March the One

I have struggled mightily lately, coming to terms with the fact there is no dream to be realized. Money blessings are from a false god, thus never really happen. All I can really do is do what I do, meaning with regards to art, separate from any notion anybody will ever give me money for what I do. Working towards money seems to compromise the integrity of work, whether you are talking about writing, building a house, sewing Old Navy jeans, whatever.
And yet at the same time I feel good with the fact our Bird Tribe children live in an environment that encourages artistic growth. What it took my ol' lady and me 25 years to accomplish, they'll already be at by 15. As humans, we build our culture slowly over generations. We are building our desired culture, even in the midst of a poison culture civilization we were born into. That's all we can do. I am content with that.

A lot of rocks have been stacked in the process of building our western civilization, and now we don't even stack rocks with permanence. We have embraced the capitalist fallacy of renewal a little too much, to where everything is seen as temporary - and we can just tear it all down and start over. Nobody stamps their concrete no more with their name.

Still though, I throw my horseshoes into the sky. My dreams of getting shaded under a money tree are dead, but money ain't real anyways, so I can still dream - dream of all this bullshit falling apart and when we build something new next time we actually fucking build it, no facades no personal brands no corporate citizens no whatever the fuck it is that has made us America. The spices and fertility of ground found in America are still grounds for something big; it's just we've had shitty "freedom" cooking for too long, and rather than mix up the menu, we've been told to double down on the "freedom" cooking, so motherfuckers are starting to get hungry for some real nutrition of soul.

Philadelphia Hand-to-Hand Haiku Tournament/One Thousand Feathers Reading

Just as a general note of awareness to all potentially interested parties, this next Friday, March 1, there will be a Rojonekku/Fresh Dipped event at the Fresh Dipped Space at 26 South Strawberry Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as part of the First Fridays thing of artistic things. What will this particular event entail? Great question, bro.

#1: RAILROAD SPIKE DISPLAY - as seen on my Workingman Shop etsy which of course will be for sale or just looking at and shit.
#2: STUDY STYLE CRYPTIC LEARNED ELDER ART - because Fresh Dipped is a screen-printing joint, we will have some dope ass screen-printed wackiness on display. Me and Deric the Fresh Dipped proprietor have been working on this in the cloud, which is not an online storage area but us communicating to each other above the chemtrail clouds, so that our thoughts are pure. If we are going to encourage you to study another person's style, we want it to come from a good place. There was some discussion about whether you "learn" a style or "study" a style, and ultimately we felt that you cannot actually "learn" anything completely, and once you do, it all changes anyways so you yourself become unraveled by your own attachment to your own "knowledge".
#3: ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS READING - I will be reading something I guess, I don't know. There will be some of my One Thousand Feathers pamphlets with me, which I may read from, or I may recite some old rhymes, or I may read some of the haiku from the Beerbox Haiku Project, which I've purged from this website and have been editing like a delirious wino the past few weeks, to be released in March as a gangsta ass book of poetry that doesn't suck. Speaking of which, if you have ever been to a reading of poetry or writing, then you know how much they usually suck. The spirit of this event is to not suck, so whatever I read, I will try to make it as chaotic as possible and encourage you to yell and scream and holler and curse along with me or at me. Which brings me to...
#4: HAND-TO-HAND HAIKU TOURNAMENT - which I will be hosting. Below in quoted form is an in-depth description of how this even takes place, BUT I NEED SOME WILLING PARTICIPANTS to jump up in this thing. The spirit of this event is community and expression and all those other dumbass creative buzzwords. No seriously, I need some vibrant motherfuckers to come vibrate with their natural born word rhythm skills in a friendly-but-competitive environment. We had the first one of these this past weekend at the Bird Tribe Compound in rural Virginia, and it was a blast. I am very excited to bring my backwoods down home folksy anarchistic mystic fuckery to a wonderful clusterfuck of western civilization like Oldtown Philadelphia. I ALREADY HAVE PRE-GROWN MY JAYSON WERTH BEARD (even before he grew his own, which is actually a Raven Mack beard)! If you are interested in taking part as a haiku competitor or judge, hit me up at ravenmack at gmail dot com or on my twitters @SSVa_Raven. Below tells you what the fuck is going to happen, with my reading/hosting haiku kicking off around 19:30 on 01 Mar 2013 aka 7:30 or so in the evening y'all.

