Mythville

From “Ginsberg Rolls Over,” the latest book by Douglas McDaniel






Colfax Avenue Daydreamer
After a One-Way Ticket, Yeah

The more the caffeine sugar jar
jumping in my head got to my
celebratory cortex cerebral,
the closer the pseudo God-man,
the Dark Knight found me on the corner
Hindu-fied, hypgnogothic
in a Tarot table of a place
with schizms of pagans
shuttering in their wastes
into plastic party hats
and flower throwing anarchists
looked at photos of the police
in the basement down below
I climbed a ladder, O Jungy Jacob,
found a mandala, stepped outside
of its snaky circle where every thing
was included, including myself,
that is, whoever, whatever ...
I calm in resident outbursts
like the middle finger sticking out
the jail cell door,
like the politics of unification
breaking old systems down
Of course! Of course! Of course!
A Gemini like Yeats would come up
with mysterious plans, a vision,
to keep his humanity from blowing apart ...
Just as sugar is stirred by a thin coffeehouse
straw, when all I needed really was a Guinness
in the Irish bar down the boulevard,
a geisha, and some noise ...
Find me a place to go, go, go ...
O angel of anxiety, get me away
from these, these, these ...
well adjusted brothers and sisters
safely bolted down by America's
college scrubbed lasses and guys,
trimmed in buzz cuts,
maintaining low maintenance
They just got a cell phone call
and I became unreal

II.

Passionate are the intensities
on Colfax Avenue,
long as a dynamite fuse
lit during the gold rush
Kerouwacky, not so much
romanticized as realized:
This age of wandering long
in the shadow city
And there have got to be
bus drivers, fully passive
aggressive, on the gas,
on the brakes ...
Shaking the Kundalini
right out of your backbone
Dark arts of mythic Batmen,
cops with cameras, old
Thana'tost around hippies
with beards as long as sad stories
Black women, Rosa Parksy,
quaking the whole busload
into fear with endless rants
about stomps upon her feet
Long and wicked from east to west,
this hard marbled street,
this historic incubus to commerce,
open desire, cell phone walls:
The distances between neighbors
In the summer it'll burn,
seems to me, recreating '68
where I almost cut
my hair

A Poolside Chat
with Winter Birds

Four pigeons
by the whirlpool
coodling up chlorine
Flying life, safe as ginger
in a cabinet,
extrapolates lifespan
The wingspan
of swimming pool pigeons
is dependent upon supply,
depth and demand
It is to the good fortune
of the young chicks
that their short necks,
soft beaks, cannot
reach down to drink
Six poisoned pigeons
find survival in the short-term
risk at the swimming pool lip
Later, they will plummet
to the floor of the concrete
corridor
Anonymous slaughterers
break off with the wind,
bleached and careening

Deconstruction of Arizona

Arizona, I don't recognize you anymore
Your creosote roots lie beneath
the perfect piles of McDonalds parking lots
Arizona, an unequal symmetry
of rubble piles collect
Ten thousand miles from here
Arizona, you are responsible ...
The middle-aged businessman
with expendable income
sweats for pleasure
Arizona, when can I stop sweating?
I swear in the heat like a pizza oven
Arizona, you are a car part store
but you got no glass to see through
and the beige collection
of air conditioned caves
is conditioned to respond
in all the right ways
The forests are in ashes
as the governor gapes
from a helicopter high
Arizona, I can find no fluid,
no friend, nor car phone to lean on
for company
By GPS, you can find me in the living room,
darkly lit, with rayolight flashing
bible black blurbs
Arizona, not even Ginsberg
would gripe about your tripe,
so blurred with anonymity
hell hardly matters anymore
Arizona, my life's belongings
are melting in a storage facility
and there are more things that beep
here than I can count
Arizona, you haven't hassled me for a while
The world is flooding
as you dry up and blow away
Arizona, a kid almost got crushed in your parking lot
and I went to one of your social service buildings
and was amazed about how many homeless lurks
were sleeping in the lobby
Arizona, I can't get assistance at the cash register
and the mountains are closed, cats run free
and all the lizards are gone
Arizona, you are sucking in souls
I think you should battalion
the borders with snow