cryptic messages taken straight to the heart

the chalk warns idle eyeballs

with federal loyalties - 

you won't be tolerated

9/11 changed everything

used to be eastern seaboard

could be ridden discretely;

don't go near D.C. no more

new cats gambleraku II

hobo cat rides the records

out to Montana, looking

for work in hydro-fracking

Sugar Legs

these legs have scored one thousand

goals off free kicks in premier

goat league outlaw world football

what goes on inside a sad dog's brain?

hound dog jowls sag across heart

pine floor boards, sad droopy eyes

staring at non-petting world

a few things I should point out in the off chance your eyeballs see this

Of note is there is our what seems to be now monthly HAND-TO-HAND HAIKU JAMBO at BON Performance Space/Coffeehouse/Drum Zone/Psychic Realm, this Thursday evening at 7:00 pm. I shall be hosting with the mosting as always, and sharing a New Writing story, which is my new-fangled oral story with heavy dose of digital reality interwoven. Winner of the jambo will receive one of my lovely railroad haiku spikes. I think there is a Facebook event page for the thing but I killed my Snitchbook, as should you.

I think I logged back into Twitter, but I'm not really talking on there. Too much fog and noise and pretending to rattle cans against bars when actually it's just car keys jangling on the way to the market. Comment here in these various posts. Perhaps we begin a discussion here. Perhaps you email me and I email you. Perhaps we send postcards, or share cryptic buzz blurring markings on freight trains together.

Life is good, motherfuckers, always remember that. No matter how much you click and refresh and the foggy mosquitoes of buzzzzzzz get around your head, remember you can go outside. If you are already outside and the foggy mosquitoes still ding and blip bloop at you from handheld devices, remember that those motherfuckers still come with a power button. Use it before it's too late. Eventually they won't even have a power button, that shit'll shoot straight into your mind, and dudes will be proud of that shit, and somebody will make a funny tumblr of white guys having shit shot straight into their mind. Don't pollute your mind. The human body is highly adaptable, and will always move towards survival, but there's been no definitive study done in my back yard laboratory as to how fast the mind can cleanse itself from over-pollution. And once you brain things, you can't necessarily unbrain them.

If you are local, I hope to see you Thursday. If you are global, I hope to see you some day.

- Raven

ain't nuthin changed, hobo stylez still ancient

people like, "I'm lil rusty"

about shit they ain't workin'

on, as if they is machines

demon machete spirit hobo guard

I daydream of hopping freight

trains across Africa, yet

consistent rails don't exist

local dreams freight yard google searches poem

Charlottesville yard

history of the coal tower, where junkie killed sheltered kid

in the midst of rebellion against upbringing

now that area is cleared cutted

being made ready for progress

condominiums and pedestrian shops

white money is not completely spent

here, just yet

Gladstone yard

I am not australia, bro

poppin’ filter bubbles with new data mined

but I can tell you that Gladstone is quiet

turn of the road town with company houses

occupied by real people

and trains still sit there

sitting, waiting

I sit there sometimes too,

dreaming, delaying

“glad” stone

Burkeville yard

mama mack used to work

at the geriatric hospital right up the tracks

the geriatric hospital is closed

the tracks are not busy

abandoned concrete factory sits there railside

brick rancher family diner still serving

mashed potatoes and meatloaf

southside virginia

gone idle for the most part

but the prison is still busy

in fact, there’s two now

both with shiny fresh razor wire

that money’s still good and flowing

only job listing online is

fork lift operator

Crewe yard

I am not england, bro

how could google’s robotic delivery of details

overlook southside virginia’s busiest

rail yard, where a little

Raven Mack once rode

the bench on an all-star team that was

double eliminated in two days time?

the story of my life, born into

the loser’s bracket,

fighting for another day

every day

Clifton Forge yard

railfan youtubes galore

clifton forge stay busy

at the WV/VA border, coal trains everywhere

once as a young Raven Mack

was courting his birdmate

we “borrowed” a minivan

and drunk drove towards our destiny

though it was deferred

as I passed out behind a K-Mart

in Clifton Forge,

we ate breakfast at a joint

that was trackside

corned beef hash

motherfucker

Moseley yard

had no idea there was a yard

in Moseley, grandparents

lived there, I once worked

housepainting with a crew

of low rider racist rednecks who listened

to nothing but Tupac who lived

next door to my grandparents

apparently

we smoked weed together

as necessary

Belle Isle yard

british motherfucker riding a kid’s train

is the first result, what the fuck google

Belle Isle is a glorious landmark of the depths

and depravities of southern humanity

as based where the river’s mouth

widens and gets hungrier

at Richmond

how many prisoners died on Belle Isle

and how many homelesses still sleep in the bridge

and how many hits of acid did I do on those rocks

making the world looks like Houses of the Holy?

