4VT0N0MY CR34T3D...

autonomy created

in the corners nobody

looks (which are never "corners")

TH3 P4TH T0 C0LL3CT1V3 S3LF...

the path to collective self

sufficiency's littered with

rugged individuals

SONG OF THE DAY: Me vs. Me

my own worst enemy

although also the greatest trick

these devils ever played was 

convincing me they don't exist

and I'm my own worst enemy

my own best friend too

which maybe isn't entirely healthy

but what is entirely healthy

and does entirely healthy

even exist any

more

ROJONEKKU WORD FIGHTING ARTS RAILROAD HAIKU SPIKES

THE SHORT

I AM NOW OFFERING RAILROAD HAIKU SPIKES AS A UNIQUE MAGICAL ONE-OF-A-KIND ITEM. THEY ARE $120 (which includes shipping, but only available to Americans, sorry – it’s a logistical thing not a nationalist pride thing). EMAIL ME AT RAVENMACK AT GMAIL.COM TO GET MORE INFO (or read the longer story below) AND TO GET ON THE LIST TO HAVE ONE DONE.

HERE ARE A FEW…

The Longer Story

At some point during my “construction” years, my love of Asian poetry cross-pollinated with my desire to experience tiny moments of escapism from the drunken laboring doom that occupied my horizon at the time, and I started keeping notecards in my pocket at all times to jot down haiku. This started to be a beerbox haiku plate project, where I wrote the haiku and applied them along with collage pictures and polyurethane coat to old empty 12-pack boxes. I never finished that entirely (it’s still in my writing camper though) but the project did lead to the Beerbox Haiku book.

Then, almost by accident, we started having the hand-to-hand haiku events which I hosted from some point in 2013 I think (?) through a single one recently for calendar year 2016. These grew crowds once people were aware of the format and knew it wasn’t uptight serious poetry reading open mic bullshit, but something you could get as wild with as you wanted to. I also took on challengers in Best-of-25 Haiku Death Matches. But I shut the whole thing down at some point I can’t even remember now because I got tired of holding the necessary space.

Since I wasn’t having the excuse to write haiku for events all the time, I started the shard haiku twitter account, jerking them out my heart in 10-packs at work. This eventually led to scribbling them with my shitty hand graph styles onto old pages torn from magazines or books, and scanning that into the eternal suckhole of the interwebs.

All this time I’ve also tinkered extensively with tanka and sonnets and writing raps and prose zines and longer book projects and on and on and on… but haiku always occupied the background somewhere or filled the gaps in the mundane day.

My absolute favorite output of haiku, though, has always been the railroad haiku spikes I’ve done, where I carve a haiku into a wild harvested railroad spike. Railroad spikes have always been used in folk hoodoo magic, and understandably so, because they are forged with actual energy, and generally put into place by actual physical manpower, and thus are heavily infused with a lot of psychic energies.

The carving of haiku into the spike is a heavily physical activity as well, and likely stemmed partially from my previous construction experience, but also my time in a research lab giving rats brain damage with small handheld brain damaging devices very similar to what I use for carving railroad spikes. (In fact, if I could afford a handheld medical drill for cutting through human skulls, I’d be using one of those for haiku spikes.) These originally were just untouched railroad spikes, though I did treat them to minimize the rust, but eventually morphed into ones that have been spray painted in hodgepodge ways, because I was using them to make chaos stencils on t-shirts.

For the most part I’ve only given these away as part of zine subscriber packages or occasionally sold them off in batches to support shit like my daughter going to India all of a sudden a few years back. But mostly, I hate capitalism with all my heart, and am always reluctant to take part in that system, even though I have to daily in a “regular” mundane ass job.

Which brings me to my now… I need to start making some supplemental income. Conventionally this would mean a second job, but being I already have one job I don’t enjoy, I’d like to avoid getting a second job I don’t enjoy. So I’m gonna try to art.

