The day, as I recall, began when the sun came up. This is noteworthy because during that period in my social, political and personal information life, the rise of the hot orb was the only real thing to be trusted. Congress had fled off again, like a flock of squawking seagulls, to various vacations and evacuations and permutations and other mutinous matters in order to avoid, of course, doing the right thing. That is, renew unemployment payments to millions of Americans. It was July, 2010.
Shook up I, in cause and disaffect, panicked. No, that’s not quite right. I dug my heels into the ground, as it were, since we, Jaimie O. and I, were so hurt, so abandoned, so scared shitless, out of both socio-political comedy and personal, unspeakably painful tragedy, my core instinct was to keep still. Do absolutely nothing. Wait until the dust settled. A very reptilian activity, I suppose (and debilitating, since, as I often say: “There is nothing more exhausting than inaction”). Until something that could be trusted returned to some kind of appearance of order, I wanted to cling to the earth. But I could not. The rent was due. Overdue. So was every other bill. The only thing left to do was move in some quick way only the Scarecrow in the “Wizard of Oz,” pointing in any and all directions, saying “some people go that way, some people that,” crossing his crooked arms, could indicate.
If Congress returned to renew another tier of emergency unemployment payments to the unwanted sea beetles of dispossessed people in the United States on a more timely basis, then maybe we could continue to hold out in our little Phoenix barrio-styled apartment complex, living cheap as shit, and carry on. But no. Eventually, Congress came back to, quote, “werk.” Then played political football for what seemed like years. We watched it all go down on C-Span. Minute by minute. Vote by vote, or, lack thereof. The game of our lives. On display like some kind of Miltonian pandemonium charade out of “Paradise Lost,” with the gargoyle goons all down there on the floor, chattering psychics transdemonational thoughts of hate and disrespect to each other, to all of us, in dis-unison. The little red state, blue state devils, signaling secret handshakes together with perverse abuses of legalese and Americanized, polemical, populist coda. And we, Jai-O and I, got angrier by the day. Shouting epithets at the television as our elected leaders tried to one-up each other with their inelegant games.
And the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was also going on. There was that. We also shouted and wept and shook ourselves, clung to each other out of sheer terror, about “all that.”
All directions to run were correct, and, incorrect, hence, the confusion.
~
Just to warm up a bit, I thought I'd tell you something about my day, yesterday, which I found very interesting. I went to the creek; we went to the creek, but, forgot our dog. Next time, we bring the dog. Also this, we acted like we owned the place. But no, that's not right, either, because we actually own very little. I mean, I have a Wilco CD, for example, still. And some other stuff. But not very much. Don't really care all that much about what I own: It's all more than I can use at any particular time, so I am blessed with too much stuff.
Dang. The dog needs to pee now. This sucks because I had a story about going down to the creek that I wanted to tell you, but now ... shitsville ... can't do that now. But, to warm some things up, I'll say that after I awoke from my meditation at the creek, I came up with this little story to tell later on, which I did not tell anyone because, well, I got lazy. Plus, there were other issues. Things I cannot say. Hmmm ... seem to be writing a novel now ... I call that novelism, now.
Anyway, the cool part of the story goes like this: Conquistodore and the Jesuit priest come all of the way up north and find themselves at the edge of the Grand Canyon. They go "shit," as in, "no bueno." They are on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. They can go no further north. Not without having to go a mile straight down, that is. Looks pretty suicidal. With nothing but sky above, and, as I was saying before I told you the dog needed to pee, nothing to look at but a shitload of misery straight down.
But Conquistodore is, if nothing else, ambitious. Like Gordon Gecko, "Greed Is Good," always ready for the rumble. He looks at his annoying conquer-mate, the Jesuit priest, and they just shrug. They can read each others minds: "We'll send a slave down there to do our bidding."
So they tell the slave, probably their least favorite but most cooperative Aztec captivee, "Look, here's what we want you to do ... take this here 12-foot rope and go down there ... See if we can cross that river way down there, so we can go on, you know, doing God's work (i.e. continue our plundering of the earth and the murdering of it's people, in order to 'save' them.)"
The slave jumps at the opportunity. Finally, he thinks, a way to get away from these guys. He's given his orders: "First," says the Conquistodore dude, "Find out if they have any gold. Next, take this rope, and then tell them what you understand about Christ Our Lord, and then tie them up, burn them, so they can all be saved."
