Mythville

Toward the End

of the Beginning

And so the Sun said onto them, "Look" ...
and they all went blind ... And the Moon
said onto them, "See? He's crazy!"
and then turned back upon the Sun
and beamed, brightly, saying,
"I told you they wouldn't get it."

So the Sun turned back upon the Moon,
and said onto it, in pity at its barren soul,
telling it, with August pride, "Wait till Eight!"
And so the Moon died, pitted and cracked,
and Man, having learned to look away
from the Sun, humble and on his or her knees,
cried out to the cruel, angry bright orb, "Why?"

And so the Sun answered, "Love, Me,"
but they could only answer back, still blind,
deafened by the roar, asking, "Who was that?"
And the Moon waited and waited,
circling like a one-eyed Horus Hawk,
and said back to the sun, more brightly,
"See ... see ... see? I can anger the sea!
I told you they would never get the Joke."

And so the Sun burned ever brighter
every vivid century, every thirteen years,
saying onto them, "Really, really, really ...
Love, Me ... I'll even hand off a single Flame
for you to abuse in my ever-brighter Name."
But they only burned brighter, and the Moon
laughed and laughed, turning to blood-red,
drifting, dreaming blues, and jeered back
at the Sun, "They need a flood now, Fool!"

And so the suspicious Sun sent them Flood,
and Fire and all but a few of them all but died,
and those who remained cried out to the clouds,
"O why? ... O why? ... O why? ... O why O why?"
And the Sun, hearing this, said onto them,
"See, see, see, learn this and I'll burn brighter,
give you a lighter, a brick and more mortar,
so more of you can begin to understand, each day ..."

And the Moon, still waiting, swayed and shook,
struggling to break free, laughing hysterically,
in a mass media breakdown of social disease ...
"I can divide, conquer and count to Three!"

And so the Sun, out of incomplete frustration,
said onto them, "Okay. Okay. Okay ...
I'll just burn you silly motherfuckers up,"
sending a purple and orange plume
of fire their way, every three days,
and they said, "Seems to be neither
oops nor here or what or why, just sky,"
while the lands all burned and the seas
all boiled into steam at the year Thirteen,
killing them ... and the Earth, quiet again,
whispered, "Cool, I can finally get some sleep."


~ Morning Sun, Iowa
http://mythvilleondemand.blogspot.com




The Solar Bath


She awoke
shapely but shaken
And I watched her bathe
In blinding electricity
Beneath the solarized sky
Tiamat met Zeus
Were unable to reach
The porch to punish her
And over the cornfields
Of Republicanated Iowa
Thunder a’ trumpeted,
And Tesla’s lightning
Failed to defeat her,
And solar light bounced
Off the feet of her
Bouncing upwards
Off the earth, to fire
Up the weaponized,
Quite culinary clouds
On the ninth
anti-anniversary
Of September Eleventh
She awoke shapely but shaken
As the neighborhood watchers
Faded away like gargoyles,
Draconian unbeings,
As the Ta’ Iowan
dawn made
The winds sing
A new day, and all
The old fucked up
Old ghosts all
But ran away
I watched her bathe
In electricity last night
As we watched the watchers
And then all of the watchers
Started signing in Morse Code
And before dawn we chased
Each other around
Wondering which one
Was pretending to be
The scariest and smartest
of them witches on
the mirror ball wall
And internationalist
Viagran huntsmen fumbling
For newsy spells to foul
The electrician’s switches
As the shapely but shaken
Wake up call doomed up
A first breath of hurricane fires
Churning up in the earns of the earth
And I imagined how the tectonics
Of the globe might burst
Sending more seawater, yes,
Up from down below,
Way way way down below
More even than
the moon can send
if Zeus ever came back
to toss that old rock
down again
And before dawn she bathed
In a lake of fire
Sent down from the sky
And we all chased down
The shapely but shaken
Without causing a ruckus
Or a Venusian star
to start screaming
About her long lost
Gothic Civil rights
 ~ Morning Sun, Iowa


