aside completely and just go with your heart. In fact, the whole point of haiku is to go with your heart, and this whole nonsense endeavor of a tournament is meant to motivate people to go with what’s in their heart, not worry and become anxious.

SO WHAT DO WE WIN?

Winner of the night’s tournament will receive the accolades of an adoring attending public, and I'm sure I'll find something from the Bird Tribe compound to show my gratitude to you as well. But don't expect anything in particular, or at all, because one never can predict what I'll do.

Speaking of which, as part of hosting the festivities, I'll share some of my own writing, or unique perspective, or perhaps just talk about what I've been cooking up in the kitchen. The entire motivation behind Rojonekku WFA (Word Fighting Arts) is to battle the complacency of routine life with words, and this means not just books or printed matter but stories and jokes and strange tales from stranger places and just everything and anything to be honest.

So that is how the Hand-to-Hand Haiku Tournament works. If you are interested in participating - which I hope you will be - contact me at rojonekku at gmail dot com. Even though this is a slam poetry tradition, my goal with this is to bring different styles of poets from different backgrounds into a mutually accepted format, and interact. Then we cross-pollinate each other, and everything will taste better.

ROJONEKKU BLOWOUT

So one of our bank card numbers got hijacked by the Costa Rican mafia or something, and we got frauded of a few hundred dollars. The fraudbot people were like, "It's flagged, and it'll be back in 3 to 10 days." I guess for some people that's chill, it'll work out, but for us here at the Bird Tribe that sort of takes us away from "Hey, pick up some milk on the way home," to "Lolol I hope we have something awesome left in the freezer to eat for dinner." (Which we do, by the way, so we're not starving, but stay out of the freezer on my front porch.)
But here's the deal - next week is my birthday, and now we're broke as fuck. So I'm having a
BLOWOUT SALE AT WORKINGMAN ETSY
where you buy some of that totally awesome and spiritually enriching shit, and put in the code 27225 and you'll get 20% off. In case you are wondering, "Why 27225? That's kinda random," it's not random at all. On a phone, 27225 is how you spell Crack, and I told my wife, I've got everything I want, so really all I'd want to do is have like two days alone in a shitty hotel smoking all the crack I could want. It's been two years since I quit drinking, and like seven since I last smoked a rock, so I just want to get fucking high as fuck, to where my toenails have that NYYYYYYYYAAAAHHHHHHH buzzing sound in them from being so wacked out on crudely altered chemical cocaine chunks.
And hey motherfuckers, did you even know I have
ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS ZINES
too? Them motherfuckers are awesome. I mean, I know you're all on the internet and think that's the way the world is, but let me put some realness back into your mailbox one time right quick. You paypal me $20 (on the sidebar to the right) and I'll stuff a priority box full of zines and ship them to your ass, to share with your friends, win over anarchist viking women, and destroy obedient pavlovbots in Wal-Mart parking lots.
Seriously though, I'm 'bout to be broke on my 40th birthday. With no fucking crack to smoke.

February the One

Look I could tell you a bunch of shit and do a blogger as the old folks say and entertain you but really this shit gets trifling. There's thirty billion thousand words on this site and I get very little satisfaction from its existence but I hope it plants seeds with the like-minded. Cyber world starting to seem like the barbed wire to me just invisible but poking at my brain.

So instead let me just share with you - random four people who make up the consistent basis of my site traffic - the fact that I'm not writing shit online much at all anymore. I fuck around with the twitters because I can't write at work clearly (due to cyber shit in my brain) so use the twitters to gibber. But I reclaim my humanity through my art, which is available at my Workingman Etsy page and is all some powerful shit when you hold it and stand next to it and feel it in real life. I don't give a fuck about money and don't translate that to success at all as I realize I'm the most successful writer I know but have only made about $639 my entire life from writing. But the fact is, as the Rebel INS once said, cash rules everything around me, so if you tell your friends who buy art shit about my art shit and then they buy art shit from me, it helps me to feel less oppressed by this cruel and broken economic industry system we are all trapped inside of. Just saying.

