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.
Showing posts with label Revolt of the Cockroach People. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revolt of the Cockroach People. Show all posts

Thursday, July 2

SONG OF THE DAY: Orosi



There’s a lot of talk about the removal of dumbass Confederate monuments that suggests if you don’t have shit like that around, you’ll forget history. The obvious flaw in this is most folks supporting Confederate monuments already don’t remember the actual history of the Confederacy. On top of this, the histories we’re told are so often skewed from the perspective of the victors, even in the context of progressive histories. As an example, until digging deeper into the things this “Orosi” song talked about, I had no idea about the Filipino farm workers who initiated the grape protests back in the ‘60s, for better working conditions for farm workers. Now Orosi is central California, but mostly populated with Filipino people who have resided in the area after migration related to farming jobs. The small city is actually majority Filipino. The Delano grape strikes happened in the same region, about an hour south of Orosi, back in the ‘60s, and were started by a group of Filipino farm workers, who eventually called on Cesar Chavez to aid in their movement. Chavez initially refused, because he didn’t think they had the money to support their own movement’s goals, but other members of the group Chavez was head of forced him to take part, and he led a long distance walk to the California state capitol in support of the grape workers. I knew about Cesar Chavez, but only recently realized he was involved in outing people as Communists, that he wasn’t supportive of outside movements too easily that didn’t support his own image, and had quite a cult of personality that grew up around himself, which he used to his benefit. Nothing is simple and straightforward, not even resistance to obvious bullshit like the current American empire as it holds itself up in the highest positions. But even dissecting the patriarchal elements to black resistance or the inequality involved in white women’s feminism is necessary shit, because we’ve got a whole slew of shit woven into our society that fucks people up and holds them down. Many people we’d prop up on pedestals, literally, even by right now’s standards, are gonna end up flawed down the road. Cesar Chavez is a good example of that. Doesn’t mean what he did accomplish wasn’t good.
The same is true of individuals. I’m a white dude. I also do not necessarily have the economic benefits born to me the average white dude would have. But I also do benefit from outsider perspectives judging me as a white dude in many situations, and probably wouldn’t have the good job I have now if I wasn’t a white dude. I’ve done fucked up shit in the past, far from perfect, and have done a lot of work to try and be a better human being. I’m still not perfect, and still got shit I need to be better about, and past bullshit I need to try and heal myself over so it doesn’t keep coming back up as a negative ripple in my here and now. But ain’t nobody perfect that’s truly human. I’m gonna allow others the room to grow, gonna try my best not to judge nobody unless they’re so over the top in militantly enforcing their beliefs on others that don’t seem right that I have to judge them, and either keep a distance or stand against as protection for myself and others. It’s a lot of shit shifting rapidly right now, which is such a good thing to see, and be a part of and experience. It’s historic. But if we keep growing as humanity, I’d expect sixty years from now, even some of what we’re seeing today is gonna seem like bullshit in retrospect. That’s good. That’s hopefully gonna be a sign of continuous growth towards betterment.
By the way if you don’t know by now, you should support Bambu on Bandcamp. Dude’s one of the top political MCs there is. I’m anxiously awaiting Exrcising A Demon: Article III, even if it don’t exist yet.

