Vehicular Tankacide

By Raven Mack

Exploring our fragmented existence through the meditative observational form of short Japanese tanka poetry. These poems were scribbled on notecards during barely free moments of Raven Mack's everyday struggle to maintain a precarious position, attempting to still find something real and natural in his humane routines, while fighting against the increasing domestication of the wild human spirit through industrial digitization. And while that makes it sound really important and intelligent, on a real level, these are real ass little poems that will find common ground with both the simplest of men and the most complex of animals. These are beautiful but chaotic little slabs of real working life, that you can cuddle into, and warm yourself briefly against the rising tide of cold dehumanization of natural life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raven Mack
• Release date: Jan 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310526367

Raven Mack

Raven Mack writes. Sometimes it is carved into metal along railroad tracks, sometimes it is etched into 0s and 1s for new-fangled cyber-devices, and sometimes it is spoken unto the wind. But that is what he does. He has been involved in self-publishing through zines, blogs, printing presses, pamphlets, smoke signals, street art, oral tradition, and astral projection for a couple of decades human time. But let's be honest, he's been doing this forever, or at least since the T'ang Dynasty.

Book preview

Vehicular Tankacide

By Raven Mack

Copyright Charles Raven McMillian 2014

Published by Workingman Books at Smashwords (Workingman Books #003)

This ebook is licensed for personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or re-distributed. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy, or direct them to www.rojonekku.com. If you’re digging this book but did not purchase it, please try to do something to support the author.

They kind of suggest you do these little disclaimers at the beginning, but look, let’s be real, we live in a world dominated by material wealth, and I struggle to thrive inside this system. If I could make a dollar off my writing, I’d be stoked, but honestly I’d be even more stoked if we just smashed this whole bullshit system to pieces. So if you stole this but you’re not actively working towards smashing the whole bullshit system to pieces and just trying to get cool shit for free, you are an asshole.

Dedications & Shout-Outs

This collection of words is dedicated to the Crafty Owl that watches over me in my times of darkness, and has helped me navigate my way back towards the light each and every time. I love you.

Shout-out to everybody that has supported my various efforts over the year, especially those who have rolled with Rojonekku in recent years. Shout-out to all the kooks, crazies, closet poets, creative kids, activists, drunkards, and general all-around loungers who come out to the Hand-to-Hand Haiku tournament/Rojonekku sermons, and share their words with me. I hear every line you speak, and it makes me happier to be alive.

Rest in peace to Charlie Tuna and Uncle Ricky. Trying to keep your spirit alive by staying alive.

Contents

Introduction

Quilt #1

Quilt #2

Quilt #3

Quilt #4

Quilt #5

Quilt #6

Quilt #7

Quilt #8

Quilt #9

Quilt #10

Quilt #11

Quilt #12

Quilt #13

Quilt #14

Quilt #15

About the Author

Introduction to Vehicular Tankacide

A large part of my fascination with form poetry comes from the fact that secretly, within my own hidden twisted brain, I’m fascinated and somewhat ruled by numbers. I count steps. I plot out books to have various multiples of chapters carry different aspects of the overarching story. I plot the number of words to roughly match characters. I weave a lot of weird, ridiculous, and mildly obsessive numerical nonsense into most of my writing.

Thus, my dalliances with haiku over the past decade feed this – a quick, syllable-counting, observational, meditative poem. The west is familiar with haiku. However, what is not often known is that the short haiku form is actually part of a larger group form of poetry called renga. What was a 5-7-5 character first verse would be followed by a two-line verse with 7 characters per line, then back to the haiku, then back to the two-line verse. Those two-line verses were called tanka. Thus, the expanded form of this short poetry, with that second verse is often referred to as tanka.

I’ve dabbled with tanka in the past, and even at one point was composing three-line poems with seven syllables per line which I called gambleraku due to the fact it had a triple-7 structure, and I started that project one time while in Las Vegas.

In 2013, I started hosting these Rojonekku Hand-to-Hand haiku tournaments, where people signed up much like an open mic or poetry slam to compete in elimination rounds with the haiku form to create a winner. As host of these events – and as a man who’s written thousands of haiku over the past ten years – I didn’t take part. But towards the end of the summer, I felt like I needed to start representing the form more if I was going to be standing on a stage, hosting those events.

Then one day, I was contemplating the sustainability of human life on earth, and how due to the culture I’m a part of and born into, I drive 25 miles a day, each way, back-and-forth to work, by myself, in a giant machine that burns up gas and emits exhaust and contributes in its own little way to the fucking up of things. We all do this. And we all justify it. Me personally, I’m just maintaining employment, to provide for my family and myself. But in the process of providing, I’m also fucking things up. We can psychologically justify this all we want – and that’s one of the greatest strengths of the human being – but it doesn’t change the fact about what’s actually happening. It also doesn’t make me able to alter the human world’s existential structure all by myself.

So what I decided to do at some point towards the end of the summer was before I turned over the ignition on my truck, I’d make myself write three