Also there are the One Thousand Feathers zines which seem to exist in a place unknown by all. These things are real as fuck, and great bedside/toiletside/whateverside... you know what, if you read this site you know what the fuck the deal is. Tell people, because I quit Facebook, I quit self-hype, I don't understand that shit. I just do shit. If you feel like it, tell people; if you don't whatever. But the more this mental compost spreads and fertilizes and gives fruit back to me through others own compost and fertilized craziness, the better we'll all be. For real.
Also, of note, no more beerbox haiku on the site. Took it down, put it in chronological order, added the unpublished ones, writing an intro, putting it out in the next month with some dope ass art too. Looking to do readings. Will be doing one March 1st in Philadelphia, and we'll build from there. Hit me up if you got a spot that can host the controlled chaos. Unfuck the world.

January IV

I do not know if anybody actually sees this website or if it's just robots that crawl through and make the artificial numbers even more artificial. Sometimes I think we are no longer a civilization but just robots talking robot to other robots. But as you can see from above, I have chickens. they keep me grounded, as they are ground birds - except many days I don't even see them because I sit at a desk in the middle of a ridiculous stack of bricks and do whatever it is I do that I get paid for, which ultimately leaves me barely hanging on financially, and suffering spiritually. What the fuck man? Anyways, here are some interaction-inducing things hopefully...

This is my actual home. At the corner upstairs closest to this picture is a huge loft I built for my oldest. The other children sleep up there on that floor as well, Little House on the Prairie style. Downstairs I scribble gambleraku graffiti scrolls. I am going to start sending gambleraku graffiti scrolls to whoever initiates or contributes some interesting discussion in the comments to each post on the blog, over the course of the next month or year or however long it takes. That begins with this post. I will do this forty times, because I am about to turn forty and because I do not trust the internet as much as I trust real things, so I am hoping to encourage real thing interactions with internet fuckers like yourself.

This is an actual milk crate that is my lucky milk crate. I am not lying either. It is my favorite of all the ones I have. I put my dilapidated laptop on it and write in the back yard. I do my One Thousand Feathers zine upon it, which nobody buys because A) who the fuck buys a zine in 2013? and B) who the fuck actually knows this even exists? But I am going to start giving them shits out in batches on my Twitter (@SSVa_Raven) because if they just sit around in piles it is going to make me feel stupider than I already feel.

And that is the way the neurons impulse this week. Have a glorious day.