Sunday, June 28

SONG OF THE DAY: Richmond State of Mind


It’s been amazing to see the past month of community actions in Richmond, and how an initial night of protesting police brutality in the name of George Floyd, which had the police bust up the protests with militarized chemical responses, caused a break-up of the protest which wandered through the city, and sowed seeds of ongoing resistance. I was awake all night following online, and at 4 am decided to just ride up to see it with the sunrise, and take pictures of the statues, as I assumed they’d scrub it away immediately. By sunrise, there was already volunteer guards outside the Museum of the Confederacy, which had been set on fire, but hadn’t burned up nearly as much as I had hoped. I went down Monument and saw the graffiti’s first layer, none of it shocking to me, all of it made sense to me. The noose draped around Jeff Davis’s head on that monument (which is now toppled) was a nice contextual touch. Once I got downtown, where the CVS was still on fire, and saw the debris on Broad, it really told the story. Shook ones took pictures of broken glass, shaking their head at upmarked sneaker stores getting looted, as if they served the community in any deep essential way. But for me, what really told the story was the level of tear gas canisters and rubber bullet debris on the street. It was like trees shedding their leaves in autum, the level of militarized police debris still on Broad that hadn’t been swept up yet to pretend never happened.
They didn’t pressure wash the graffiti away, and there’s been actions every day since, a rotating cast of the people who have been out in the streets, with the Lee Monument now renamed Marcus-David Peters Circle, and having been turned into a community space. I actually happened to wander through again early a week or so ago, like 5 am, sun wasn’t even up all the way and I was the only one there, vibing to the much needed remix to the confederate monument, when I heard a thump, and like five police SUVs and cruisers rolled up, and a shitload of Virginia State Police, all geared up and flashing them big ass cop flashlights everywhere on the monument started moving around. I sidled my way across the street as inconspicuously as possible, not hassled at all by them beyond dirty looks, because I was just a normal ass white man to them. I saw when I got home that later they erected the concrete barriers around it, as it was technically state property, so the state was shutting it down at dark every night.
Every day since, the people have gathered, turning the space into a cookout zone, an open mic, basketball goals and picnic tables have shown up, people occupying a public space for public use, as a metaphysical middle finger to the Lee monument itself, which has just become a deeply layered blend of colorful graffiti. And every evening the police have shown up, armed for riots that aren’t happening, and blasted the people with rubber bullets, flash grenades, and tear gas, daily. The downtown Grace Street Richmond police station has also been turned into a dystopian fortress, with concrete blocks set up in the street, shutting it off, because the city dump trucks they were parking there weren’t doing enough I guess.
All of this is to say, it’s been amazing to see all this happening. Richmond has such a strangely unique history, on the James River where “western civilization” first grew its creeping tendrils on this continent. Richmond was a major landing zone for early African slave trade, and also because of this was the capital of the Confederacy during its brief moment of refusal to recognize all people’s humanity. The energy in this city is unlike any other place I’ve been, and it makes perfect sense that it’s been a space where the protests of the past month have held strong on a daily basis. And though I only lived a quarter of my life in Richmond, it’s always been a strong anchor for most all my life (most all of which has been lived in the James River basin). Folks have been throwing up prayers that those monuments to inhumanity would come down for many many years. And it can’t be forgotten that despite the alleged binary of the Civil War, those who won the war’s flag gets flown alongside the confederate flag by the people of today who are still poisoned by these inhumane philosophies. The fact the state of Virginia actually owned a tiny circle in the city where a confederate monument stood higher than anything around it, in a circular spotlight, is a pretty gross testament to the fact that though the southern states lost the Civil War, the things they believed remained a part of the American institutions that ruled us. You can’t reform rotten foundations.