The slave does this. Meanwhile, the party on the Rim stood around and considered the benefits of something that would later be invented. It will be called a "leafblower." Nobody is sure if the slave made it all of the way down to the river, which later became known as the Colorado River, because he never came back. The Conquistodore and the annoying Jesuit priest left with their party of "converts" and slaves as such, probably turned right.
Time for the doggie to piss. It's the humane thing to let it do, ya know?
~
They had finally made their way down to some actual water, which was the important thing. She looked down. Wondered, why here? She was sad. Always, mostly, sad, but special sad today. Short bus sad. He saw a bench that had obviously been left there just for completely insane people to sit and pointed, as in, "Sit, there. See. We are here. We are going to sit here now because this is obviously here for crazy people."
She sat. As instructed. She looked down. Not really very responsive. "Let us enjoy the waters," he says. She stared some more, shell shocked.
"Look," he said. "All they were going to do was give you an organ grinder and maybe a bed and a corner to go woo woo in."
She kinda shrugged. Looked down at the water.
"What would the water do?," he says. "Tends to run down hill, I guess."
She stares. Not even a crack of a smile.
"They got nothing for you in those places," he says. "Forget them."
Maybe a shrug. The water runs beneath a bridge and the car sounds ruminate madly over their heads and the birds are chirping and he tries to listen for the sound: The talking waters.
It speaks. The water says what it says to special hearing only dogs like him get.
"Yeah, we could chase ourselves silly around this f**cking demoralized state, which has always, always been this way, anyway. It can't take care of the supposedly mentally ill. They got nothing. Nothing! Not for you. Not for you."
She agrees, looks at him, with those shocked blue-green gorgeous movie starlet eyes. Horrified at how little they could do. Horrified!
"Listen," he says. "The water ... listen ... the water speaks."
If his heart wasn't broken already, he could lose his mind here, he thinks. It would be worth it, he thinks. For her, he'd say anything, do anything, feel anything, stand in the way of anything.
Anything had been happening for some time now.
"Listen. Listen ...," he goes on, emptying his head out now, obviously running way too of mouth today. "Yep, we could go around, do all that, we could chase around and get you some kind of public lunacy assistance and they could put you in their cages but they got nothing for you. 'They' haven't had anything for about, hmmm, 6,000 years ... but listen for the water. Listen. Listen ..."
A giant truck rolls over the bridge and it interrupts everything with its dust up of total grinding death world in motor grind f**ck you planet sounds. Then it's gone and the world of the living returns. The greens. The birds. The tweeting, Tweeter-like. He thinks of Tripoli, burning.
"Hear that sound, that trickling rickling sound. Now listen, in-between those sounds, and in-between those sounds," he goes on ... "We can chase around to get someone to do something but to give you another number to call, or, you could decide to live."
The sound of the water, he told her: "Life. Life. Life ..."
Before I go much further into “all that,” let me tell you about Art the Architect. Let me tell you about my day yesterday with the owner and maintenance engineer of my new apartment. Art the Architect is old, older than this here apartment, which is made of brick and wood and red tile and bolts and nails and all kinds of metal. Art the Architect apparently has a collection of water heaters in a large room in the basement of this three-floor building resembling the missile room of a Polaris submarine.
Since A.A. doesn’t sign his name to anything, including the lease (he likes to talk about “personal responsibility” while failing to sign his own name to such documents because, well, “She’s the boss” ), there is some chance he’s buried his wife down there. Small chance. But a chance all of the same. Gotta keep the check comings in … of course. Of course. It’s not like Aunt Jemima signs checks to make payroll, either, right? It’s not like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man receives any royalty checks each time “Ghostbusters” is aired on cable.
The Architect is wiry. Wiry as filaments he always seems to be needing, in search of, sorting through his pockets for, etc., etc. Yesterday, he was seventy-seven years of age. That does not stop him from working, like a busy ant, most likely to the grave. He has a hawk face, piercing blue eyes, and a shit-load of pride about the accomplishments of his life, which are considerable. Yesterday, with his checkered blue shirt tucked in beneath his pulled-tight belt, limping less than usual from some kind of back distress caused by an accident long ago, dressed in sharp-looking Levi’s, he came to assess the damages of his kicking out of the now former residents who had left the one-bedroom apartment below us in a ruin of dust bunnies and at least one hole in the wall.