River Dip #1

Almost didn't because I felt lazy or fighting off cold or something or other, but did end up dip dip diving into the dirty James River this afternoon. The ol' lady laid out, fighting off the ironic anemias, but my eldest kid did the soul baptism to start a new year as well. Water was cold (naturally) but air was nice, heart muscles clenched up for a brief minute and I wasn't sure if I was bound to die a Polish immigrant death or not, but my body settled and lungs started working. It was good.
I turn 40 this year so am hoping for 40 dips in the river (at least), spaced appropriately, so as to utilize winter water to keep the Viking Blood pulling to the top. I already notice a difference in my ability to enjoy cold, which will be beneficial should I have to sleep outside in the coming years I guess (even with global warming, temp. extremes will occur).
I set some goals for the year, and since most were attached to quantities, which I am trying to replace with quality attitudes in my life, there's no need to recap those goals specifically. But in a nutshell, it is like so:
#1) distribute my paper words more AS SEEN HERE, which is a relatively new thing kickstarted by the fine people of Earth this past month. I had planned on writing like 10 of these in my week off from work, but holidaze got in the way, and honestly I've been writing more poetry than anything else the past few weeks, which is odd. Still though, this will be my first means of expression, because I am disillusioned with the power of the internet (or betrayed is probably more appropriate, lying fuckers, always trying to squeeze dollars out of a motherfucker). And related to this is...
#2) do more readings. I am hoping to start a series in the Charlottesville area in the coming month, and hopefully can line up a similar less regular thing in Richmond. Additionally, there are a number of areas people have said, "Hey, we can do that here," or "I've got a place, let's do this," but you know how people are - when you actually want to do something you find out they are all ideas without many actions. Real shit is hard to find. But I plan on riding buses regularly for weekend tours to do readings. If you know a place or set up readings, or whatever, let me know. Looking to do Friday/Saturdays within bus trip of each other, and hopefully the cheap ass budget buses go wherever the fuck you are at.
#3) slang these haiku spikes AS SEEN HERE, which the more I have them around the more amazing they are. These motherfuckers got power, ain't no doubt about it. I hope to eventually be spending all non-bus-riding weekends carving these things in the back yard and tearing up power tools. (There's photographies on that store too, so scope that shit. Taught myself how to cut mats freehand and everything. Country livin' bitch, you either learn to do it or you don't get it done.)
#4) writing more sonnets. I've laid out a number of crowns of sonnets, that I'd like to get started on because I fear like the Beerbox Haiku project from previous, this will probably be a three to five year process to do what I'm thinking of doing. That being said, I've definitely shifted into sonnet mode for whatever reason, settling with the three rhymed quatrains, then rhyming couplet to close out, all lines 12-syllables (Alexandrine) rather than standardly popular 10-syllables (aka Shakespearan style), because honestly, fuck ten syllables. Twelve has a much better rhythm to me, you can split it into sixes if you want to do internal rhymes as well like a decent battle rapper would, and even split those sixes into threes if you want to go buckwild and do internal linguistic patterns within the rhyme scheme. I don't necessarily do that, but I also don't necessarily don't. In fact, lately when I am bored, I write a "freestyle" sonnet, which means I just sit down and do that shit. I can do 'em in roughly 20 minutes. They ain't time-loved classics, but they have proper syllable/rhyme schemes, follow a story, play with words, and that's probably not normal "casual" behavior for people. Hopefully, I amass a fat stack of these things this year, somewhere in the triple digits. Knowing me, I might get close to 100, or I might write 450. Hard to fucking say.
#5) make music again. Have not made music in a long minute, mostly because I lost the partnerships to do so, one to distance and the other to severing the ties that bind. Amping myself up to post a song a day in February, when I actually do turn 40, which will cover the shit I've done in my life musically (which isn't much), but will hopefully trigger me making some new shit in the next few weeks. I dug out all the broken parts of my haphazard recording system, and everything seems to still be there, other than needing a new pair of dollar store pantyhose for the twisted coathanger spit guard I clip onto my cheap ass mic. Lo-fi til I die, y'all.

A new year really ain't nothing but flipping an old set of calendar boxes for a new set, but still, I hope it brings to you hope for new beginnings and burning out old clutter and cutting those ties that bind. We had a fire today in the yard and burned up all the Christmas greenery we had used for decorating the holidays - cedar twigs and holly and all that shit - and it flamed up white and bright and wild like evergreens do, and it felt pretty crazy. Definitely some letting go of the old bullshit involved, and moving into the new real. I've felt large strides of personal growth the past two years, as has my ol' lady, and our paths are definitely intertwined beyond just being the Bird Tribe family together. Our ultimate purposes have not fully presented themselves, but I'm willing to keep pushing at it, and excited to see it unfold.
If you are a regular follower of this site or my bullshit over the years, I hope we get to connect face-to-face this year. Let's build. And let's destroy. Unfuck the World.

new goings ons in cyberlands

Hi regular purveyor of fine literary gobbledy-gook, as well as random casual wander-thru-er. I have added a pair of links at the sidebar there that are places you can now purchase the One Thousand Feather zines as well as wacky railroad spikes & junkyard photographies. Perhaps you will consider these things as worthwhile additions to your various lifestyles. Perhaps you won't. Ultimately it is your choice. Ultimately all things are your choice, although not really when you consider the neuroscience triggers often set off by popular advertising as well as the overall numbing effect of electromagnetic pollution. But you still kind of have a little choice in things, and these items I offer upon you are all ideally suited to further help you have more choice amidst the buzzing robot world trying to destroy our dirty animal minds.
So hey, say something in the comments... It helps me waste time when I am watching the minute hands crawl around the same clockface during the daytime.