Gothic January

Two lovers shared
a broken tree
to burn a fire
to stay warm from thee
while the knight
took the queen out
for a dance
beneath the sun
the military marched
to the frozen One
and success, and strife
rode a chariot
to a star
to make happiness
a drink
at the oxygen bar
and I told you,
"I can't boil oil now ...
I'm kinda in the mystic
just a little bit;
in circles, in pinwheels,
in cyberstazi
and the FBI,
in the lLamb
who walked
beneath January's
darkened agnostic sky ..."
as the lovers dreamed
and the gargoyles stood
in summer corn stalks,
in frozen wood,
within a circular steam
within a steam
and you laughed love,
come back to me

~ Iowa City, Iowa

By Douglas McDaniel
http://mythville.blogspot.com/


Hermit By the Sea

Were I but a byte hermit
I'd sing of thee from distant shores,
but God was just a comet,
no Martian, no comment,
nor mere baseball dream
...from some Elysian Field
of Soprano Land, Idi Amin,
but a stellar dark star dwarf,
who rules now like an oaf
on Egyptian soil, living off
your sweet sugar's gasahol,
your machine asp ass sugar loaf!

~
Douglas McDaniel
Mythville, America
http://mythville.blogspot.com/

Serotonin

How different
might history be
if Hitler is able
to take a three-hour
nap on a certain
New Year's Day
of America's choice?
If he had been able
to feel the cool alert
behind his eyes
that his view
had been a bit
cross and yes,
maybe a bit more
blue oil paint
would do and yes, yes,
that Leonard Bernstein
cat is groovy
and yes, Custer,
that guy, had turned around
to let the sea
of the dispossessed
catch up on their own cruelty
and consider to let just
a few of those bastards
live to tell a real story
of mercy to the newspapers
back home, that to win
a war of genocide
was no mercy
and the cornflakes
in my own head
were nothing but alcohol
stains upon daylight
clouds of peace?

Bombing Run

Say what you want
about the low lifers,
tyranny begins
at a very high
altitude
because,
gosh darn it
beating my guts
in Oppositeland
is very high praise,
because what you call
a Tea Party is really
not even dinner,
because ancient drums,
the many tom tom toms
are just the steady
pound on a tenderloin
of the mind
turned into a tender drum
sweet and kind and pure
and even if Walmart
broke the place up bad,
one more purchase
at the near-dead
country store
just might
make just enough
difference

Where Sir Freudo
Lost the Ring

The morning began
and never ended
quite unlike many others
as I stood like
one of those granddad old
palace sentries
who guarded monarchs
at their pearly gates,
expressionless, zombiefied
in next to last Templar mode,
poised and posed, metalurgy
realized to be hurtful treasure
for TNT people, useless as they
come and go, now rendered,
once again, quite pointlessfully,
as a word picture with a blue sharpie,
purchased in San Francisco
by Saint Francis of Assissi ...
upward, turned back toward Zeus,
his challenger ... Him who once
maintain in Spain great
bloody mountains of gold
taken from small brown men
who knew of nothing more
to see Sheriff Joe Arapaio
as nothing less than
an avenging Lord of Death ...
He from across the sea
failed to learn more beautiful
things than bad code scrolled
by a false fundamentalist God,
false single immutable sword,
a word that can't be weighed,
edited, reconsidered,
in a Bible black brick
by burn barrel people
who, iron cast, in their rejoicing,
instead deciding to send
the Ring of Doom
back to his maker
at the foot of Father Washington
in a statue beneath the snow

~
Douglas McDaniel
Washington, Iowa
http://mythville.blogspot.com/

GNP

Gone Nuts Planet
is outta sorts
every thirteen years,
the sun says

Unreadable tattoo,

from the men made
of bamboo

Railroads are nice

But I can't pay the price

Is it too late to lie

or become a ballerina?