It had been a noisy place. All kinds of drama going on down there in the basement apartment before, but yesterday it was quiet as a closed-down saloon on a Sunday morning. Not even the rattle of a broom stick fallen to the floor could be heard. Since Halloween was just a few days away the couple living there had still left some decorations on the staircase leading down to the door. Some seashells, rocks. Also, they left the light on for Art the Architect. As well as the air-conditioning. On “full.”
Slightly passive-aggressive, I’d say.
However, they had managed to, somehow, suck the cold air out of the refrigerator. They were highly functional drunks.
He summed up the entry (exit?) way, the door, and then, a very, very small window space, nervously, anxiously, like my wolfie dog does when it needs to go out the magical portal to pee. Aye-Aye was frustrated, clearly, by the fact he no longer had the right key.
~
Which reminds me of my first metaphysical joke. It goes like this: Some people believe they can manifest everything to be true. Like, for example, stand out in front of a bank for a long time, hoping it will change its evil ways. I call this, “pissing in the wind.” However, it’s worse than that. You can pee against a brick wall for millions of years, but, despite the fact all matter is essentially a collection of porous atoms, you will never in a million years break down that wall with your pee stream.
Okay. That’s over with. First joke-break is now complete. It hasn’t been sponsored by Gatorade. In fact, now that I think about it, the whole joke needs more study. For example, what if the wall were made of limestone brick? What if the person peeing was three-hundred feet tall? What if three-hundred people were peeing against limestone or some other textured brick for an entire century? Surely, there must be some point of break through, under the best of all possible circumstances, right? What if seven billion protesters peed against that wall every day, 24-hours-a-day style, dogs, too?
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit … Could “werk,” right?
~
Art the Architect had trouble with his keys, almost habitually, since he leaves dozens and dozens of them on the floorboards of his trash-strewn auto, which used to be some kind of Lincoln Continental, but on this day wasn’t an old limo at all but, instead, a recently purchased blue Mazda truck.
The sun was just up. It was the post-vampire hour.
Now, at this point, I need to share some personal information. By this point of the morning, I was feeling pretty emotional. My Celt-angered DNA was roiling. Tears had been hanging off the edges of my eyelids for days. We had just gotten to know our new A.A., who had de-neighbor-ized the people downstairs. They had become quick, if liquor-licked, friends. Now, they had to leave. Jai-O and I had identified, having been chased by events all over North America ourselves for what seemed like years, and it was, quite frankly, all more than I could possibly take. I had helped the couple move out, not only because I liked them, even if they were serious alcoholics. But also because I knew there would be no peace around us until their escape was complete, because Art the Architect was throwing them out due to two-months late rent. It was my way of sticking it to the Man, who had actually been quite patient. It was his wife, he said. She called the shots, A.A. said. He was just the deliverer of bad news.”, as well as the executor of certain facts of life as well as the highly selective laws of “personal responsibility
The couple said, hells bells: They had paid in advance prior to that period of personal information lateness. But now the information was now, ya know, different.
Both sides of the landlord-tenant dispute were telling the truth. Hence, the confusion.
By the end of this day, that is, the last time I personally saw Art the Architect, information-ally, all I could see was his cowboy boots and the lower portions of his cuffed Levi pant legs, sticking out from the beneath his new-used truck that he’d just vampire-bought at the amazingly cheap price of $1,100. It only had a little more than one-hundred-and-ten-thousand miles, he’d said, after I’d asked him, quite pointy-headed-ly, about it. I’d also asked him to increase the amount of heat the water heater connected to our apartment, actually offered. To this point, hot water in the shower lasted about four minutes. It made a shower shorter than most Beach Boys songs. But now A.A.’s boots and Levi cuffs and ant-like shins were still. He appeared to be, ya’ know, dead.
But I, like other people in new situations and surroundings and circumstances, am quick to judge, unknowing the real story which, let me tell you, is even better.
~
What was confusing about the BP oil spill was this: The amount of actual spew was, well, in dispute. One side, the responsible party, estimated one amount of oil from 14,000 or 15,000 feet or so beneath the surface of the Gulf Mexico: less than we thought. The other side, and the rest of those watching and paying attention … that is to say, those who could possibly bear the weight on the eye of the hideous tele-video screen image of the disaster well into mid-summer … an image to which there was no real way to guess the broken device’s size, thought: More than we could possibly imagine was coming out of that hell hole.