Tuesday, May 26

SONG OF THE DAY: Until Then



Malcolm X just had a birthday… well obviously he didn’t have it, because he was assassinated a long time back, and I often think about how one of America’s greatest most recent philosopher/thinker/activists was taken from us. He was only 39 at the time of his shooting, and had experienced such rapid political and philosophical growth in his adult years. His pilgrimage to Mecca and visit to Africa had been a pretty impactful period on expanding his outlook as well, and that had only happened in the year before his death. It’s also noteworthy because African nations had just begun to gain independence from colonial rule in that same decade. His influence likely would have extended well beyond just African-American culture, or even just African diasporic culture. It all seems so relevant too because we’ve got the same fucking bullshit going on in America, like we’ve been stuck in this cultural quagmire we can’t escape because nobody’s tried to actually fix any of it. The oft-quoted clip from Malcolm talks about healing, and how healing involves pulling the knife out of someone’s back, and letting them heal the wound, when America hasn’t even acknowledged it put the knife in people, nor pulled it out.
But also always relevant to the discussion of Malcolm, and his assassination, is the divisive techniques of the powerful. That famous pic of Malcolm peeping out the window holding an M1 was done not in reference to the FBI or CIA, but the threat on his life that was presented by Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. Part of Louis Farrakhan’s ascent to power was built off his dedicated resistance to Malcolm. Of course there was quite a bit of collusion between intelligence agencies and police groups back then to fuck up black activists, but if you go pulling the threads of FBI involvement in the Nation of Islam/Malcolm X feud, and even sort of distant preservation of the Nation of Islam, shit gets murky (as all conspiracies do).
Mostly though, I just lament the fact I re-read Malcolm X speeches or essays fairly regularly, most of which composed during the last decade or so of his life. And he never even made 40. Imagining what he could’ve accomplished had he been allowed to continue to grow and develop is a depressing stream of thought. Lots of times, in our American-centric perspective, we tend to lump Malcolm and Martin Luther King Jr. together, but I think about Malcolm with Patrice Lumumba, the brilliant Congolese pan-Africanist, who also was assassinated in 1961. Both these men were not just activists visibly resisting world systems in place, but they were people who had shown rapid growth as thinkers, both of which cut short before they made 40. And definitely relevant as we get into the last stretch of a Presidential Election where two bumbling old ass white dudes compete to not fuck up the worst and become the alleged leader of the alleged free world for another four years, or more. Lolol, anybody who thinks this world system that’s still in place is a good and beneficial one is a goddamn fool.
Anyways, check out this track by Marcel P. Black, conscious Baton Rouge rapper. Sometimes I forget to attach the prose to the song, but figured I’d better today, because Marcel’s a good dude, and he’s got a bandcamp, so you can support dude directly, which is important since nobody can tour or do shows currently.

Wednesday, February 19

Tuesday, October 15

Tuesday, September 24

SONG OF THE DAY: Summer 1984



The 1984 Olympics being held in Los Angeles was used as justification for one of the earliest militarizations of modern police departments, with massive gang sweeps leading up to the event, where many known gang members were rounded up and jailed on various charges that could've been enforced at any point. One should always remember existence can always be deemed illegal, because there's enough laws on the books that any of us can get put in jail should a police state choose to enforce what it wants to enforce. For African-Americans and norteno Latinos, this meant jail at the time, but for many immigrant communities, this meant known gang members (which means they were on gang task force lists, not necessarily known in any other capacity, basically a list police made) got deported back to wherever their family was from, despite many of the alleged gang members not having ever known the place.
For central Americans, this was a huge issue, because a lot of refugees of civil wars and unstable states in those nations, caused by direct and covert US interference, relocated to Southern California, where they found a gang culture that required organizing their own protective gangs. This manufactured new gang members, who were exported back to the native nations of their parents, where gang networks connected tendrils. This also imported the gang problem seen in El Salvador and Honduras from the US to central America, which - thirty-some years later - has become the justification of some alleged invasion of criminal elements which requires giant walls and militarized police forces working covertly in various American cities. The whole thing has been this self-perpetuating cycle that has ultimately depended on the dehumanization of minorities. And in fact, a lot of what is really fucked up about America right now was initiated during the Reagan era.
I find all this interesting because none of this is new, but we have been trained to have such a micro-focus, probably by design because if we have a micro-focus, we are always excited by what's new, instead of content with what already is in our possession. Capitalist economy requires constant dopamine rush of newness. Unfortunately in terms of larger critical thinking, this sort of destroys our ability to see longer term patterns, and instead we focus on the immediate - that somehow Trump is an anomaly that has upset America's prestige, when in actuality he's just a less PR-savvy version of what's been going on constantly for a while.
Police militarization has only gotten stronger since 1984, with surplus weaponry from constant wars, not to mention police just straight up being down with purchasing military style shit, all of which is justified by a war on mysterious terror. What happened in LA in 1984 helped lay the tinder in the metaphysical environment that exploded in the '92 riots, because Rodney King getting beat by the LAPD was not shocking to a lot of residents, nor was the cops getting acquitted. But it was too much to have it all out in the open like that, without giving a fuck. Essentially that's why bourgeois have a problem with Trump era America, is that it's just out in the open without giving a fuck. But Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama all escalated these federal executive powers pretty steadily, without any thought that it could go wrong. They didn't care. They imagined the sustainable growth of executive privilege with no repercussions. Obama had pretty great PR skills, so it's been a big hangover to drop to Trump, but it's really not all that different in terms of what's being done, just the corruption is more open and doesn't give a fuck. More metaphysical tinder is being scattered.
If you are excited by that tinder, and look forward to an explosion, I hope you realize how many of these people out here support the militarization of the police, without question, and have militarized themselves to a large extent. These people don't give a fuck, and when the explosion happens (which it will), I hope people are ready for what that entails. It's gonna be some ugly things happening, and you can't unexperience what you experience. And not everybody can afford therapy either.

