freedom to do things freely

rest in peace Vollis Simpson,

learned more conversating with

you twice than five years at work

garden of delights

ev'ry time we eat beets, I

forget then think I'm shitting

blood and I'm about to die

dilapidation gambleraku whatever number was next

how is man not nature when

the rust from manmade items

is like autumnal decay?

sneaking in the side door

my dilapidated life

is the one I dreamed building;

fuck newness, fuck bitch asses

empty shells of existence

never sat at cool kids table,

too much to do to fuck with

trifling consumptive nature

ancient hobo gambleraku

failed railroad haiku carvings

litter my property like

memories of lost freedom

you can has railroad haiku spikes

dilapidation gambleraku number third off

sad entrapped owl spirit peers

through loose, unglazed windowpanes

at a crazed world spinning hard

one thousand feather 7 & 8 pamphlets 

dilapidation gambleraku number second off

staring out busted windows,

wondering how the tree keeps

growing without helping hands

compound decor gambleraku

all of these things still exist,

just in a more mangled state;

Bird Tribe is rough on plastic

Whiteboy X

sniffs of the morning commute’s

exhaust fumes of progress

chasing dreams planted inside a wild mind

that could care less

but was trained how

and now concern warps to worry

morphs into paralysis

trapped between abstract numbers

that fence in my every action

threatening barbs poking at my brain

to recognize the boundaries

of domestication

the industrial plumes of progress flower along the river

progress manufactured

by any means

progress hydraulically fractured if

necessary

progress lifelong tenure tractored by

fine-tailored grandfathers who were painted not drafted

my born destiny is

as a mineral resource at best

avoiding white trashing, recycled

harvested and marketed as skilled

and compliant, never defiant

by any means

necessary

cover the world gambleraku

domesticated work beasts

slurp caffeine whips to proudly

please master supervisors

freight train boy gambleraku

today is one of those days

where "disappear forever"

makes a lot of fucking sense

scribble script from the past gambleraku

transparency goes both

ways, never forget that, plus

they got money for full tint

railroad haiku spikes

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

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

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

more like fathers of anarchy gambleraku amirite

david mann mantras spiral through

my brain as the soul slow drains

through another forty hours

Sunday night gambleraku down

a man is only as strong

as milk crates he stole throughout

his life can help organize

downward dog gambleraku but not really I don't do yoga

crescent moon "C" wraps around

eye of horus "R" but then

where is the "M" for my name?

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.

a gambleraku about disappearing

free bird tribes will disappear

time to time across oceans

to escape apocalypse

also here is a video I did about pamphlets

Hand-to-Hand Haiku Tournament in Charlottesville this Thursday evening

THIS THURSDAY NIGHT at 7:00 PM at BON coffee event performing house center of underground greatness, we will be having a Hand-to-Hand Haiku Tournament. Details as to how that works are below, but basically you show up with 20-some haiku, which can either be 5-7-5 syllable structure or just short poems 17 syllables or under, and you trade off one-on-one against others, until one is defeated, on and on until a single person is standing, who is crowned the Haiku Spirit Warrior of the evening, and gets a one-of-a-kind motherfuckin' railroad haiku spike of my own creation. The one I've hand-selected for this even is about shineface people, because I often wonder if Charlottesville is not simply full of shineface people, looking to gentrify rusty styles into something they can live vicariously through. I realize this is partially my own pre-conceptions, but experience here has not exactly countered that internal bias. But we are brining the Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts Hand-to-Hand Haiku Tournament to the public, in the hopes that the shinefaces who gentrify the earth and commodify trash do not ruin our good time this one evening. SO I AM CALLING ALL FREAKS, FOOLS, FIENDS, FUCKERS, FREESTYLE PHILOSOPHERS, HOMELESS BUKOWSKIS, BABYLONIAN RESISTANCE FIGHTERS, SLAM STARS, MILLENNIAL FALCONS, WHITE WALKERS, ONLINE PERSONAL BRAND DEVELOPERS, DESIGNERS, FINE ARTS PAINTERS, HOUSEPAINTERS, SKYLINE PAINTERS, LEAVES CHANGING COLORS IN THE AUTUMN FAIRY PAINTERS, GLITTERATI, LITERATI, HIPSTERATI, BUGATI RIDERS, BOX CHEVY DRIVERS, DIP DIP DIVERS, EASYRIDERS, FORMER EASYRIDER OL' LADIES OF THE MONTH FROM THE 1970S, FORMER EASYRIDER OL' LADIES OF THE MONTH FROM THE 1980S, BEAVER HUNT PARTICIPANTS PRE-1983, COFFEE AFICIONADOS, SELF-PUBLISHING EXPERTS, ZINESTERS, SCENESTERS, BIG DREAM BELIEVERS, SMALL TOWN BELIEBERS, DON'T FIGHT THE FEELERS, YEEZUS FREAKS, FAMILY MEMBERS, VW MICROBUS PROPHETS, RAINBOW FAMILY MEMBERS, ASTRAL TRAVELERS, ACOUSTIC GUITAR BUSKERS, MONSANTO CORN HUSKERS, CATCHIN FIREFLIES IN JARS AT DUSKERS, VISIONARY ARTISTS, OUTSIDER POETS, STREET GENIUSES, WORDSMITHS, BLACKSMITHS, TRAMPS, HOBOES, BUMS, EMPERORS OF THE NORTH POLE, KINGS, QUEENS, GODS, EARTHS, KNIGHTS, DAZE, BISHOPS, ANTI-BISHOPS, CARDINALS, ROOKS, RAVENS, WOLFDOORS, WOLF SHAMAN, COYWOLVE AFICIONADOS, SPIRIT ANIMALS IN HUMAN FORM, SPIRIT PLANTS IN ANIMAL FORM, SPIRIT MATTER IN EARTHLY FORM, MCS, DJS, DANCERS, ROMANCERS, STONES, DREAMLESS FLESH AND BONES, DRUNKARDS, HOP-HEADS, AND ANYTHING ELSE to come on out, it might be cool and shit.

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

WHAT HAND-TO-HAND HAIKU ENTAILS

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT ABOUT HAIKU?

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

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

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

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

BUT HOW WILL THESE BE JUDGED?

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

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

SO WHAT DO WE WIN?

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

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

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

field jukebox gambleraku number five

tom joad's entitled ghost eats

wild harvested greens, and keeps

playing "money" by pink floyd

this is not farming gambleraku number two

bastard monster's machines stalk

through corn simple existence,

with glyphosate well water

buy a subscription to 1000 feathers support my madness

the road I live on y'all

blinded by solar, binded

by electrified gridlock

that took my freedoms away

field jukebox gambleraku number four

this used to be my ipod,

it held two hundred songs max

and was always recharging