Hand-to-hand haiku is an actual thing that has existed as an offshoot of poetry slams for over a decade, but I am bringing it to the here and now because it is a thing I wish was happening so that I could take part, so I guess I will emcee the affair and create its existence locally.

WHAT IT 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, 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 13. 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 raise the flag of who won that round. Whichever flag a majority of judges raise 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 a round reads first the next round, so red would read another 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.

Thus, for all people reading haiku, you may need up to 25 different haiku, in the off-chance the first round, the semifinals, and finals all go to their maximum amount of rounds. Thus, I say you need a minimum of 25 haiku, although if you are eliminated early or win rounds quickly, most likely very few of you will actually use 25 haiku.

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 large arsenal of haiku, so to speak, 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, which one would assume would 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.

A personal aside, as a man who has literally written several thousand haiku over the past five years, a method I use is writing them one per index card. This seems like 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 was the truest replication of the Japanese poem. We are going to go with this. Now somebody may say, “Wait, counting syllables goes against what haiku actually is, Raven!” Well, let me tell you, I know this form deeply, 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 together with 100 verses per poem, you can hold your complaints to yourself. We cannot accept part of a traditional but pretend the rest doesn’t exist and call ourselves a traditionalist. 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 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.

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 sort of suggest each of them concentrate on a different vague aspect that pertains to them, such as “artistry” or “spirituality” or “dope ass rhythm” and so on. 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 fucking hand-to-hand haiku thing? This is bullshit!”

Judges: You will judge as you feel appropriate. Like I mentioned above, I’ll give you a theme as a suggestion for your focus, but you can 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 a railroad spike etched with HAIKU LOUNGER. I carve haiku onto railroad spikes as a thing (as seen here - http://www.etsy.com/shop/WorkingmanBooks). You will not get an actual haiku spike, but you will get the HAIKU LOUNGER trophy spike, and you will be declared the victor in some sort of fashion, and end up with something tangible to hold in your hand and be like, “YES! I have finally arrived!”

That is the plan. This will be the first of these we host in Philadelphia, and we hope to do it once or twice a year at the Fresh Dipped space moving forward. The whole point of this is to spread the joy of quick poetry, and also make a fun battle-game out of it. It will only be as fun and amazing as we all make it though. If you are worried at any point, be assured I am emceeing the whole event, and will make it entertaining on my own if need be. Do not feel any pressure at all. Enjoy the experience.

If you have any questions beyond this, hit me up. ravenmack at gmail.com.

February the Four

I went to buy a laptop for my kid's birthday at the Best Buy today but then what I had seen for sale yesterday wasn't there today, and I asked the dude about it and he was like, "Yeah. You know, you COULD'VE ordered it online to pick up, and it'd be here now, or we would have saved one for you." I looked at him and said, "Yeah. You know you could raise your own chickens for eggs and hogs for meat, because it ain't hard. But you don't, because that type of life ain't your's. Fuck your online ordering bullshit," and I walked off, but not before perusing their TV show DVDs to see what was new out that was worth pirating from inside the internet. Thing is I knew the laptop wasn't there any more because the internet had told me, but I couldn't believe it so went to go see it in person and be mad at Best Buy and really mad at everything. What the fuck man?

I started two new writing projects today. I kinda hate people giving a fuck about what they do, like writers thinking every fucking thing they think is worth documenting and harvesting like we're feeding humanity with our twitter jokes or some bullshit, so I started adding rambling paragraphs to random listings on my Workingman etsy page. I hope people start buying that shit because I think it's awesome, but I'm also gonna maybe bury nonsense in the listings because what the fuck is the internet for other than to randomly disperse madness (which is actually goodness)? The more things become ordered and curated the more we all need to work to clusterfuck it up more and make it crazier and harder. (Also, I like being difficult I guess. I don't fucking know man. But scope out the hanging tree listing. That's one I remember changing out of the ones I changed.)

I also have decided to do flash fiction, which for me I am pretending there is a guy named Charlie Milwaukee who writes stories for Easyriders magazine in the 1970s, but he only does it on a yellow legal pad with a pen, and each story is one page. Once he gets to the end of the page, he has to wrap that motherfucker up in the margin or he has failed the entire purpose of old Charlie Milwaukee.

So that's what I did today. Also I wasted another fat chunk of gristle of my life at a job. Go America! Go straight to hell America.