Networked society

is seasoning anxiety
and for all of our
dispassioned new
sobriety, we missed
the point, entirely

~ Douglas McDaniel
Mythville, America
http://mythville.blogspot.com/

CC: http://cccomeseejerusalem.blogspot.com/

Penumbra

This is about the word, "Satan"
This is about "Jesus," chased by light
This is about the demarcation zone
     moving on the moon

This is about the sun
This is about the earth
This is about the material world
     shaking like a ghost in the machine

This is also about Elvis and JFK
and Herbet Hoover and Sheriff Joe Arpaio:
This is about all of the snakes in the grass
     hunted down by electronic kittens

This is also about, but not limited to,
the undefined demarcation zones
of the infinite, worlds within words,
     rescued by the rational real mathematics

This is about the question of which is better,
Driving to make good "time," a joke, distance ...
This is also about noticing more details
     by walking to your mailbox

This is about the frequency, Kenneth
This is about the code for those in the know,
and the great whole planet of supposedly
     lesser souls, who don't get the signal, yet ...

This is not about banks
This is not about tanks
This is also, but limited to
     the narcolepsy of football
This is not about the eye
     in the pyramid, nor the AOL
     of the mind's eye

This is about the eternal robust
engine of change and the need to conserve
the present in its proper place, lacking time

~
Douglas McDaniel
Mythville, America
http://mythville.blogspot.com/


Devolution 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,
the angry sun awakes, a lion,
the wind pulls sacred smoke
around the window
and out the door

I scream into silence

Arizona, you are responsible ...
The middle-aged businessman
with expendable income
sweats for pleasure
and I feel
"pretty peppered"
by it all

Arizona, when can I stop swearing?

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
are conditioned to respond
in all the right meets wrong ways

The forests are in ashes
as the governor gapes
from a helicopter high
for the diversionary tactic
of the the unrael politic
and asks the spotlight
to "move on"

The spotlight will not
"move on," the world
is watching

Arizona, I can find no fluid,
no friend, nor car phone
to lean on
for company ...

The wolf is watching

By GPS, without your bullets in fistfuls
you can find me in the living room,
darkly lit, with rayolight flashing
bible black blurbs
on non-violence
cursing your name

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
my frozen assets
of the heart

Arizona, you haven't hassled me for a while,
though I'm a loose cannon at the mousy mouth
 ... The world is flooding, bleeding,
burning blinding in high winds from above
as you dry up and blow away

Arizona, heart patients are being denied,
a kid 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,
dreaming of Mississippi burning

Arizona, I can't get assistance at the cash register
and the mountains are closed, cats run free,
the lizards have disappeared,
to plot secret revenge
to assuage denial

Arizona, you are sucking in souls,
eating them, spitting them out,
at very low wages ...
of sin ... I suppose ...
and six are dead now,
six!

How long? How many more?

Arizona, I think you should
battalion the borders with snow
and big bad bars of soap,
painting you headless
telegraph cross with wires,
tin cans of TNT
and a sacrificed fox
also known as "truth"

~ Douglas McDaniel,
Iowa City, Iowa


Beepee City Blues (Forgive But Don't Forget)

Awake in a captured American city,
wide awake, uncommon and conquered
by Beepee, of thee I sing: see the greenish
star sign, flag of my new queen, no king ...

And so this is the new valley, forged
by a poisoned sea. You see? I stared
into your dark and bubbling gurgle
of gore, too long, and now I have lost
my heart, owning my death, drowned
and alive, in little bubbles of grease ...

And yours, in these hours, drifting back
into sleep now, uncovering the brown loam
of anguished grief, in the Paris of the prairie,
dreaming of the fairies, who bleep my name,
cursing my overdone disinfected dysfunction ...
but I'm awake now, pumping into function

At discourse with the junction of light and dark,
on my electronic ark, loading the animals now,
my music, your now now and my then then, to thine
angels we seek truth, cruel, my belly, your barrel
of hell, spelled out now in the sweetspilled spice
of good medicine, served in a box of Davey Jones,
containing my heart at the bottom of the Gulf,
and birds drop out of the sky
between me and you ...
crashing, singing,
"squeak, squeak."

