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 fenced in. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fenced in. Show all posts

Thursday, April 18

SONG OF THE DAY: Fences


I have a pretty good ability to sense metaphysical fences. It’s both a blessing and a curse. The worst side of it is how easy to see throughout my life where I’m not welcome even though nobody outright says it. That shit weighs heavy on you, because outwardly identifying open-minded types that have hearts full of hate will be hating on you, and those metaphysical fences are up big time, but they’re not physical so they’ll deny them even if you try to point it out. So you gotta just abide what you know to be true, and accept they’ve kept plausible deniability in the physical realm. America’s full of that shit, metaphysical fences behind neighborhoods where you’re just walking along, saying what’s up to random people you pass by, when all of a sudden you realize you’re about a block and a half into territory some sort of security force is gonna show up and ask you what you’re up to. Fuck it. I cut holes through metaphysical fences with haiku spikes regularly. Just drive them in the ground right at a weakened edge, deep enough into the ground the grass covers the head and nobody realizes it’s there, and a hole gets ripped in the invisible walls, and next thing you know the neighborhood is ruined. It’s like reverse gentrification. I practice it a lot actually.
By the way, this is a Blue Globe Beats song my boy Boogie Brown put together off an EP full of songs where he had computer voice read blurbs from this very blog. So this song’s words are already on here somewhere or another. If there’s a track Brown hasn’t put up on Youtube that I’m supposed to write about, I usually whip up a video just like I do with the kudzu’d 45s. For this one, I found video of hedge laying back in the day, which is the old school method of cutting hawthorn to build natural walls. Video lines up pretty amazingly a few times. I consider this art, even if it’s just me throwing a bunch of various shit together. It’s a digital mosaic, and only like 19 people will ever see it. Thank you for being one of them.

Saturday, June 10

SONG OF THE DAY: Wondering


Fences are assholes, and one of my favorite asshole fences, for all it represents, is the fake ass wrought iron fence along the train yard in Belmont, Charlottesville, which separates an old part of the yard with a coal tower where delinquents used to fuck around until a teenage girl got killed there years ago, from the actual still operational yard. The coal tower stretch has been a road for a while and now all these expensive ass townhouses and an "urban living" apartment building have gone up, and the fence keeps everybody jogging along the bike path safe from whatever vagrancy or minimal industry might still be going on in the barely functional yard. And Belmont is starting to creep in closer on the other side as well, from the southern end, with the old office building there being renovated into apartments, and the houses in that part rising in value at a crazy rate. Won't be long until another fence goes up most likely. I find it hilarious to an extent, because all the folks living good comfortable lives for the most part, at least financially, in those new townhouses and all, don't want the industrial blight, perpetuating this myth that all the hard work to have a society is just magically done by unseen elves (the poor) that keep everything functioning smoothly in the exceptional way America was god blessed. A few blocks over, there's a giant mural of the train yard done by a Richmond artist, hearkening back to an older era when people actually had jobs in train yards. There's other murals like that nearby (and anywhere that's being gentrified from old industrial abandonment zone to new thriving renamed neighborhood in any city around America), probably a little brewery that's popped up too, with either the brewery or some of their beers named after defunct industries or local landmarks, pretending to honor the memory while actually just exploiting the ghosts they refuse to acknowledge. I pray that the trickster gods of working folks rise up from the creosote dust left behind from their existence, and haunt these assholes by blowing through that asshole fence. We no longer have wrong side of the tracks, because everything's been settled so long, but we most definitely still got wrong side of the fence, everywhere. One side, you're good, but on the other, you're a threat. And your politics don't matter at all, to be honest. It's just what you're born into.

Friday, February 17

4LL TH4T WH1CH T13S VS D0WN H4S...


all that which ties us down has 
less power than we realize 
(though it feels overwhelming) 

Friday, January 27

C0CKSVR3 1N MY C0VNTRY P3N...


cocksure in my country pen, 
but unsure in larger world, 
I still crow my constant shit 

Saturday, September 10

VNL3SS Y0V 4R3 PR0P3RTY...


unless you are property, 
America will not care 
(respect the rights of nature) 

Wednesday, July 20

1 0FT3N 3NC0VNT3R N0...


I often encounter No 
Trespassing Signs in spots where 
nobody’s even watching 

Friday, March 25

F3NC3S 4R0VND 0BST4CL3S...


fences around obstacles 
blocking my daydreams; all I 
get to do is zoom-a-zoom 

Wednesday, February 9

FR0M TH3 V3RY B3G1NN1NG...


from the very beginning, 
always regarded fences 
as more obstacle than rule 

Friday, December 31

JVST 4N0TH3R D0M3ST1C...


just another domestic 
human being, pretending 
free will’s somehow relevant 

Thursday, December 2

SVRV1V1NG TH3 PSYCH1C M1N3 F13LDS...


surviving the psychic mine fields 
leaves you trapped behind feelings 
of guilt, simply ‘cause you lived 

Saturday, October 30

D1D MY B3ST T0 1GN0R3 TH3...


did my best to ignore the 
psychic no trespassing signs 
nailed throughout environment 

Sunday, May 16

Wednesday, March 31

MY N4TVR4L W4ND3RLVST...

my natural wanderlust 
got tied down by lines, widgets, 
and wi-fi’s barbed wire fences 

Wednesday, February 17

Monday, December 21

Saturday, December 5

N0 M4TT3R H0W W1D3 Y0V K33P...

 

no matter how wide you keep 
the windows open, the four 
walls of home might still close in 

Tuesday, November 24

Saturday, November 14

D0M3ST1C4T3D G4M3C0CK...

 

domesticated gamecock 
of a human being, trapped 
inside fences I don’t see 

Thursday, September 17

4ND Y3T H3R3 W3 4R3 - C0CKSVR3...

and yet here we are - cocksure
of our own self-righteousness,
while fences grow tall and close