February the Three

Thus wire spoke Zarathustra:
spikes etched with wildman haiku
available at the etsy 

number sixty-nine is my
lucky number, sexual
connotations withstanding

learn from your elders, Raven;
stack art in obscurity,
the hipster assholes will come

February the Two

wild sunrise over
tattered remnants of freedom
left behind in field

hunted and gathered
wild laughing gymnasiums
bright orange with spirit

I climbed ramshackle
stairways to manmade heavens
man made all his gods

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.

S14: Best African Cup of Nations Teams Over the Past 10 Competitions

Hey, guess what? This past weekend the 2013 African Cup of Nations kicked off in South Africa, and that is a thing I am casually interested in. Being this is a website inside of the American internet, where sort of interesting content is very often created by people casually interested in a thing, I figured what the fuck man, let me waste some time probably better spent on other things, and compile a list of the national football teams, African style, old sporting 14 list style, dork style, pure internet styles galore. So what I did was I broke open an Excel spreadsheet and calculated some functions and sorted some datas and went through the past ten African Cups, giving teams different points for how far they went each cup, and then powerfying them according to which one was most recent and which one was most farthest, and I came up with this totally scientific as fuck list of the Top 14 National Teams in the African Cup’s past ten tournaments, and will use this as a way to talk to you about what this team’s chances or whatever are for this African Cup.
You might be like, “Whoa whoa whoa… what the fuck is the African Cup of Nations?” Well, remember that shit about the UEFA Cup that was all over the ESPNs last fall, in Poland and the Ukraine, what which had white peoples from everywhere all talking about that shit, and people you never even knew were from Europe originally in your local locale started talking about shit like Wayne Rooney or Portugal or racism in the Ukraine or the local Irish pub that serves Guinness on tap? This is the African version. It was supposed to be in Libya, but then Libya came apart at the political seams in 2011 and traded spots with South Africa, who was gonna host this shit in 2017, so Libya will be all better by then I’m sure and be able to host the African Cup of Nations. There’s always some sort of craziness with the African Cup, like a country’s team is abducted or absolved or killed in a plane crash or there’s a civil war or something. So let’s travel through this wonderful continent that was the mother of all humanity...
#1: EGYPT aka The Pharaohs – Not even competing in this one; ranked 54th in the World by the FIFA. Egypt has won more African Cups than anybody – 7 – and even set a record in the early 2000s by winning or tying 19 straight games. They won this bama in 2006, 2008, and 2010. But during World Cup qualifying in 2010, they lost a controversial play-in game with Algeria, and the national team has pretty much gone into disarray ever since then, not qualifying for the 2012 CAN (aka African Cup) or this one in 2013 (which switched to odd years to avoid World Cup crossover). To their credit, they have two wins in their first two games of African group qualifying for the 2014 World Cup, and I am sure the fine folks of Egypt would rather have the nation’s third appearance in the World Cup than anything else, especially post-Mubarak era.
#2: CAMEROON aka The Indomitable Lions – Also not in the field of this 2013 CAN, and ranked 67th in the World by the FIFA. Cameroon is tied for second-most CAN titles having won four, just like Ghana. They’ve actually made the knockout phase (final eight) of the African Cup seven times in a row, before not qualifying in 2012. The early 2000s saw Cameroon as one of the Third World’s best football teams, almost cracking the FIFA top 10, and they’ve qualified for six of the past eight World Cups. They also are notable for controversial uniforms, as they had sleeveless bamas in Africa in 2002, which the World Cup wouldn’t let them wear. And then in 2004, Puma designed one-piece outfits for Cameroon (lolol) which FIFA declared illegal, even though there was no official wording saying shirts and shorts needed to be separate articles of clothing. As many things football-related end up doing, it went through international court systems, and Cameroon agreed to wear two-piece uniforms, and the FIFA gave them back their qualifying points that had been stolen by white men from Europe.