Thus, I’m selling railroad haiku spikes, on an as-wanted basis, through a waiting list. They are each one of a kind (obviously) which means not only the spike itself but also the haiku on it. Should you request one (at ravenmack @ gmail.com), we will talk on the phone, in a consultation of sorts, so I can get an idea of what you’re looking for or needing on your spike. And then, during my “studio” time (which actually means setting up my industrial rigs of hand drills and milk crates and vise grips and tie-down straps in the back yard over by the chicken coop), I’ll start producing them. The cost? $120, which includes shipping. That might seem like a lot to the struggle-is-real enlightened degenerates who tend to make up those who follow my creative endeavors, but for a one-of-a-kind piece of art, and for the effort it takes me to produce them, it’s a more than fair price. Plus, I’m probably going to some sort of famous dumbass cult poet freak fucker one day, so consider it an investment.

If you have any questions, the email is above. Please spread the word to supporters of the arts who might be interested in such a uniquely magical item.

Peace,

Raven Mack

PS: Here are more.

self lords performing supreme

mechanical maths to keep

them buckets back-and-forthing

nothing about my life looks

picture perfect - still, I've peaced

shit together well enough

strong-willed personalities

sapped sometimes by sensory

sensitivity - stay strong

2014 Hand-to-Hand Haiku Tournaments

ROJONEKKU HAND-TO-HAND HAIKU NONSENSE. Probably worth nothing there are only two of these officially left for the year - the last Richmond one and then the year-end championship invitational nonsense. Participation has waned at times recently, as has enthusiasm both from others as well as myself. Looking forward to shutting it down for the winter and perhaps coming back with a revamped style next spring. BUT FOR NOW LET'S MAKE THESE LAST TWO EVENTS RAUCOUS AFFAIRS OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE GIBBERISH!

• October 22: Balliceaux, Richmond, VA, 8:00 pm sign-up, 8:30 pm kick-off
• November 8: BON, Charlottesville, VA, 7:00 pm sign-up, 7:30 pm kick-off

PREVIOUS POSTERS PLUS HOW THIS SHIT WORKS IF YOU STILL DON'T KNOW

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.

garden of delights

ev'ry time we eat beets, I

forget then think I'm shitting

blood and I'm about to die

what I read in bed last night

So I totally read some things on my robot newspaper doohickey last night...

SILENT WAR from Vanity Fair
This was one of those long-winded in-depth exposes of cyber warfare being conducted between the United States (and Israel) against Iran, and vice versa. Obviously, as Vanity Fair is a western magazine, it takes on a favorable position towards US operations, and also talks a lot about how all this crap affects business. Everything is always about how shit affects business. Business is so goddamned important all the time. Business business business.
The whole NSA spying crap, and our beloved dear leaders stepping in line to tell us how we should not be worried, everything's cool, and then spy dudes being like, "Yeah but we totally stopped like 19 more 9/11s from happening. Like every other child in America would have been exploded by crazy terrorists if we hadn't been able to check their yahoo mail. So I'm thankful for that." Which is of course all bullshit, and of course all our leaders would try to ease our mind about this. However, I have a completely different question for you? Did you in all seriousness think they weren't doing that stuff? Do you think a Department of Defense project like an internet would be rolled out to the world and not utilized as a means for watching everybody and everything, both here and abroad? I saw a snippet of Obama on with Charlie Rose this morning where he was like, "We don't use this on Americans, only foreigners, and you have to do bad shit." That was what they used to say about drones too, but we now know there's been a ton of collateral damage with drones. So basically the same people who don't give a fuck about that are being responsible with this? Whatever bro.
But also, why would you think otherwise? If the technology is there, and all wired transmissions of information which would require a warrant to physically tap into that wire have now moved to wireless transmission, which legally is regarded the same as radio frequencies and open, why would you not assume they do watch that shit? I mean you have to be pretty naive to think that, and yet many people are that naive, as I saw an online petition circulating about being indignant about the NSA program that got leaked. As if you are going to call attention to these people that this somehow compromises the basic principles of America so they will just stop. Again, whatever bro.
What freaks me out though (and doesn't really freak me out, just something I noticed) is that since this all got whistleblowed, the internet is behaving differently. File sharing site cookies don't seem to be re-registering. Tor is acting funny. The entire speed of the internet is sketchier than it was, and sometimes this is specific to chrome sometimes to firefox. In other words, there are things going on you don't know. And you won't. Usually with programs like this, regardless of whistle being blown, what we find out about is already done and things are probably way more severe than what we see. This has always historically been the case. I know it's nice to pretend we live in some bold new age where information will be shared freely and ideas will spring forth and create a wonderful new world for all, but that's not literally the way the world spins for a majority of human beings, who struggle with continuing the "being" part of human being on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. However, we do get things like this...