Tuesday, April 23

SONG OF THE DAY: Whitey on the Moon



Relating more to Gil Scott-Heron’s lyrics here than the whiteys on the moon, I look forward to a day where our racial analysis in America starts to parse whiteness away from its monolithic cultural superior status, and we can start to see the shades of grey inside the whiteness. While capital letter Whitey has gone to the moon, there’s still a lot of lower case whiteys stuck here on the flat earth, pretending they gonna get a ride on the spaceship. In fact, that whole demographic of lower case whiteys has been capital W (for win) Whitey’s bread and butter since way back in the day. And I don’t say that to absolve poor whites from the dastardly acts and inherent benefit to being white in this society; I say it so that the capital W Whitey can lose their foot soldiers and literal cannon fodder. Even as a white male, at least as the type of white male I am, I can say without a hint of feeling bad, fuck Whitey.
There used to be this journal called Race Traitor, which talked about how the best way culturally-identified white people could dismantle the systemic power of whiteness is to betray that shit. We done got so woke these days, we might have gone back to sleep partially, and you might have an online rabble rouser jump in your shit for trying to do that. But honestly, in all my experiences in life, if you carry yourself in the real world with integrity and don’t be a self-important asshole, most folks gonna end up trusting you to be doing right. Internet moves too fast for real world processing though, and also clouds all truth with multiple fogs of misinformation, so rather than being like “yeah fuck whitey on the moon!” you’d have people arguing that ultimately Whitey getting to the moon was the most important cultural achievement in human history, or that there was no moon landing, or that actually the Annunaki landed on the moon four centuries ago, or I don’t know a million different things. But ultimately the point of this song is this dude’s sister got medical bills out the ass from living in sub-standard conditions, and they going broke just trying to live, while capital W Whitey done not flown all the way to the goddamned moon. That shouldn’t feel like a big W for win necessarily, if you’re leaving behind the majority of humanity to make historical etchmarks for the economic minority.

Friday, January 18

SONG OF THE DAY: We Need Some Money (Live)



Been trying to hype MY PATREON in order to have artistic endeavors supported financially, but the hardest part for me is marketing myself, because I don’t come from an arts supporting tax bracket background. So it becomes an internal jihad question of empathy and entitlement, because I saw a dude with a blue check by his name make a post, which I’m sure he’d say was tongue-in-cheek or not serious (as nothing ever is with entitled people) asking for sponsorship of a trip for five to Las Vegas to go watch some wrestling bullshit. I mean, sure if you can find the rubes dumb enough to support shit like that, go for it. The fucked up thing is at exactly the same time I saw friends posting how their EBT got cut off due to government shutdown, and also saw stories of people’s rent vouchers running out in February, also because of government shutdown, so folks wrestling with hunger and homelessness as real life issues. As I know folks in that position, and have been dependent upon government services at times in both my adult and juvenile life, it’s hard not to feel empathy for that, and see a certain inhumane disconnect to be like “lol send me to Las Vegas to watch fake fights” while motherfuckers out here starving.
Ultimately, this is why I’m horrible at marketing myself, because I know how hard money is to come by, still don’t have it, and know if I get it, hardly none of its gonna ever go to a patreon, simply because even 8 years of stability at the same employer, in terms of multi-generational stability, well I’m at 8 years lol. So the resources remain slim, and yet so much better than a lot of people. I mean, I got food in my cupboard I’m like “nah, I don’t feel like eating that” so it gets pushed to the back. Having known hunger and empty cabinets, I recognize the privilege in that.
So I wrestle with how do I approach people who have extra wealth, who enable the arts, when I’m not that type of person, nor will I likely ever be? And if ultimately I have issue with the system itself which breeds this level of inequality and human disconnect, where your neighbors are struggling and starving, and you’re out here wanting people to give you money to write poetry, I don’t know, I haven’t figured out how to walk that line yet. But I know I need some damn money, and I know others need it too, and I know this shit is broken that we’re living in, broken at the core, y’all can’t blue paint away the internal rot, y’all can’t even green paint it or whatever fuckin’ color fake socialist democrats mark themselves… the shit’s broken. But I also know it’s Friday, and life can’t be all depression and gloom and even revolution gotta be fun. So I’mma throw on some go-go music, after work gonna get my hair cut, might wear a whole fuckin’ Adidas track suit tonight, fuck it, no shirt on too, 20 pounds overweight after holiday slothfulness ass belly hanging out, not giving a fuck. My kids present to me for Christmas was an Adidas track suit, and I ain’t even wore it yet, because hadn’t had no fresh enough heart day to rock it. Maybe I let my brain tell my heart today, “Fuck it heart, I know I keep telling you shit is fucked up, but it’s Friday, you got a three day weekend, so fuck it, let’s lounge.”
If you enable the arts, enable me, please. People support far worse at far higher levels. And if you’re broke perpetually and hate the system like me, let’s tear it up, but not all serious style and recreation of power structures and act like somebody’s gotta be in charge and shit, let’s just tear shit up and have fun and take what we can and then when it’s all gone and we’re like “oh fuck, what now?” we figure out what then. But with go-go drums.