~ Coralville, Iowa
By Douglas McDaniel
http://mythville.blogspot.com/
http://mythvilleondemand.blogspot.com/
http://mythville.twitter.com/
mythville@gmail.com


Eyes Wide Open

America, your Tombstone, Arizona,
stands out, in memorial balloons,
talking heads of post-gunfire analysis,
in anguished memories echoing
gunfire, in flowers left upon
the furnace of revolution,
in the mixed up mindspace
of mistreated man-monster
assassins, in creature comforts
shaken like broken tablets
given by Moses, by the mere
shattered jerking around
of horrifying images
to television commercials
where we are asked
to ask our doctors

We the people are capable
of so much more: Capable
of surgeons able to render
miracles far more healing
than moon missions,
predator strikes
from deep in the sky,
from quick stock fixes,
dialing up foxes,
connected by two-year
contracts on cell phones,
by unholy secret armies
unleashed upon the world
but now rendered
in one sick sad baldface
mad hatter joker fuck,
who decided to make
history by shedding
your blood, and your children's
children's blood, to make
that point, old pointy,
that no one else could give
a hearing to because,
old shriner shiner,
it pays too much
for the talking skull,
to answer the one question
it can't answer for itself: Why?

The map is fully dotted now,
with hands holding hands
and yet we can't all seem
to becalm the energies
flowing from the angry sun
because, dear masters,
the amplified drug lords
of commerce, offer more
ailments, sick sad treatments
that have nothing to do
with love, just money,
just time for bull markets
and disinformation

We can dream,
point to our heroes,
and tolerbrate
a forgivenness
of our sins,
sometimes
only as long
as the car ride
home

Clearly, nature
is doing its damndest
to show us our faces,
our spewing missed
places as fomenters
of foul foams
guzzling up
from the bottom
of our beer bottles
and polarized teas

Listen to the water,
America; listen
for gentle silenced
sounds, in cattle cars
racing by, in delivery
trucks chasing us around
with backwards beeping
to greet each morning,
to failures to answer
the myriad echoes
of grieving sisters
for suicide cults
set too hard
on logic chopping,
on passions, on reason,
to the revolutionary
flavors of the season,
to rocket ships made
for secret mission masters,
to lies sold as truth
in penciled in televised
image makers, harbingers
of false light, false words,
false perpetrators
of plans against you,
America, plans beyond
pure reason, just plans,
authority zones of controls
intended for our sponsors
of capital gains, tax dodges,
miniscule media channels
to jail up the Jonahs,
the Joans, arching , marching,
moving forward to nurture us,
to set love right, for Job,
so he can no longer suffer
in the error of St. Paul's
jealous rage and error

Fear, no mind reader,
can open our eyes
for the first time, America,
open them, now, read see feel
your own bodies, connected
to the whole earth,
not just your slicing borders
for the first rotten time

~ Douglas McDaniel
Iowa City, Iowa
http://mythville.blogspot.com/
http://mythvilleondemand.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/mythville
mythville@gmail.com

Sputnik Moment

Spoken like an angel of light
in the halls of Pandemonium,
purple ties, in harmonium,
Robespierre without peers,
silver tongued saint,
to the tainted, with silvery hair,
shadows taller than wind,
caught in corners,
making loud old sounds,
growing louder,
making the case, without debate,
as the illusive image flickers,
without debate,
mixing the media-phors
about nothing being funny,
about peace love understanding
holding hands across America
to all the sweet voices of nobodies,
silent majorities, loud-mouthed
minorities, frozen out, surrounding
blue-lit burn barrels, yearning
for the golden ghosts of yesteryear,
receiving instead, this Plutonic tonic,
with nothing but their imaginations,
all beer-soaked and dumbed down
to go with the drifts of currents,
mountains, prairies and stars

In the woods the mind
has much mistaken,
the currency of the re-awakened,
all mankind peering inside his apple,
his words written in two mirrors,
written down twice, eyes sympathetic
to the two faces of citified man,
Luddites locked out, being the divided
electronic icicles, turning red or blue,
waiting for the mail gone paperless,
to poets seeking heat from cornstalks
covered in snow, to laughing waters
flooding now, measured in GPS miles,
in cool and sleazy breezy smiles