In fact, both sides were right. Hence, the confusion.
~
By the way, I know where horror movies, stories, the very gothic genre comes from. It came to me at 3 a.m., and it made me think of Edgar Allan Poe, as well as blinded John Milton, pounding his walking stick on wooden stick on the floor, shaking silly due to the deprivation of his rapid-eye-movement sleep, muttering, “I’m waiting for the muse to visit.” Then, say Poe, opens a drawer. There’s this scratchy, pulling sound of wood-against-wood, and he grimaces, trying avoid waking this, hmmm … not sure how successful he actually was of actually obtaining such things … a raven-haired beauty sleeping on the floor. Then he pulls out a manuscript, half-finished, of poems and stories, and paper falls out. A rustling sound, loud as a Texas cattle truck going by at this hour, falls and plops a swish on the dusty floor. She rustles a bit. But, Poe’s heart racing now, nervous, because it’s not his home, it’s hers, such as it is, because she, a lady of the evening, earns more money than a poet. He doesn’t want to get thrown out. So, like a burglar, he relents. Sighs. Takes a deep breath. He decides to go out the door, into the night air a bit, to smoke some whatever passed for crack back then, to jar the brain and buy him just a little more time before the dawn comes. Maybe he can save his own life by coming up with a perfectly terrifying line to reflect his Jaggered sensibilities about God, the Devil and raven-haired women and their ever-bleating hearts. He opens the door, like a spy. It goes cree-ee-ee-ee-eek. Loud as Lord Baltimore, him once a big chief, who never said, far as I know, “May they be sorry they did not kill me yesterday” to the rising sun, if such a person existed. If Lord Baltimore ever made a noise, I hope it sounded like a Liberty Bell from hell! Anyway, Poe’s heart jumps: “Shit, shit, shit … busted.” He turns, and sure enough, there she is, the Raven. “That’s it, that’s it! Get out! Get out!” she screams, totally awake now, furious. And then she shouts, as his quill is thrown at him, the ink flying out of the bottle, splattering him, “Nevermore! Nevermore!”
That’s where horror comes from. Not from ghosts? Fuck. They are in our heads as we creep around, trying to keep our writer-asses safe, trying to stay beneath a roof and in a warm room, and perhaps, trying to remain maybe just maybe, loved by and in the good graces of the Raven.
But now, ah, now … Mr. Poesy is finally ready. He clears out fast. Finds another lady of the mourning, another place to lay, from the coins he made from having his happy crapped on all too many ways before. He writes his new poem, about a Raven crying “Nevermore,“ his heart cracked-silly broken open, and the process begins all over again in dark and sad, impoverished Satanic-milled mid-19th century, red-bricked, Baltimore, or, in old blind lonely ol’ London, in Milton‘s case. Yes, the muse had come to visit. Personal demons, be loved.
Glad we cleared that up. Boo!
~
There have been many times rock’n’roll has saved my life … but … this has been inhibited by certain destructive activities, including: Whenever I have read any issue of Time Magazine during the past year. For example, there is the examination of the strange false rhetoric of columnist Joe Klein. For example, during the fall peak of the Occupy Wall Street movement, he apparently was inconvenienced by its truth, as well as its rhetoric and lack of singular clarity. Now, my problem is, while listening to the Jayhawks’ album, “Smile,” I now choose to respond to something Klein has written. This event, two days after I watched the DVD, “All the King’s Men,” which was based on a great book loosely based on the Louisiana man-of-the-people politician, Huey Long, who, before he was assassinated, spoke up for the “hicks” all of his life, corrupt as he was, doing great things for “the people,” in other words, the 99 percenters, against the big powers of his day, including Standard Oil, as well as their political lackeys.
Well, I’d have to say, “Mr. Klein, Mr. Chairman in Pandemonium, is no Robert Penn Warren. I saw Robert Penn Warren speak once, and Mr. Klein, Mr. distinguished Chairman in Pandemonium of, ya‘ know, Hell, couldn’t carry his pen, keeping it warm for him as Mr. Warren, or a million other fine writers, personally went to the limestone walls themselves to pee against their own personal places of power!”