#3: NIGERIA aka The Super Eagles – In Group C of the African Cup, ranked 52nd by the FIFA. The 1990s saw one of the African continent’s best national team runs ever as Nigeria not only qualified but won their group in both the 1994 and 1998 World Cup, failing to win their first knock-out game in both however. Still though, those runs gave African teams confidence in their hyper-speed style of play. Nigeria, as you can see by their FIFA ranking, is not as great as it was when it was considered one of the best 5 teams on the Earth. Nigeria won the CAN twice, but not since 1994 when they were truly the Super Eagles, but has finished 2nd or 3rd four of the past six African Cups. They were, however, tied by lowly Burkina Faso in their first game this African Cup, which inspired THIS amazing celebration by the Burkina Faso goalkeep.
#4: COTE D’IVOIRE aka Les Elephants – In Group D aka the African group of death, ranked 14th by FIFA. Cote d’Ivoire, led by good ol’ Didier Drogba, is the darling of the African continent currently, with the highest FIFA ranking of any nation. (Algeria, also in Group D, is the second-highest ranked team according to FIFA nerdery.) The thing is though, until the rise of Drogba, Cote d’Ivoire has little international presence. They’ve qualified for the past two World Cups, but not made it out of the group stage. In the African Cup, they had a run in the early ‘90s where they won in ’92 and finished third in ’94, but that’s their high. They’ve finished fourth in ’08, and lost the championship in ’06 and ’12, but have yet to win the Cup during the Drogba era. This might be their last chance to do so, as he is already transitioning into circus show stage of his career, playing in China for big money against lesser competition.
#5: GHANA aka The Black Stars – In Group B, ranked 26th in the World by the FIFA football ranking organization that is totally corrupt. Look, I will be honest, Ghana is my favorite team from the whole world, as the entire history of gaining independence before any other African colonial country, slapping a black star on their flag, and becoming proud soccer players, is a story that is unparalleled in Africa. Add to this weird Ghanaian movie house homemade movie posters, and a country that produces the best hip hop on the continent (fuck you Nigeria), and Ghana is the place I often convince my ol’ lady we should relocate to before America completely disintegrates into financial chaos and cultural Armageddon. They’re tied for second with 4 African Cup titles, but haven’t won it all since 1982. In 2010, the Black Stars became only the third African team in historical foreverness to make it to the World Cup quarterfinals, losing in that round to Uruguay in a heart-breaking game I watched on a laptop sitting on the hood of a 1972 Pontiac Catalina (for real – word to the Fresh Dipped). Had they won, they’d have been the first African team to make the semifinals, ever. Here’s hoping to 2014 in Brazil! And here’s A SONG to hype you up about it!
#6: TUNISIA aka the Eagles of Carthage – Trapped in Group D, and ranked 53rd worldwide by the FIFA. Tunisia won this is 2004, but has drawn a group that features the two best current teams from the African continent. They’ll kick off group play tomorrow in a border bash against Algeria. They’ve qualified for four World Cups, including three in a row from 1998 through 2006, but are most famous amongst African football historians for being the first African nation to win a game in the World Cup, beating Mexico 3 to 1 in 1978. Ultimately, African football history on the international stage has been a slow-growth process of post-Colonial independence, as displayed through the prism of sports. This also is why I always root for African teams in the World Cup. Fuck the first world.
#7: ZAMBIA aka The Copper Bullets – In Group C, also the defending champions of the African Cup, and ranked 39th in the World. They’ve qualified for five World Cups, with very limited success there, and been a top team in African from time to time, but never won the African Cup until last year. Thus, there has been a cash bounty placed on them repeating as champions, as it is a proud moment for Zambians. I mean, sometimes I have to mail in these blurbs because I don’t feel like writing anything, so I just say really normal shit like that. It sucks, but luckily I don’t know any Zambians who will be insulted by it. I guess maybe that’s not lucky I don’t know Zambians, as perhaps my life would be more enriched with their influence.