And this perfect image,
with a different vision
for the Everyman, offers
an acre, a plot, a carnage
of a green and pleasant land,
where the clean air is unclean,
and the last waters, thundering mean,
with books to burn, words in earns,
facts gone to myth ... blown this kiss
with posts on the wall, unreadable
mega-bit tattooes and star bright
Twitter accounts, in aeons, gurus
keeping track of stock options,
riding in limousines, praying in their pines
of a dim-lit Sputnik rendered into far stars,
wishes in dreams gone to daylight footballs
in darkened Sunday afternoon bars
as light and time shines in two suns so bright,
not a dead star but a man made overflight,
searching for reasons, for something to say
they stuck around for ... a last tree,
a bit of grass, all caged behind bars
in this house of infinite mirrors,
the Saint has joined the sinners

~ Douglas McDaniel
Iowa City, Iowa



My Own Private Elbaho

Going down periscope
to chase away the snakes
I dream of an island
where the beautiful
muses wake
a sunny volcanic
spit where the blood
is washed from stones
and cloud-buffed skies
are imaginary tomes
for paupers, princes
kings and queens of old,
a place I'll now call
my private Elbaho

She dreams of green
magic mountains
where Solznenitzen
once roamed
and growled
about peanuts,
salt shakers,
peppers, pie and tea,
angry and set alone:
"She's a sweet muse
who seldom comes
to me, her hurt,
mere words,
mere soundless
bytes of sea,
mere thought,
faceless as
facelessness
can be ..."

She of mad hills,
winter thrills,
billed to gravity,
She who hides like spring
a secret Persiphone ...

The flowers on her
her breasts fuel
perfect company
as mourning mad
mountains, sunless
SAD disease ...
Buried in silence
beneath baddass
endless snows
she lives now happy
in her private Elbaho

~ Douglas McDaniel
Iowa City, Iowa



Not Another Parking Lot for Words

Made sure the windows
were all wide open
for this brittle haus warning,
God forbid the warming, should we
ever break dead with reclaiming
witches reclaiming their food
for thought and kindness I offered,
them never tasting the bread ...
They insisted they could save me
and then, the saving being done,
called me the devil, the devil,
the devil, three times,
before they were One ...

And compassion is a virtue
sold out in short supply,
gathered in plenty

And there you were, with my backlit
ghost behind the suffused
dark arts behind the computer
screen’s white apple byte light,
the difference between innocence
and knowledge being sub-atomic,
it’s positively Platonic,
allegorical, hysterical ...
when you ask for a cigarette
since it’s my personal policy
to only give out one Spirit
per hour to the hopeless ...
(I mean homeless) ... and if they
claim to have hope I give them three:
That’s how homeless hopelessness can be.

So it’s back to my parking lot for words,
worlds within worlds,
but way far from the gypsy cafes
as Napoleon, fresh face-i-fied,
sleepwalks into Starbucks to be reborn
in its iconic cup of Gaian
corporate glee, which may be good news,
just maybe ... since I saw
a Thunderbird in my dreams,
then his shirt logo of the same
damn military echelon of wings,
eagle spread winking,
he, a soldier sure, retired, moneyed,
yes, a super serene Baby Bomber ...
A crier of you know what? ...
Can’t you hear their birdseye cries,
they are, bling-winged batbirds who cry,
repacking themselves, after landing,
in their imperial cruiser esuvees:
I saw a documentary
on their disappearing, once,
on mah MTVeeee! I guess I need
them more than they need me.

Then one more comes in,
a walking zombie cell phone call
after parking a black hawk
Land Rover, gee ...
she has camo flag pants in tune
to those photos on the big electronic

BBS .. SBB...Bss...BS...Bs...BS...

of Iranian missile launches
all doctored up to be seen
by this property, this land
for you and me ...

(Hey man what’s the plan
what was that you sai-i-i-d
sun tan, sun man, drinking head,
lying there in bed?
You who tried to socialize
but couldn’t seem to find
what just what, Jethro,
you were looking fer,
that sumpin’
on your mind)

But a big heron circles
over Starbucks, wide white
sailing, neither failing
nor flailing
with black-tipped wings
... and just as strangely
I almost missed, the ponytailed
programmer in a Prius
as a potential friend
to send this give up, this smoke,
this one-per-hour cigarette of hope
to a guy wearing a turqoise bracelet: Hey! Hey!

Hey ...

I just got a medal in my dream:
A Thunderbird re-e-e-e-ward,
and another laugh, a smile,
from a strong blueish blonde blondee
bird driving a white trash Ford.

