profiling

©2023 michael raven

a curmudgeon
without a
sense of humor
is no fun at all

It might just be me… But I’ve found that I have no taste for angry online rants anymore. Even my own rants feel tiresome, which is why I’ve trended away from launching into one whenever something piques my ire.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally partake, but I feel that same tiredness when I reread what my spleen has vented.

Then, again… Most things make me feel tired these days. Except when it makes me laugh. Absurdity and satire make curmudgeonly monologues, not to mention other experiences, notably less tiresome for me.

I don’t know what I’m getting at here. Just mental stew splashing out of a leaky pot.

Take care and enjoy your day or night, whichever it might be when you read this.

beforestorm

©2023 michael raven

warpaint stained
beforestorm
rumbling grey
roiling & boiling
aching heart-throb
battering empty
shell drained

.exsanguinate.

wraith fluttering
against the
wallcloud come
lips blood copper
biting rain
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

1995

©2023 michael raven

guerrilla poetry at
broadway safeway
thursday nights
fliers you
cannot refuse
handed out to
everyone everyone
while a raven
preaches to
the flock

shopping for
something tasty
on the side
Photo by Dmitry Daltonik on Pexels.com

Note: In 1995, I was living in Seattle and somehow got put in charge of a spoken word night at a downtown café. One of our tactics for getting people to come was to do theatrical, “guerilla” poetry at local stores where we thought we might have a future audience. In and out in less than a minute (or we’d be thrown out by the management, or police), handing out 8th-of-a-cardstock-page cards listing times and dates of the next “salon” while one or more of us shouted out poetry. Safeway on Broadway (it might have been a different store name, time does funny things to the memory) was one of those locations least likely to call the cops on us, so they bore the brunt of our antics. I did some window shopping, but I never tried to pick anyone up at those events. This picture reminded me of a more fantastic imaginings of possible outcomes that never came to be.

treasure in the racks

©2023 michael raven

be the record shop treasure
as i flip through and through
click clack click clack
the cd case racket wishing
on that music well for
something different
to the ear, mouth moving
silent to words jotted down
a glimpse inside that head,
mouth uncomfortable at
the shapes it makes while
the click clack click clack
ratchets through the room
Photo by Maor Attias on Pexels.com