SEASTEADING from N+1 magazine
This is an article about government-free floating nation-states as a possibility, and of course the people in charge are libertarian tech elite types who can afford such nonsense. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love to have my own houseboat homeland. But that's not realistic for most people struggling, nor are most libertarian philosophies which for whatever reason have been hijacked by this bullshit free market entrepreneur attitude that somehow people trying to make a business of everything is going to benefit humanity. All of this is built on the notion that business is good for everybody. I think that might be a faulty foundation.
I honestly would move my family from America tomorrow if I had the money. I mean this is the only country I've known, and where I was born, so I'm not exactly schooled on alternatives or know in my heart that something else is better. But I do know when I'm being bullshitted, and I've been heavily bullshitted in recent years. I may not be able to prove in a court of law someone is bullshitting me, but guess what? Courts of law are bullshit too. Legal/illegal does not necessarily directly correlate to right/wrong.
And then I get to the question is a country its laws and leaders, or is it its people? Is America our growing police state trying to protect us from constantly fed fear of things that may or may not be real but we have to trust the police state itself when it tells us it is real, or is it the population of people? I mean that's a chicken and egg type question, because American media starts to coax the population certain ways, not to mention our collective diet and activity levels and so on and so forth, so it becomes this self-perpetuating crisis. So I don't know what makes America what it is - the government or the people. I like to say that we get the leaders we deserve, but damn, I'd like to believe we deserve better. I'd also like to believe the naive notion that if there is something wrong here, then damn it I can make it better if I try hard enough and get enough people rolling along with me in the same direction.
But again, why? What am I answering to? Why should there be a higher cause? Why should I give a fuck if my government is a corporate kleptocracy and corrupt as fuck and spying on my every word? Just live my life, right? When I am sitting in the field, thinking my thoughts, fuck them. They could take that away, put me in jail, but I still have my thoughts. Well, they could put me in solitary confinement, do the things man knows how to do to people now, and alter the way my brain is processing reality, to change the way I am thinking. But it's still me, right?
The problem I have with these libertarian seasteaders is that they assume all humans are allowed this great potential to open source brilliance their way into utopia. A huge majority of us breathing oxygen and eating corn on this earth are not allowed that, and we live in a sort of feedlot existential space where we are mostly a tool. That's all we are. We are baboons trained to be productive instead of hanging around trees all day trying to fuck each other. We are a domesticated animal, nothing more nothing less. So saying something is legal or allowed by law or creating a new way of law or whatever seems almost irrelevant. Especially in light of this...