One Thousand Feathers winding down, explaining my madness

So the ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS KICKSTARTER, which has been wildly more successful than I ever thought, is winding down today. To be clear, I'm using each $100 to support one issue of this thing, so all the extra money is just supporting more of this craziness, not just lining my coffers with gold. Anyways, I showed my junkyard photographies and railroad spike haikus this weekend at a show, and response was strong. I wrote up an explanation of my different projects to have as a one-sheet explanation for folks at that show, and it seems like a pretty good explanation of what the fuck I am doing in my various ways so I am putting it up here for you to peruse and maybe support my kickstarter today. Thanks. Let's unfuck some shit down.

ROJONEKKU WORD FIGHTING ARTS

Rojonekku is a style of word fighting arts taught by me, Raven McMillian (aka Raven Mack) to various demographics of the Universal Underclass as a means of empowerment. A general socio-economic condition of the Universal Underclass is local legislations usually make illegal normal underclass means of survival, thus creating outlaws through normal living. The goal of Rojonekku is to channel these natural Universal Underclass psychologies and genetics into word fighting styles that are generally overlooked by local legislative bodies, who prefer to use the Freedom Charade Technique to keep the masses placated. Thus, word fighting can be disseminated throughout, in traditional means as well as through the use of newer developing social media technologies, without literally causing imprisonment.

I was born from trash psychologies and genetics, and it has taken me hard uphill work for most of my nearly 40 years to recycle myself into a positive enough force to not self-destruct, much less help others who come from similar backgrounds gain power over their lives, even if nowhere else other than the realm of the human word clusters that live inside our heads. When the world around you is a prison, sometimes literal and sometimes metaphorical, it’s probably a good idea to unlock the inner-worlds which go as forever as outer space. Big picture of the forest, that’s the goal of Rojonekku.

Inside that forest though, each tree cannot be a grandiose utopian dream. For the Universal Underclasses, life is hard work. So the trees of Rojonekku – the lessons I use with my students, the forms of writing we share with each other, the forms of expression you see here before you – they are all  work. There is dirt and grime and struggle in all of it, because that is what we come from. And instead of feeling ashamed of this dirt and grime and struggle etched into our bloodlines and scarring our insides, we need to embrace it, get the good out of it, and discard the bad. This is what I was born into, so beyond my choice, that is what my life’s work must be.

BEERBOX HAIKU PROJECT

I had for years kept this box full of scraps of magazines cut to the same size, for so long I can’t even remember why. I think it used to be to glue into a writing trigger notebook, but then it became its own thing. At some other point, while deeply immersed in the rewarding life of being an hourly housepainter, I fell in love with haiku again and decided, “I shall write a thousand.” So I did, each one on its own notecard. As they started to pile up, I wanted to highlight my favorites, but all I had laying around was the box full of magazine pictures, as well as empty 12-pack boxes from my family’s recycling bin. So in the haphazard way, I started making Beerbox Haiku Plates.

Eventually, the plates piled up themselves, so I decided to put them together as wall-hangings in groups of three plates. All told, 1000 haiku (only 900 of which were used on boxes), 225 empty 12-pack boxes (most of which, unfortunately, I probably drank on my own, which in itself is 2700 beers), 75 total wall-hangings, not to mention the thousands of magazines pilfered for images over the years. I am glad to say that at this point in my life I no longer self-medicate with factory alcohol products, but piling these haiku up in such a literal sense around me in my life was an important step in moving beyond the self-medication/destruction tornado many Universal Underclass people like myself get stuck inside of.

JUNKYARD PHOTOGRAPHIES

Haiku, being quick observational flashes, indirectly led me to starting to take pictures of random roadside detritus along my life’s meandering path. At first this was with a Polaroid, where I just took pictures of old cars. But then Polaroid stopped making Polaroid film, and this became a hot commodity amongst artsy types, thus pricing me out of that realm. It was sort of cutting it close before they stopped making it, but I enjoyed the dirty effect of Polaroids enough to justify it to myself. Once prices went black market, I couldn’t.