-- Douglas McDaniel
Aurora, Colorado

Thunderbolt

The Reformed Presbyterian Church
was hit by a thunderbolt
and Morning Sun, Iowa
was rendered back to the year
Nineteen Fifty One

And brother Jesus
sat on his Cardinal corner
with the ghosts of three gauzy
British colonial columns
behind him, more than twice
the height of the man
commanding them,
who lives four or five
times more often in life
than in death,
but who's counting?

Meanwhile, the local fire captain,
Tom "Torch" Lawyer
sits as the Grand Poopba
in the unmarked Oddfellows Hall ...
He, a Big Brother, of the weather map
and he sings, "O Hey, Gaia, what did I do?"

"O yeah, there was that, and that and that ...
I'm so sorry angry sun, sorry for this,
sorry for that ... O Kracken King Igor,
heavy weather hanging from across the plains
to the mountains once made pleasant
from Denver, Colorado
to Bloomington, Indiana:
Where John Cougar Mellencamp
is still wearing his hard hat ...

"Please, O Kracken,
spare me your change
and please spare
me some of my favorite
old mason bricks,
and spare me
from my brats

"Leave me one
Rosetta stone
and at least three
favored stocks
for six hundred
and sixty six
Fortune 500 companies
and please sponsor
my one last storm rider
so he can broadcast,
like Paul Revere in silver
my long last broadcast
on the Weather Channel
on Ruppert Murdoch's
Blue Ray Disc-shaped
magic Thunderbird carpet,
so that music can still be
piped in like rock'n'roll
in a cowboy hat
at the local Wal Mart

"And spare me your golden
spike in natural gas,
your January jolt
in coffee prices,
and spare me your sanguine
advice on what to expect
and spare me your photo radar
lanes used by Fed Ex,
and spare me your
weaponized Pineapple Express
as it tingles a trio
of water spouts
across the forty eighth paralell

"But please remind me later
to use a higher quality
white ashy paint
so I can smile upward
with a stun gun kept
quite safe behind my back
as I move beneath overhanging
chemtrail inspired clouds
to keep my doormats dry
when you try to reclaim
your honestly inward saints

"And tell that bastard
Mr. Ringo, he's running
out of time, and though
he bought a Wal Mart sold
Chinese-made plastic compass
that we have him lined up
in our electronic eye sights
and he'll never get across
King Henry the Eight's
magical river line

"Because, you see,
Medicare doesn't cover
everything,
especially his supposedly
secure bright and sunny
horizons, or bullets
or my elitist religious conceits
because he can't use his cell phone
or even mark a fully mastered retreat
with the sunspots buzzing up auroras
against his great hope for liberties
because they will always cost him more
than his lonely Roosevelt socialist dime

"Say a big hello
to that second toughest
man in America,
that next-to-last Templar
because I can see, feel and read
the second coming of Joan of Arc
sleeping in her shrine ...
'Coswe all know there's nothing
more exhausting than inaction
and his sacred pen as shotgun
won't bring his dead doggies back

"So hey! Angry Solari,
let's just say it was all
a good old boy's
misunderstanding
and even if the annointed We
run the risk of getting heart arrested,
or if sanctified gloomy We
speed through our Freemason made
towns, rocket launched
at the speed
of thirteen million
miles per hour,
and even if Johnny Ringo
can teach himself
to silence the two stormy
coasts in the centered
silences of his mind,
we can cut off his touch
to Taiowa her in Iowa
in order to remain in Tombstone
to review the cannons loaded,
in the late afternoon aspenglow,
as they are pointed
at Cochise's last stronghold
so that we, alone, can enjoy
the bonny bones of Norteneo
from our weaponized
plastic transister radio,
nor can he enjoy sweet
Maggie Marlowe, sleeping
in nicotine terrified migraines
without a tweet in our jail-baited
basements humming up thunder
from our cold dark basements
down below, so we can
keep up our plans to sell off
glassified dead scorpions
to the last of the plutocratic
touristas at the high noon
military movie show."

~  Douglas McDaniel,
Morning Sun, Iowa
http://mythville.blogspot.com/