Mr. Klein appears to be a mere contrarian at court. A front-runner. The type of guy who, having already failed to notice the zeitgeist for Time, decides instead to write something apparently supporting the one-percent, pissing off, thus, the 99 percent, in order to get more hate mail and therefore, keep his job.
Anyway, world-weary as I’m feeling right now, I can’t “Smile” about Mr. Klein’s wisdom (a generous use of that word right now), or, his “wit.” He’s really not very funny. Tries to be. For example, in his Oct. 31, 2011 one-page piece, which takes up a little over one percent of the 94-page issue of Time, the headline, which I doubt he came up with, is “An Implausible Populist: Obama hopes to join forces with the protesters, but his record tells another story,” … which, finds fault in some book about Obama’s economic policy because it failed to “check the proper spelling of legendary banker Walter Wristen’s name.”
I mean, only a fuck face from hell, a one-percenter insider himself, would ever think any banker, other than maybe the Monopoly Money Guy or, and this is still a stretch, someone named Rothschild, or Morgan, another good example, is well-known by enough of the 99 percent of us to ever be known as a, quoth, “legend.”
When I’m wearing my rock critic hat, I cringe whenever I see the word, “legendary.” Because it’s about as useful of a word, once you analyze the term as “behave,” as in what are parent’s actually saying when they tell a child to “behave,” Peeing against a big white limestone wall of power is a kind of behavior. Publicity people promoting their hot new bands use the word, “legendary.”
~
This just in: It is November 5, 2011, Guy Fawkes Day, and there is snow on the plateau. First snow of the coming winter and it’s a tad early, I’d say. Just as the “freak storm” that hit the North American Northeast about eleven days ago, maybe twelve, was described as being a tad early. Personally, I find the term, “freak,” a bit insulting to both extreme storms and “freaks.” Someone (not me) should write a strongly worded letter. Someone in a position of far more significance and readership and therefore power, such as Joe Klein, who should be writing about climate change instead of inside-baseball shit, for his one-percent use of the page he is given each week for Time Magazine. But Joe Klein is only in-touch with the Washington D.C. insider. Yes, everyone on the Earth thinks they are an economist. It’s hip to be so cardinal square. But there seems to be more important matter at hand, right now, than dollars and cents. The time and money people, nonetheless, are trying to keep, even on a sweet sad Saturday, their grip on “winning the future,” as Obama put it in a recent address about the economy and jobs and gross national product and all, earlier this fall.
“Future”? What future? Without addressing climate change immediately, Mr. Pandemonium Chairman, what kind of future do you have in mind? Both sides are right, hence, your confusion, about the economy, which is clearly beyond the mortal consideration of any one mind. Get over it. Get over it … so we can move on …
~
Anyhow, on the face of it, the use of the word “legendary” is short-hand for “I have absolutely no new information or light to share about this person I am now mentioning, if only because I am writing on deadline from an ivory tower right now and, well, I have a lunch appointment I have to get downtown. And with all of these bad-smelling protesters outside, I am going to be late … and anyway, I have never misspelled a name before in my life and all … and anyway, if I did during my tenure at Time Is Money Magazine, there are about a zillion copy editors and proofers and control ‘freak’ editors to pluck it out …”
Have I ever heard of any “legends” about “legendary banker” Walter Wristen? No, I have not. Never even heard of him. Not surprising, that. Am I an economist of any sort? Nope. Nope. Nope. Saying anything, quite honestly, prior to this year, about bankers, is pretty new terrain. But I have seen Mr. Klein on various talking head broadcasts, ivory towering, and, well, I have never given him much thought. As a head talker, that is. Hardly, you know: Legendary. Not even colorful. A pretty drab man. Just another, as Ryan Adams might sing … another “political scientist” who lives “on the edge of town.”
More interesting, and more “legendary” is the Geico.com insurance Gecko featured on another page, also taking up a little more than one percent of the Oct. 31, 2011 of Time, on the page opposite of Klein’s column. “Geckonomics,” the advert states. “A case study,” the ad quips, “… in Saving People Money on More than Just Car Insurance.”
And time, one hopes … dreams, in fact. Gotta make good time, right?
And as the Jayhawks are getting the loud on, I realize: Hey, the Gecko is funnier than Joe Klein! If I’d just looked at the advertisement and spent less time and money on Time, reading Joe Klein’s work today, it would have saved me a tremendous amount of time in my life that I will never get back.