Monday, November 19

SONG OF THE DAY: Night of the Living Baseheads



addiction as function from abuse or trauma, was reading an article claiming science talking about that
but then think of inter-generational trauma and addiction as numbing coping mechanism
but then think about where addiction happens environmentally & how it’s cultured by
our larger poison culture, but then also think about whether these things are chance or not
whether the presentation of crack and heroin and opioids and crystal meth is chance (it is not)
and whether our addiction issues in America are a lack of addressing the traumas
or a perpetuation of traumas continuing to be applied to minority/socioeconomic marginalized
to keep them in the margins, by design, all along

how much late 80s/early 90s hip hop warned us of all these things everybody all of a sudden
feels so fucking proudly woke about in the past four or five years?
how much was that explosion of voice for the voiceless just an unstoppable force because of
previous suppression, and how much was that voice then filtered through
shiny suits and corporate charlatans like puffy and suge, so that the voice of the voiceless
was turned into revenue streams?

fuck America, fuck ppl who think wealthy ppl like jay z or jeff bezos or puffy or are somehow
benevolent and revolutionary. can’t wait for this trauma machine this poison culture factory
to finally burn the fuck down

this is a poem, on the internet, so not a real poem
a data poem, spiked with vitriol for 0s and 1s
rotting you from the inside
you fuckin devils

Friday, November 2

SONG OF THE DAY: Turtle Van


IT’S FRIDAY AND WARM AND MY SEROTONIN FEELIN’ RIGHT AND THE REVOLUTION STILL WON’T BE TELEVISED NOT EVEN ON TINY HANDHELD SCREENS, AND EVEN THOUGH THE WORLD IS FALLING APART IT’S NOT REALLY FALLING APART, JUST LAST GASPS OF EMPIRE WHICH MIGHT TAKE 2 YEARS MIGHT TAKE 20, HARD TO KNOW. BUT YA GOTTA STAY RIGHT, BE HYPE NOT DOWN, GET YOUR BRAIN CHEMISTRY RIGHT, KEEP PEP TO YOUR HEART, FIGHTING THESE DEVILS MEANS FEELING GOOD WHEN THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO SOMETIMES, PUMP THAT MUSIC WITH THE WINDOWS OPEN, SIT ON THE STOOP OUTSIDE, SAY “what’s up brother” TO THAT DUDE WALKING PAST, MAKE DISARMING PLEASANT EYE CONTACT WITH THAT WOMAN WITHOUT FORCING CONVERSATION ON HER, JUST BE A FUCKIN’ RIPPLE OF POSITIVE CHANGE ON THIS CROOKED ASS EARTH, Y’ALL.
For me personally, Stalley helps, at least today. Turtle Van to cross Turtle Island aka Abya Yala aka the Americas. Make 'em great again like the 1300s.