#8: MALI aka Les Aigles which means Les Eagles – In Group B, ranked 25th by the FIFA. As of writing this, the first six games of this year’s African Cup have resulted in five draws, with Mali’s win over Niger (aka the N-country for poor spellers) being the only outright victory. Mali is the top-ranked team in this year’s competition that has never won an African Cup, and much like throughout their history, they are currently experiencing chaos and unrest at home. In fact, Mali has had to withdraw or didn’t even bother to enter qualifying for every World Cup up until 2002. Even then, in 2006, when they lost a qualifying game against Togo on a last second goal, riots broke out afterwards. So they’ve never won the African Cup and never even made the World Cup, and still are ranked 25th in the World right now. If you are a fan of chaos, I suggest you pull for Les Aigles.
#9: SENEGAL aka the Lions of Teranga – Unqualified for this African Cup, ranked 79th internationally by the FIFA. Senegal’s high watermark of historical footballdom came in 2002 when they made the quarterfinals of the World Cup. They’ve never won the African Cup, though they did finish 2nd in that 2002 year of greatness, and finished 3rd multiple times, as recently as 2006. But they’re not even in the field this odd-ass year.
#10: SOUTH AFRICA aka The Stupid South Africans – The host country and in weak-ass Group A, ranked 85th in the World. You may remember that South Africa hosted the last World Cup, which had those vuvuzelas making noise all over the place. I can only assume that shit is going on again at the African Cup. I fully support the use of cheap plastic horns; fuck the haters. That being said, I never cared much culturally for South Africa, even after apartheid ended, because I don’t know, it seems like the one African country that would be next to Florida on an imaginary map’s geopolitical reconfiguration of the Earth’s nations. That means it’s not so desirable. (Apologies to all Floridians and South Africans who are cool peeps though; keep it real y’all.) And actually their nickname is Bafana Bafana, which is Afrikaaner for “the Stupid South Africans” I think.
#11: MOROCCO aka The Lions of the Atlas – Another quality Group A team, and ranked 74th internation-style by FIFA. I don’t know, I’m getting kinda bored of this, and thinking about Morocco makes me wish I could smoke some hash, so I’m going to take my writing tincture and zone out to some Wino acoustic troubadour metal goodness for a little while.
#12: ALGERIA aka the Green Desert Foxes – In Group D, ranked 22nd in the World. Most of what I know about Algeria and Algerians was taught to me by an Egyptian co-worker right after Algeria beat Egypt in World Cup qualifying in 2010 and the two countries almost went to war. Algerians are dirty, smelly people, and carry giant swords around and kill people for no good reason, and are a country of thugs and murderers who wouldn’t respect the word of The Prophet if it was given to them right before their eyes. And really, they stink.
#13: ANGOLA aka The Sable Antelopes – In Group A, and ranked 78th by the FIFA. Look, all I know is Angola has the best flag in the whole wide world, because they are one of the last Communist countries left, and their flag features the traditional hammer and sickle image re-imagined with half a cog and a machete. I would love to have one of these. If you are reading this right now (which I doubt anybody is) and you were to buy me a full-sized Angolan flag and send it to my PO Box, you would be my most favorite person for at least three weeks. At least. That is not me begging either, because if I was going to beg for a flag I would beg for the old style Rwandan flag, pre-genocide style, which had the traditional African red and green and yellow with a basic black R right in the middle. That shit is tight as fuck.
#14: GUINEA aka the National Elephants – Not even in this bitch, ranked 61st by FIFA. They’ve never qualified for the World Cup, and were even banned from international competition at one point in the early 2000s due to government interference. They were runner-up in the 1976 African Cup, but have never made it beyond the quarterfinals other than that. And yet they consistently appear in the tournament, maintaining mid-card status in African football team. And with that vague wrestling-reference, I am out of this bitch. WATCH AFRICAN CUP GAMES ON WHATEVER ESPN IS ON THE INTERWEBS, OR BETTER YET GO TO SOME FOREIGN ASS WEBSITES AND DO SO, BECAUSE HONESTLY IF AFRICAN HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US ANYTHING IT SHOULD BE FUCK AMERICA.