Because (boy, this is really starting to feel like “werk” now) Klein also has something rhetorically useless to say about some arcane appointment, about some Washington D.C. insider sort named to something called the National Economic Council. Look, angels, I’m no Klein or Robert Penn Warren or even a funny Brit Gecko, but I do know a few things about journalism and how, on the national level, it has failed us all. Or, at least 99 percent of us. Klein has been kissing up to power with his pretty pen. It’s what pays for his, well, high position in life as false scribe of phony, not-very-funny rhetoric. For example, about this Obama appointment for this thing called the National Economic Council, it dismisses the “atmospheric intelligence” of this guy, Lawrence Summers (Klein’s legendary, Okay, Okay, Orwellian phrasing here). Then, Klein writes, the appointment has the “emotional intelligence of a gnat.”
For me, this is an insult to all gnats. The National Council All About Gnats should be disgusted with being compared to a man who, apparently, this Summers’ guy is, “prohibited the government from regulating financial derivatives.”
Yeah, that sounds pretty stupid, I guess. Whatever derivatives are. We are all supposed to know because, clearly they are all part of that zombie-technology machine that has actually now, count them all, emptied people from their houses, their jobs, their homes, torn up families, caused suicides, long lines at the food banks, shootings at Wal-Marts, assassinations at strip malls, started some wars, choked off others … but sure has fed a lot of bitchy talking heads to yell at each other on the different network shows currently still not discussing more important things all day, all night, such as the current weirdness of the “atmosphere.”
My question is this … Who the fuck is speaking up for the gnat right now? Joe Klein? Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. These days gnats are like girls gone wild. He’s not even speaking out against the magical television salamander Geico man who is a spokes lizard for car insurance we are all forced to buy; in many cases even if we don’t even own or drive a car!
Try to get flood insurance!
That, as Fleetwood Mac might sing, “Is not that funny, is it?”
~
So we packed all of our pretty little things and left, heading East. I knew it would be poisonous, yeah sure, if we slipped a little down the road toward the south, all along the way, due to the winds coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. We, all of us who had made that choice, and who were on that road coming down Raton Pass, who had enlisted in the U-Haul army, nationless, obscene with ill-packed material tokens of the past, all decided to turn right at the first opportunity we got, which sent us straight out into the great Midwestern prairie of America, the sea that lacked tranquility. From that point on, the comedy had ended, and a real shit storm immediately began to get noticed ... while we watched the watched, watching me, you, everyone, for ridiculous and dangerous and merely curious reasons … But there was road work outside, keeping us going out that way East, at first, right after we had passed over the mountain pass, due to heavy road work in Trinidad, Colorado. Another barrier was put up, and everyone had to just keep going north … hissing up fuel-fired noise, oh so aerodynamically, against strong winds if we headed north, tactile power if we kept in front of the late-summer front, also on our tail, baddass hanging over the Rockies, gathering force to burst upon the Plains.
We, the Weather Channel proletariat of the dispossessed, did not want any of the Haliburton solution degreaser sprayed upon the Gulf to disperse the oil, sprayed like some kind of massive chemical warfare upon the living things on and off the coast, all to just make the oil spill stain invisible to the mind’s eye by congealing the Wormwood-black stuff, dropping down below the sea level to coat the ocean floor and everything living down there to soak below while the angry summer sun cooked up that shallow sea from above … So the beaches could be rendered clearer. So guys with white plastic bags, paid for by the U.S. government or paid for by BP could look, ya know, effectual. So chamber of commerce types could still say, “Come on down, the motel prices are cheap.” So the Mayor of Shark City could say reassuring things about how things were going to turn around. The stray beach combers could just shrug and tell the television cameras and tell Citizens of the Earth about the lack of crowds this year, which was nice. About how, yeah, they saw a few dead birds, maybe, along the Florida coast, or maybe an oil ball or two, but “Who knows where it really came from?” Otherwise, they would say, they are having a “great time.”
Bosh, we said: The days of pleasantries were over.
We, the Two People, Jai-O and I, were furious and feeling like we were in grace, maybe, but under control? Hardly. Behind the front in World War Three, we were. The boys and girls in uniform were fighting the Skull and Crossbones Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the mountains of Pakistan. And the only nice thing I can write at this point is wouldn’t it be a fine and dandy thing if, in the future, they called this era of international meltdown and murder, instead of the promised and predictable World War III, the Skull and Cross Bones War. Due to its apparent synchronicity with the Crusades, as well as the Age of Revolution, that is, the American and French Revolutions, which were more or less engineered by the Bavarian Illuminati.