Tuesday, October 30

SONG OF THE DAY: Hip Shake



One of my greatest memories that I don’t really remember because of drugs is doing acid and listening to the actual cassette copy of Exile on Main Street by Pussy Galore that my old roommate had back in the day. To this day, the sounds of this tape sound a way that probably don’t sound right to anybody else, but my personal atomic structure upon this earth is tinged with the experience of that time, which was life altering in the moment.
What we know, despite all claims by scientific method that a universal scientific truth can be determined, is all built upon foundation of experience. We’re living in a hostile time, and people are getting madder and madder at each other about how come other people don’t know what seems obvious. I’m not justifying ignorance, or suggesting turn the other cheek to fascists, because tbh I’m swinging kettlebells every night in preparation of what might be coming up fast. But yo, nobody’s is just automatically born a perfectly formed philosophical entity. In fact, no such thing exists. (Haha, I said “fact”.) But people stay mad at other people, not just the extreme ones (who deserve scorn, because they not even trying to be anything but hateful), but also those on the spectrum not too far off from them. It’s weird to me how groups of people who have openly embraced the concept of a spectrum instead of a binary will all of a sudden apply binary thinking in a situation. The concept of decolonizing our shit is deep and layered and fuck, we got so much work to do.
And at the same time, you still gotta have moments where you smile, where you kick start the serotonin, where you shake your fuckin’ hips and feel free, even if in the confines of a temporary sanctuary you’ve built with a like-minded person or peoples. Serious shit is going on in this world, but you’ll burn out and become useless if you keep it serious around the clock. Life is life, and you gotta keep living, while also fighting the riptide of bullshit.

Tuesday, October 9

Monday, January 29

freestyle sonnet #100: UPON CONTEMPLATING THE ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE WE THE PEOPLE LIMO GETTING SET ON FIRE


Weeds consume incomplete concrete inhumane grid 
deigned to keep the peace through orderly division 
of paths, but police can't keep track all they forebid, 
so manifestation of wild folk envision 

autonomous spots along the larger margins, 
encouraging a revolution hid inside 
shadows, without asking, without begging pardons, 
without pretending system isn't denied 

freedom as legal procedure. Fuck cops, fuck laws - 
at least those designed by fallible people who 
succumb to their own corruption easily. Flaws 
in the wild are natural and perfect - chop/screw 

back notion that nations somehow are anything 
but post-feudal bullshit which makes the wealthy king. 

Wednesday, May 31

Tuesday, May 23

TOP TEN HOKKU OF THE HOOPOE

#1: c0pz 1n c4m0Vfl4g3/g34r3d Vp f0r 0b3d13nc3/3nf0rc3m3nt - fVll b0r3
#2: 1 r3m41n p34c3fVl/l1st3n1ng t0 h34rt - n0t br41n/p01s0n3d bY cr4ck3d skVll
#3: p3pp3r spr4Y 3y3s1ght/g3ts bl1nd3d bY 4ngrY f1r3s/- r3tr34t t0 sh4d0wz
#4: 4l-ghVr4b 4ll4h/- wr1t1ng j1h4d p03trY/0f 1nt3rn4l f1ght
#5: wh1sp3r1ng dh1kr/w4lk1ng thrV sh1ttY c1tY/jVst b3f0r3 sVnr1s3
#6: bVzzb0t 3l3ctr0n/4Vth0r1tY 3nf0rc3d bY/0rg4n1c r0b0tz
#7: g0v3rnm3nt p4p3rz/n3v3r 1n 0rd3r fVllY/- f00l 0Vtt4 c0ntr0l
#8: fr33 sp33ch z0n3 b4rb3d w1r3/str3tch3d 4r0Vnd p3r1m3t3r/0f psYch1c s4f3 sp4c3
#9: n3v3r sp34k y0Vr trVth/1nt0 0p3n s0Vrc3 m41nfr4m3/- t00 m4nY b4ck d00rz
#10: r3s1st 1n r34l l1f3/- s0w d1ss3nt; w4tch 1t bl0ss0m/b3n34th kn0wn sVrf4c3