Kinney Crossover yard

not even a town with that name

just a remote yard outside

Lynchburg, headed back to Appomattox

where the Civil War died

back towards Farmville

where fuck man so much dark history

back through Abilene

where my youngest sister is about to birth

another young mack unto the world

in another ragged country home

on through Green Bay Burkeville Crewe

back to where populations still explode

and dreams are still chased

very few of us “crossover” though

but we are fucking people

and we keep doing our thing

against all odds

against all hope

with a “fuck it” mentality

the tambourine of my heart plays a sweet song

in high school I was often

high and my car's blown speakers

sounded like tambourine shakes

sporting 14

all that natural born shine

of today won't even rust, bro;

shit is straight up plastic trash

field jukebox gambleraku number seven

bought records yesterday,

two Tim Barry joints, plus

a Wino & Conny Ochs

graffito gamblerokkyu quatro

rewilding motherfuckers

wearing brown clothes need to learn

to love dilapidation

kitchen medicine

the Manchurian tea beast

in primitive bottling state,

used to quell inner demons

ancient hobo styles

blurry shadow swagger steps

across railroad ties chasing

a destiny manifested

friday doldrums

peacocks ain't buying shit no more
hardly a gamecock left in this cyber-coop
the family van busted & the washing machine don't drain
because of shoddy plastic parts on the inside
(I know, I've dug into them)
but the world keeps spinning

truck acting like it wants to die
seems like this always happens in
the 250K to 285K range
summertime usually
global warming ain't good on manmade creations
including man
but we'll cross that bridge
then burn it, when the time comes
and the world keeps spinning

work malnourishes me
but gives me money
not enough to pay for all the shit
but if I can keep bailing out water
at half the rate it floods in
I might be able to die while on paid vacation
probably camping as I can't afford a cottage
but at least I can afford to call living outside "camping" still
as the stars slide overhead
as the world keeps spinning

wishing for the past's promises is all I have left
promises of success, of people paying
for the things you like to do
of affording to do those things
without begging, harassing, asking over
and over and over and over...
but the world keeps spinning

it's just life, just work
(because that's this culture's ways)
it's just money
(also this culture's way, tied into the first)
it's just the struggle
(always present, regardless of culture)
it's just feeling compelled to scream into the void
hoping for something to echo back
waiting... waiting...
but I am alone on this ledge,
and I have to accept that shit
while the world keeps spinning

sure, motherfuckers don't care
but they never did
and never will
that's why they are motherfuckers
and there's a lot of them
most every face you greet is incomplete
on the inside, and quite the motherfucker
waiting to be unlocked or just triggered
(as most don't have locks any more)
and I can't take it personal,
it's just the world spinning the way it has always spun
be happy to be sensitive enough to feel the spins
stay grounded enough to not get yourself sick at it
no place will ever be stable in the grand scheme
(not even at the top of pyramids)
it is the way of the people flittering around on the surface
as the world keeps spinning

painting and spackling after work
in a rough country house
as youngest sister will have firstborn
in a month or so, thus we make room...
hope the truck doesn't die in transit
hope the nephew is born strong of spirit
hope he is able to grow old, comfortably of spirit
while the world keeps spinning

I am a natural born gamecock
you can see it in my walk
my shoulders have always been heavy
with chips and weight
and sensitivities to the world's spinning ways
gamecocks make noise to mark domain
gamecocks stab spurs at perceived threats
and gamecocks gonna crow
as sure as the sun rises
because the world keeps spinning

one thousand feathers
while the world keeps spinning

graffitto gamblerokkyu trois

my heart is a high-level

krylon sprayed uselessly in

a world making yard sale signs

graffitto gamblerokkyu two

faded pinks, mustard yellows,

arrows pointing to nowhere

all bounce behind my eyelids

freestyle sonnets

If you get my One Thousand Feathers pamphlets (prescriptions for the future, access to the past), then these will eventually show up as parts of a new Freestyle Sonnets pamphlet at some indeterminate and somewhat unpredictable point in the future. But here a few for those rare motherfuckers that still happenstance upon this site still.