freestyle sonnet #9

trauma clenches upon neck muscles - iron grip
of tension, slow boiling stress conditions plus quick
strikes of accidents complement fight-or-flight trip
of ancient brain chemistry; one slips into thick
cranio-sacral congestion hard to unwork,
hard to re-wire survivor thought process ingrained
in unconscious brain's mechanisms, built by jerk
against the unsure flows of chaos life sustained,
which is mostly better than the alternatives,
as no other life is promised, thus another day
will have to suffice, repelling superlatives
as well-defined white matter is slowly turned gray;
born as the uncarved block to suffer existence -
to keep existing is to offer resistance.

January V

This is Sugar. She is a goat. I taught her how to play football.

This is Phoenix. She is a child. I have taught her many thing, which is an ongoing process. She may be the strongest visionary in our Bird Tribe, which can be hard to handle at times.

This is graffiti on a freight train. It is all the beauty of Industrial Revolution, right there. We have wasted 500 years of our human existence, and also shaved human existence down for large segments of our humanity because of this. The next 100 years will be painful for many. Oh well. Step up or get swept up. It's your choice.

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.

freestyle sonnet #8

(from the suggested subject of bee decline by @badtracking, which always makes me think of my daughter River who has been possessed by honeybee spirit from birth, and in fact on her birthday this past weekend we gave her this awesome honeybee lamp made by this guy)

River – my youngest – is possessed by honeybees,

even speaking of Melissa, their ancient queen,

before she even knew about mythologies;

toddler games played, sniffing her nose at things unseen,

breathing deep, then sighing at times, soft voice sings “sweet,”

yet sad for when she couldn’t find them, less each spring,

missing the buzz of their spirit, feeling incomplete,

like humanity itself: will the future bring

a time of hand pollination as GM crops

disrupt raw smells that attract honeybee desires,

plus the growing pesticidal effect that stops

bees’ chemoreceptors from leading these flyers

from being a part of this well-balanced system;

thus man-made world becomes my child’s man-made prison.

freestyle sonnet #7

(on the subject of "delayed gratification" by @brumblehag which led to me reading about the Stanford marshmallow experiment)

My childhood marshmallows were accumulated

slowly, in fifteen minute increments as Mom

set one on the table but said if I waited

I would get a second, then a third, and so on

it went through my younger years, then adolescence

ss well, my bedroom closet swollen with white fluff

corn syrup sugars whipped into U.S. essence;

and yet still I resist the temptations to stuff

my face with false nutrition in order to acquire

more, though ultimately it all has no value

or practical real World use, unless a bonfire

breaks out for millions with sticks but nothing to do.

I’ve achieved marshmallow wealth, white eagles will soar;

this sonnet is really just money metaphor.

sunday morning coming down

Feeling some deep questions today, wondering what the fuck I'm doing. It can be difficult when you see others experiencing success, and you have this notion that on a basic ability level, you're right there with anybody. But it comes back to the realization that this is not a true meritocracy, and there's a combo of ability and luck (aka lottotunities) that come into play, so all one can do is stick with pushing their ability, to control that part of the equation, and fuck man, you are just forced to see what happens with the luck part honestly. I even had a dude who is a famous award-winning literary author type tell me that it takes the ability to tell a good story, and to have somebody be able to see that you can tell a good story. Probably the best one hundred writers in the history of this American experience, I bet at least 30 of them are completely unknown. Not published but unheralded, but un-fucking-known, non-existent in your local library.
A second thing I try to tell myself is to not see myself in the eyes of public knowledge, in other words do not equate success in terms of pop cultural recognition (even within the fringe pop cultural worlds of the internet and literary establishment) but in doing what you want to do. Most of the time when I get hung up on trying to translate what it is I want to to do in something that can pay an electric bill, it becomes compromised. I seriously have no fucking clue how to make those things jibe together.
I do know that what I am doing is not what I want to be doing. And I know what I should be doing is not what I do most of the time. Part of this is my own fault, part of this is the holes I have been dug into by life (which again is partially my fault), and part of it the simple fact where and what you are born into sets the prism for you the rest of your life. It's like that Price is Right Range Game with the green window - if you come from certain segments and circles, your green window is only going to go so high. That's just how it is. I mean, there's shots at bigger endings, but those are the luck (aka lottotunities) half of the equation, and if you are born from certain segments and circles your chance at luck is limited, as you are just not connected.
I feel like everything I'm connected to right now is draining, and only yelling at me about what it is doing, nobody pushing or inspiring me, nobody feeling me. And then tomorrow is Monday, where I sit at a desk, to keep about 3/5 of my bills paid, and give me a hope to keep the other 2/5 successfully juggled in the way modern American creditory systems allow you to juggle as part of their game.
I guess I'm fucking sick of this shit. It's so dissatisfying, and not what I feel inside. When the outside reality doesn't reflect the inside's desires, that's when illness of the mind starts, to try and survive the non-matching inputs and outputs sending bad signals. Mental illness is generally considered to be a bad thing, but shit man, we're so externally-inclined, as well as externally-manipulated, we need to think of the causes of these mental symptoms. We won't though. And I'm going off on another direction I shouldn't be putting inside the robots. Fuck you robots.