THE AMISH ARE GETTING FRACKED from New Republic magazine
Basically the Amish don't believe in suing people, so energy companies are fucking over the Amish in their rush to frack the world for profit. I can't even begin to tell you how much fracking bothers me, not because I'm some environmentalist or some green shit like that, but because we literally as humans have no clue what the long-term effect of this is going to be on the way the earth's ecosytem works. We are releasing large amounts of interior gases, just to chase a dollar essentially, and it's being justified in the name of business. I wonder if we'll ever get to a point where we, in large groups of us humans, can come to terms with the notion that business does not have to be the be-all, end-all of justifying how we live. The fact we have to earn money to pay a bill does not mean we should justify whatever the fuck we are doing to make that money. But because of the power systems in place, to one extent or another we're all trapped on that money grid, so we all think the way to escape is financial freedom. Get rich, and live the good life. Again though, this is assuming that business is good and the great benefactor of humanity. I'm not buying that, as these energy assholes fucking over Amish farmers show. Being human is the great benefactor of humanity. But we're only allowed smaller and smaller portions of our day to be human, more of it being channeled into being a tool for some sort of greater business good. And if we aren't being a useful tool towards a greater business good? Then we are made to feel like a failure, like we haven't tried hard enough, that we're a drain on humanity, although essentially we are only a drain on business, not humanity. We're still human.
I am not sure what all is going on in this world right now but it's a whole hell of a lot of shit, way more than we see or are made aware of. That's one reason my One Thousand Feathers video talks about being truth-free, because so many people offer their own truths, and all of it is cut with their own experiences and biases. There is no truth, no great ultimate goal to achieve. There is life, and you live it, and then you die. Try to have fun with it some, and try your best not to be an asshole to other humans, because they'd like to enjoy their lives too. Really, that's all I hope for, but as long as business has hijacked human consciousness I'm not sure we'll ever get there, and domesticated us into fucking tools working towards something completely removed from greater human good. I don't know man, sometimes I look around and it all seems so silly. We have been trained to psychologically justify so much bullshit. I doubt I could escape that anywhere on earth, so I guess carving it out secretly in the shadows of where I already am makes more sense than starting over elsewhere. So that's what I'll do. But it makes me sad to sometimes think about what we could be doing with ourselves.

January III

I think there are sketchy things going on behind the scenes of the interwebbers lately as my robot numbers seem to have powered up like Shinobi. I figure this is probably some asshole attempt by corporate cyberlords like Google or Facebook or whoever to inflate something, increase value, pretend part of that value is mine, keep all the value themselves, have it explode because the whole thing is artificial, but they keep their shit and I am back to nothing, like always, and a lot worse for wear through the whole process, including emotionally because the trials and tribulations put survivor mentality into our brain molecules. PTSD from the everyday, know what I mean? But just in case this is not some trumped up overlord scam in its early unacknowledged stages I am picking up signals and clues about, let me explain to you some of my wonderful "put food on my kitchen table" literal literary things I have, that are real, and yet accessible through robot transactions.

Rojonekku word fighting arts next phase of printed battle against a civilized world's false promises is One Thousand Feathers which has the first two available, but will end up being a thousand. No shit, that's the goal. I'm in the middle of five more already, in mad juggler style. One Thousand Feathers the One is The Primordial Traditionalist I, which is back roads philosophizing but also heavily influenced by my main man Rene Guenon. One Thousand Feathers the Two is Recession Proof I which is a dope ass short story set in the short-term future after America completely gets into austerity chaos and the lower 70% or so of society is left to be fucked. It's tight. And look, if you just paypal me $15 to $20 through the DONATE button over on the right sidebar there, I'll stuff a box full of about 20 of them, mixed and matched, for you to share amongst your local circles of peoples. It's real literal paper you can really literally hand to others or leave on your kitchen table or give to people who buy weed from you or whatever. If you do the DONATE, mark it as a gift so we can fuck paypal out of their cut.

Also of note is along these Virginia side tracks I wild harvest ripened-by-life railroad spikes, bring them home, wipe them down with magic apple cider vinegars on old hospital rags, and industrially carve haiku I wrote into them, creating a one-of-a-kind magical object that would totally motherfuckin' bless any mess, from double-wide to mountaintop mansion. If you click that link and are like, "Oh fuck bro, that's expensive," I can understand. The main reason I make art is I can't afford art but I need art. I also have some of the homepix from this site photo-printed up and matted and looking all pretty and shit that would also bless most any mess. They're all worth what they are listed, probably worth more actually when I look at the crap other people sell as matted prints or art objects, but I also understand and respect the struggle. If you something you are in love with, hit me up, and maybe we come to an agreement that is mutually beneficial. As much as I can always use money because I never have money, I am also like, "Man, fuck money," plenty of the time too.