ain’t never no peacock, natural born gamecock,

even when I’m cooped up, I’ve got a free range heart,

with knowledge to impart and instill in hard rock

heads of my offspring born to be performance art

scratching the surface of earth in wild spirals, led

by their spirit more than numbers getting brain crunched,

or soul getting gut punched, their intuition inbred

by mack mental prowess; this bird tribe shall stay hunched

behind your holograms of freedom, built with blood

made of copper, we understand shadow dwelling

is necessary for survival of true mud

mindframes, being outnumbered by the fast swelling

masses of drone cyborg soft wire brained mockingbirds

building intelligence through blindness to black crow words

tapping ties with steel toes chasing horizons west

or south or wherever this open car may go,

I’m not particular to place but strange faces look best

regardless of the light; I’ve attempted to know

a home and a bed to where routine was achieved,

kept my hair trimmed presentably for better work,

better pay, better days promised, yet I received

nothing but discomfort, more bills would always lurk

behind the ones I wrestled away, multiplied

in force, when the freedom I was chasing was right

there behind every freight whistle; this world lied

with what it offered but also lied still each night

and that didn’t match my heart’s wild palpitation,

so I tromped away from life stuck in one station

all the rewilders seem to be white people when

seems it was them who had over-cultivated

civilization in the first place, giving men

climate controlled comfort for domesticated

creatures to survive even thrive despite living

contrary to feral beginnings learning fire

to crawl towards burning permanence, misgiving

progress to the rest of nature, bound by barbed wire,

and now they come bowing back - white skin in brown clothes,

sheltered noses turned upwards at those who refuse

to accept the blank-eyed gazes of those who chose

to say purposely “we rewild” when this mind ruse

to feel better about man’s tinkering with planned

tinkering in reverse still doesn’t understand

better to force words to fit ancient way rhyme schemes,

but not too ancient because wasn’t no words wrote

back when you worked the fields with no room for day dreams

because every moment was it, no footnote

to refer at, deferring to wisdom obtained

by scanning scribbles with meanings using two eyes

connected to memory bank investments trained

to attach abstract concepts to the lines that rise

off flat papers, abstractions built together tall

to create warnings and stories and histories

and give depth to fleeting moments, to help install

meaning to the mundane, moving the mysteries

of existence into books that exist only

to share man’s past minutes, making life less lonely

shadowland mind puppets born from massive neglect

of intellect, left to rot staring at boxes

of extra-sensory deception, we henpecked

of our thousand feathers by electro-foxes

praying upon bended knees in cubicle chairs

where our asses is as fat as cookies hidden,

crumbling the hard drive into lost fragmented lairs

of despair and distorted contortions given

freely, freedom and free dumber both doubling down

on recovery techniques that never tested

publicly or were proven to be cap-and-gown

worthy, but all alternatives weren’t divested

thoroughly, but that’s okay we stroll lack-a-dazing,

stars light the path, but we blind indoors screen grazing.

just kicking it y'all at the rail yard

where the wandering winds lead

me, I follow those whims blown

through my mind suggest going

graffitto gamblerokkyu

primer base coat on throw-ups

ensures longevity which

means you gain fame forever

what I read in bed last night

I went old school and held actual printed paper in my actual human hands last night. The digital revolution is not a revolution at all but merely the television program they put on trying to prove Gil Scott-Heron wrong in being all like, "See? The revolution was televised. We have so much power in our hands!" Bitch please, you got a goddamn all-the-time commercial in your hands. Now go click refresh on your soap operas.

TAO TE CHING translation by Burton Watson
I've actually had this copy of this book since college a thousand years ago, and love the translation. Also this dude Stephen Addiss who used to run a haiku group in Richmond did the brush stroke art, which adds a nice layer to this copy. I was sitting in the woods yesterday, stalking a fox who had been stalking my chickens (and pretty much killed off my flock) because I was gonna suplex that motherfucker then DDT him (or her... I am not above violence towards fox women, especially when they kill my chickens), and just sitting in the woods got a lot of the Tao Te Ching poking around my head. We live in a time of a myriad of explanations for a lot of shit that doesn't really need to be explained. It might seem like I'm just talking yin-yang when I was doing that "truth-free pamphlet" bit in that one youtube video but I actually meant it. There is no explaining everything, figuring it all out, putting a checkmate move on existence. It ain't gonna happen, for you or me or anyone. So I figured I needed to contemplate on the Tao Te Ching a little more, although I found it somewhat boring and contemplated making my own translation of the various translations I have. Perhaps that will be a thing this fall, or perhaps it will not.