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.

freestyle sonnet #6

(triggered by the first drawing ever of Snuffy Smith, who is tattooed on my right arm, as shared by Paul through the twitters)

colored pencils can't sketch how sketchy is the life
spent juggling scrap heap troubles amidst hardscrabble
strife; mountainside struggles to make peace with a wife
and raise half-wild children where the yardbirds cackle,
where the winter hogs forage 'cause scraps don't exist,
where the clapboards got gaps which whistle with wind, while
we making our ends meet though most middles got missed,
and the woodstove's hungry for a bigger woodpile,
plus the tin roof's pinholes drip droplets when the rain
starts to fall; "when it rains, it pours," like grandpa said,
which was more about money than the water stain
on the plywood ceilings hoverin' overhead;
we say we'll get by, while civilized worlds all scoff;
we drop literal "g"s to keep our actions soft.

freestyle sonnet #5

(on the suggested subject of "Gorilla Monsoon" by Low Records)

mountainous men mentally maimed by machismo
meander around squared circles in front of marks,
psychologic'ly building tension, touch and go
until two "tough cookies" repress feminine sparks,
mauling the emotions they're afraid to express;
the colorful voice on commentary hard-sells
angles - the hatred between men mostly undressed,
engaged in sweat-soaked bearhugs triggered by ring bells;
Pavlov's people howl, hoot, and holler at proper
moments of engagement, believing the two sides
to be opposites opposed - bruising showstoppers
taking pre-conditioned crowds on piledriven rides
into subliminal switches of behavior -
sexually inclined to have rich flair nature

freestyle sonnet #4

(on the subject of "wenches and winches" as per Robyn R. thru the twitterbox)

Where I live, redneck chicks got jacked-up scowls
twisted in perpetual anger; where's the fun
crazy bitches I remember, with the Jim Beam jowls
and feminine howls that would stay would 'til the sun
brought another goddamned day, but still no worry;
have the times been changed, where sweet rural souls act hard,
steering big shiny trucks with windshields never blurry
from moonlight mud, parked perfect in manicured yard;
what the fuck? where went the wide open but laid back
ladies with tangled cooches unshaven like my cheeks,
shaking asses to Skynyrd, drunk off of living
as wild as we wanna, parked beside backwoods creeks,
getting dirty as fuck without a misgiving.
But these No Fear chicks ain't outlaws, nothing near it;
they've wal-martinized away these women's spirit.

freestyle sonnet #3

(on the subject of West Virginia, as per Paul R.)

A wild and wonderful woman from either War
or Cucumber - somewhere southern where wastes
run rampant like loose slurry; she was never more
than this wildbird lounger could handle; her mouth tastes
of cigarette smoke and the High Life; mountaintops
removed her inhibitions; two minds stripped in cheap
hot tub hotel room; when intertwined, the World stops
needing meaning, we speed like demons, hope to keep
the thrill of the hills in our amphetamine hearts;
but pleasures of flesh are best measured in mirrors
faced rear view; one good month became one thousand parts
broken and patched, broken again. I still hear her
words of protest; I said "I love you," I did;
that's the last time I seen her, holding our first kid.

freestyle sonnet #2

(based on subject "Challenger explosion" by @TyrusBooks)

Earth-bound monkeys with nervous tinkering fingers

Thinking better of their future than history

Should allow; but collective memory lingers

Less than the promises of Gods of mystery

acting scientific suggest spirits lifted

into the Heavens beyond shall find paradise;

thus the monkeys most mechanically-gifted

build a snub-nosed flying pistol robot device,

fill it with our earth-bound hopes, and aim at the sky,

pull the trigger on our madness, to imagine

other-worldly futures as our creations fly;

yet lacking solid ground logic to examine

our humane limits, we burn up on re-entry,

plus continue this process each human cent’ry.

January II

I have been publishing short novels, about one a week lately, inside the deep web, but also in pastebin pages, so you can find them by google searching "pastebin" plus "NDAA" because I did a text replace search and change the name of the main female character in each novel to NDAA, which stands for Never Demean Asstastic Angels, because it's important to me that we never demean asstastic angels. They are blessing, from god or science or some shit. Also, one of the better novels in this series, that NDAA lead has a daughter named Peach who is sort of a Down's syndrome angel herself, but also what would traditionally be considered a halfwit by our prejudiced standards of so-called civilization. But her mom, NDAA, feeds her square cereal, which is like those cinnamon grahams or whatever, but Peach calls them "square cereal" and hates them because she hates breakfast, just on general principle. So NDAA tells Peach she is the president of a square cereal secret society, to try and get her to eat breakfast. Except Peach still doesn't. Instead, she hangs out on the front porch and every time a car randomly passes their rural abode, she yells out at the top of her lungs, "I'M PEACH, THE PRESIDENT! I'M PEACH, THE PRESIDENT!"