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.

p g s p f

penned-up animals given
smiling faces in our minds
to feel right with our life's lot

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '10 #9: "Synthetic World" by Swamp Dogg

Synergy is a too much thing sometimes. I had been stuck on holding pattern, with this the next song to write about, and had all these "crooked ass world spinning awkwardly" type things in my brain, but nothing forced itself out forever. But last week after I had hauled my two pigs into a rural butcherman to slaughter and slice into appropriate parts, I just kinda got stuck on sore and beaten by this world. Friday afternoon, I cut out of work early to go down to Buckingham County and get my animal parts. This butcherman dude was a real kook, so we talked shit around the bed of my truck for a while, including about how some of the ridiculously wealthy in our general area of the world were actually solid people, just rich as fuck. He said at one point, "He ain't nothin' but an ol' shoe like me or you." I had never been called an old shoe before.
So I had three full-sized coolers full of pig in the bed of my truck, two whole produce boxes full of it behind the seats in the cab, and two more produce boxes in the passenger seat, all of it wrapped up in butcherman paper, except the top box, which was the pork bellies for making bacon and the belly fat. I'd have to salt and sugar the bellies myself to baconify them, and the fat was gonna get cooked down to medicinal lard. (I like saying that because apparently there is such a thing as "medicinal lard" which my wife can sell for $15 a pint.) But riding back north 20 to Scottsville, with a giant box of meat seating directly and openly beside me, in fact from animals I had taken care of for the past 8 months, it was odd yet felt good. Then I plugged in the gaypod and hit play and "Synthetic World" came on. Perfect.
Then, yesterday as I waste my life with a job that does not feed me spiritually or creatively even slightly, I was poking around the interwebs and went to the Wigger Mortis blog, and C.T. there mentioned this very song and having discovered Swamp Dogg on my blog. Strange coincidences, as I'd been waiting to write about this stupid song for two weeks.
It also, however, reaffirmed something in my purranoid ass brain. There's a lot about the butcherman, as well as taking the pigs down there with the help of my neighbor, that I didn't feel like sharing with the interwebs, because this is a fake ass place (the interwebs) where people find salvation from their own social shortcomings. Except of course, this shortcoming philosophy becomes the mainstream and shit changes. You have Comic-con become part of regular news, and shit like that. For me though, I am still old school enough in that I think if it is something you could not stand around the back of a truck and proudly talk about to solid bros of your's, then you should never take pride in it. This means the 7 Real Dolls or collection of 4000 Japanese wrestling DVDs or having digital files of every New Orleans rap tape ever made, none of this is a prideful thing. And the internet is the opposite where those are wonderful things, where your freak flag can fly with as many off-kilter colors as possible, and that only makes it better.
I think in my brain I too often assume the internet is the homeland for that, which it is, but without the presence of real people anymore who do real shit like kill pigs and talk to weird dudes who call people "an ol' shoe" and just have general real life experiences. It feels like more of a synthetic world than ever to me. I actually can feel electromagnetic frequencies weakening the sharpness of brain's creativity lately. I've been experimenting with taking yarrow tincture internally to try and slow this effect, but there's no doubt it's a synthetic world. (Side note: the "tinfoil hat" thing was misinformation, because the aluminum foil actually increases the effect, as opposed to blocking.)
But there's still plenty of real shit, too. Real shit never goes away, although you can't easily find it on a smart phone app. You are better just wandering around aimlessly, because there's real shit around every corner if you wander far enough off the electronic path.
STEAL "Synthetic World"
NEXT UP: A warbled down ass whiteboy classic!

p g s p a

dumpster produce final feast -
fat hogs snorting through their last
bellies full of a good life