RAILROAD SEMANTICS #2 by Aaron Dactyl
Trains been calling me, meaningless travel's been calling me - and not travel like flying somewhere because I look at flying to some destination like having an epidural child birth - it's not natural, and you are removing yourself from the actual experience. Obviously I'm a dude, not a woman, so my opinions on child birth mean nothing, but from watching a few and what I've learned with my ol' lady, there's some connection within the mother to the passage of child into this world from that incubation state. Post-partum depression is less common in women who have natural child births and feel that passage, which also would make sense because under epidural you're coached to travel that passage as opposed to feeling the natural urge. Travel is like that too - the act of getting somewhere is more than just going to the beach - it's the trek to the beach, and the roads you travel, places you stop, weird shit you see along the way. The more obscure your travel path can be means the less bullshit ads and strip malls and crap like that are in your way fouling up the trip.
Aaron Dactyl's Railroad Semantics has its limitations, as all zines do, but I enjoy the fuck out of it. It's not great writing like you'd recommend it to everyone you saw, but it's good writing about good subject matter that's more than worth your time if you are feeling the call of freight trains but have to lay in a fucking bed at 10:30 at night so you can get up at 4:30 and go deliver coffee for a bunch of cancer doctors.
Which brings me to the issue at hand - how to find nourishment in an malnourishing employment situation? I am malnourished socially, as I am surrounded by the pear-shaped bureaucrat people who tend to look like chickens. (I think the lizard people use the chicken people to keep things in order - the chicken people are a buffer against wild domesticated humans who may or may not go wild again.) Socially, a lot of the people I became an adult with as well as the influential social factors in the area I live, they've all become bougienati (bourgeoisie illuminati) who think an independent restaurant with wacky decor and a good microbrew selection is the greatest achievement that can be made in life post-age 30. Neither of these are things that feed me, at all, even slightly. The internet seems to be a snarky place where the bougienati sort of hone their social skills as internet heavyweights are social lightweights in real life. So that doesn't feed me either. So what feeds me? I don't fucking know. I think I need a face tattoo, like hobo crusty punk fuck-ups like Aaron Dactyl, but I guess my childhood wasn't fucked enough to quite put me over that edge. If I ever hit some sort of lick and end up to where I don't have to have a regular job, I'm going to celebrate by giving myself a face tattoo though - probably a tiny star outside my left eye.
By the way, I'm not sure if anybody is ever here - by deactivating my Facebook and Twitter I sort of cut myself off from being like, "HEY! LOOK AT THIS NEW MEANINGLESS SCREAMING INTO THE VOID I DID AT MY OBSCURE BLOGSPOT WEBSITE!" so I'm not sure if anybody realizes this exists outside the fog, albeit still inside the fog, but if you were thinking to yourself, "Man, that Raven Mack is great, I'd like to get him a present as a token of my enjoyment for all the dumb shit he does inside the internet," you could purchase me any Railroad Semantics issue from issue 3 through 7. Plus it'd support Aaron Dactyl. Or you could just buy a prescription to One Thousand Feathers, and I could support him myself, although I'd probably just funnel that paypal money into printing more One Thousand Feathers. But if I've learned anything thus far with my various projects the last few years it's that very few people give a fuck. They all want to be entertained, through methods that are convenient enough to them they don't have to exert themselves. And they only really want to spend money on microbrews at restaurants for the most part. Eventually America will be nothing but restaurants, with a hierarchy of places to eat where restaurant workers at high end places will afford to eat at mid-level places, and so on down the line, and the poor service industry people will eat shitty fast food, and shitty fast food workers will get food stamps and eat processed foods from Wal-Mart and this will be seen as a pure form of survival in an America completely gentrified by the bougienati.
Goddamn, I need to just turn my family into hobos or something. This shit is getting trifling to keep pretending is worth the effort - this site, this job, this country, the whole overly-complicated bullshit that we call civilization and culture and right and progression from a primitive state.

america the gambleraku homepix

America, that lying

bitch ass motherfucker sold

me weed but it's just parsley

field jukebox gambleraku number six

easyriders' magazines'

in the wind photo sections

corrupted me as youngster