Also I started working a comedy novel where a family of four cousins from southern West Virginia win the lottery, and rent an RV from Cruise America, and go on a cross-country travel spree where they kidnap various rural crime noir writers and force them to work mundane jobs, fall in love with loveless women, have doomed children, and experience the beautiful wonders of a life without hope. And then they have a time machine so after they make the writers experience all of that, they throw them in the time machine (American made, naturally) and go back to the first time they kidnapped them and instead torture and kill them, but with the added benefit of the writer having the full brain of memories related to actually being forced to live that type of life they glorify.

But mostly I am working on a collection of sonnets called Viking Underclass Conjures Valhalla in an Earth Gone Dark. It is post-apocalyptic, racially charged, has pornographic scenes galore, and the main character is based on what I'd like to be in life, namely a naked hillbilly viking warrior hiding in anarchic mountains who fucks a lot but also sneaks into cities to tear shit up, all in the name of building a more better world. Each sonnet is normal 14-lines, four rhyming quatrains with the rhyming couplet exclamation, and Alexandrine in nature each line, because seriously, fuck an iambic pentameter. Also each person/relationship is a crown of sonnets, where there are 14 basic sonnets whose last lines compose the crowning 15th sonnet. But there are also 14 different people/relationships that tell the story, so each of those crowning sonnets compose a final crowning crown sonnet at the end, which when I'm finished, will be tattooed on my right foot. At that point, I will add a new inside joke to my arsenal of inside jokes, where when I am barefoot at summer gatherings, I'll say, "Can I kick it?" in reference to the old Tribe Called Quest jam, but then I'll point at the sonnet on my foot and explain what it signifies and what a large undertaking writing a sonnet collection that really was and how taking on such a complicated form poetry project in such a free-form brainfucked era is a shining example that yes, I truly can kick it.

January I

Those normal ghosts of disillusionment have paraded into my brain again. Why believe? Why trust in fate? Why continue to pursue the EMF dazzle dance with carpal tunnel jazz hands, pretending it is building something, rather than destroying?

Basic tenet of most religions was expressed in that NGE-inspired Jay Electronica line, "You either build or destroy, where you come from?" Tricked into thinking we build, only destroying ourselves and our peace. This civilization is a trickier beast than ever before, and those at the top have robot fetishes at least in terms of letting robots heard the domesticated animals into the proper fences. Don't believe for a second the same rules apply top-to-bottom. The meritocracy delusion should be gone from your head by now.

This is me - an online blur of darkness, out of focus on purpose (my purpose - or their's?), showing bright brilliant flashes but never able to pull it together. By civilization standards, I am a failure, and perhaps even a squandered talent. But on the build or destroy standard, I am a success, just without the "I". It is a success that what gets done under the name attached to me has been done in the ways it has been done. It is beyond me; I have had little control over it my entire life. Now is no different. Though sometimes it would be nice to lottery ticket imagine if I was a successful by civilization's standards writer, working in a back yard studio with electricity, paying my electric bill the month I get it instead of right at the cut-off date and usually even then calling to get an extension until my next paycheck, but that isn't the way it goes. The things that would have to be done to be that type of civilized success, they are not in me. And if they were in me, I wouldn't do this the way that I do it. Word is bond.

freestyle sonnet #1

Cyber-syllable sonnets dribble from the dome

Through the electrosmognetic haze thick like thigh

Muscles, and causing similar sex thoughts to roam

Through the dullard corridors of internal sky.

Keep telling my children the universal stars

Seen in dead winter dark through loose windows rattling

Is mirrored within, confined loose in skull-like jars

Where caveman molecules built by fire are battling

With cybertron special effects, buzzing, sealing

The perimeter of lime green auras, free born,

But the mental illness ain’t ailment – you’re feeling

what’s real in the rhythm of caveman children torn
From uncarved block party wild style universe birth;

If you can’t hold it in your head, then what’s it worth?

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.