We had multiple family digital cameras, so I took the older one, which has always had a nice feel to it to me. It’s been dropped a number of times so has a cracked bottom where the batteries/card are held in, and has to be duct-taped together to keep the connection working. Thus it looks like a homemade bomb. I bought a new digital Polaroid camera one time, thinking it would continue the Polaroid lineage, but it failed to match the simple megapixel beauty of the older digital camera. In fact, over time I have tried two other newer, better digital cameras, one even suggested by an actual protographer friend, but none of them gave me the happiness of the old ones weird settings. These pictures started going up on my website one a day, and I would write a gambleraku poem to go with them, and then they just started being their own thing. It’s a very meditative experience for me, to just wander around the back sides of the American Façade and take pictures of beautiful blight.

GAMBLERAKU GRAFFITI SCROLLS

Gambleraku is a three-line form of poetry with 7-syllables in each line I started writing because I was feeling confined by the 5-7-5 standard westernized haiku structure, but do not support free form poetry, as it is not workmanlike. Free form poetry is vacation from constraints, and my life is all about constraints for the most part. My constraints have constraints. But I started tinkering with the 7-7-7 structure and enjoyed the flow of it, to use with my pictures I put on online. Somewhere along the way I stopped putting them online, but then I found a roll of receipt paper for a gas pump, and thought, “Wow, it would be fun to turn this into a graffiti scroll.” So I am, little by little.

HAIKU RAILROAD SPIKES

Carving haiku into railroad spikes came to me as a great modern recreation of the work of my favorite rapper – T’ang era Chinese rapper Hanshan, who was a mountain hermit and scribbled poems into cliffs and caves. Where I wander, there are no cliffs and few caves, but there are tons of railroad spikes. These spikes are wild harvested from throughout Virginia, wiped down with vinegar, and then a haiku I’ve written is painfully carved into them, using an industrial back yard method that is loud and physical and really great. These haiku are only used for the spike they are carved on, then gone, so not only are no two alike, but that haiku is unique to that spike.

Additionally, railroad spikes are considered powerful objects in southern hoodoo magic, often used to bless or protect properties. The spikes are infused with the energy of labor, and for me also the spirit of the railroad which has always plucked an outlaw nerve in American history. With this southern hoodoo magic tradition in mind, where the spikes were placed at the corners of a house or property with the pointed edge of the top pointed inwards, I carve the haiku in such that the side with the pointed top edge is blank, and can thus be pointed in the direction you need the haiku to shoot. Conceivably, these haiku spikes could be driven into the ground with the point properly directed, and the energy and spirit of the haiku would shoot in that direction. There are aspects to Wilhelm Reich’s theory on orgone energy involved here as well, and honestly I am afraid to really explain all that these haiku spikes mean for fear of weakening their magic.

I am available for railroad spikes commission work for individuals or properties on a larger scale. This can mean either special requests, or a visit to your land or home, learning its history and your history with it, getting a personal sense of the place, and composing and carving original haiku in relation to the place. These are powerful objects, either for marking a space, or for helping heal a place from past activities.

ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS

One Thousand Feathers is a pamphlet project I’ve recently started that will involve the creation and dissemination of one thousand small literature tracts over the course of the rest of my life. Having a father and a father’s father who both died in their mid-40s, mostly from being caught in that self-medication/destruction tornado that afflicts the Universal Underclass, this project is a means for me to envision and shape the second half of my life beyond the age of 40. This is a portion of my life that I honestly did not believe would exist until recently, and I am excited to see how it unfolds. You can learn more about how to make it unfold, literally inside your hands, as it progresses, online.

CONTACT

Further information about all of these projects, or questions, request, or commissions can be done at www.ravenmillian.com (web), ravenmack@gmail.com (email), PO Box 270 Scottsville VA 24590 (mail), @SSVa_Raven (twitter), Rojonekku (google), or along the back roads of Virginia (life). Thanks for your interest and support.

an interview with RVA Mag

Hey, I did done an Interview with RVA Magazine and perhaps you will find amusing things or insight into my personal nonsense or maybe you'll just find things to mock, who knows? That is the nature of the cybernet. I know this though - you won't make any hilarious animated gifs from it.

Refractions on a Broken Window

This my Kickstarter bitches - ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS - so git on up with the git down, brother. (By the way, I call people "brother" all the time now, but am very careful to say "brother" like a middle-aged black dude and not like an "I only eat organic" white dude. Those guys are very in-organic. Brother.)