Sure, it was all going down after nine years of Bush and Hassan I Sabbah shit in the Mideast, all to keep the price of oil high, while the Sultans of Arabia sat quiet, pleasant and pleased. But the rear-wing on the North American continent of this undeclared front, this undeclared colonial war front, this civilian, not apparently militarized zone for some kind of neo-Skull & Bones conflict, North America, had mobilized the U-Haul Army, with trucks and dispossessions all loaded up …
We knew time was money. So did Congress, I mean, those members of that group who had the secret-sit-on-their-handshake, in order to regain power. They were campaigning the vote count was over. In fact, before. They handed him such a crippled ship to sail the Bonesies knew he’d never get the ol’ bird to sail.
~
This was no vacation and there were no, as we had hoped, jobs to be found in New Mexico though it seemed to be booming with Haliburton-style activity. Though New Mexico, it seemed, remained “enchanted.” We made the first right we could, avoiding Pueblo, avoiding Colorado Springs, heading straight out to the fifty first state of the Union, the new Area 51, where we could see, from the road, a mysterious veil of misunderstanding, a strange cloud of some kind seeming to extend across the plain for fifty-one miles or more, as colonels of perfect little military-industrial style unmarked vehicles herded us on, so we could not turn around … and gas needle drew down, drew down, drew down, and I began to realize I had been on this old state route before, that it would going to continue to be a slow, up-and-down ride, and it would go on forever and ever into the afternoon, that if it rained at all, the great storm of prophecy behind us, it just might flash-flood in the low-lying places, that nobody was stupid enough to put gas stations anymore, that if civilization had ever really existed there they would be ghost towns by now, that we had to head north as soon as possible because they was a horrible stupid silly mistake because the mountains behind us were beginning to disappear and no compass in the night could save us.
~
Which reminds me: Many Boomers today, concerned about their needs to maintain two homes, if you include the one in the woods for those special summers so they can play with their grandchildren and so on, as well as keeping their social security fueled, fortune-amassed nest eggs secure, plan on working through, quoth the Raven, “retirement.” I will not go into whether this generation ever really gave a fuck about the future, the unborn, the more recently born, or, even, their grandchildren, for that matter. Nope. Nope. Nope.
All I can think of at first is, “Wow.” That really adds to the job-hunting crunch for those graduating from college, or, younger. As well as the more recently born. As well as how long as many Boomers might live, and considering the number of unemployed Americans there are, and how long it might take to fix the employment scenario before us, which is … according to a recent report from Eponymous the Economist … “the rest of the 21st century.”
The next thing I can think of is: No worries. Be happy.
Why? Well, as an artist and writer and hopeful literary immortal and all, I plan on working well past “retirement” and death itself. In my view, especially as a poet, artist, etc., the “werk” really begins after death.
Whew. That’s a relief.
~
Turned out, Art the Architect wasn’t dead. He was in the act of feeling much betta’. He just needed to rest his back. He does so by laying himself flat across the two front seats of his vehicle.
Like a lot of people, AA has a lot of trouble with back injuries. My theory is Americans load themselves down with too many burdens. Live in the U.S. is difficult. The U.S., believe it or not, world, is a difficult place to live. As the Woody Guthrie song about the Okkies going to California during the Great Depression, it “Ain’t no fun if you don’t got the dough rei me.”
AA and I had a big discussion about this that day he was cleaning out the recently made-available apart-a-mento. He was, for whatever reason, in a big hurry to share, with me, who at the time had long hair, the facts of life that we are, as a nation, a place where “personal responsibility” is Francis Scott Key. The quoth, “conversation,” was a day-long event. He who failed to sign the lease in his own name, signing it with his wife’s name, all with a series of quick apologies and explanations, kept going and going and going and … He was a veritable Energizer Bunny about “personal responsibility.” Sure, he could tell I was a little ticked my new friends downstairs had been de-neighbor zed. Sure, they were a tad still in the stages of paving the road with their own excess, and as a result, they had to leave for a new palace of improved wisdom … maybe … maybe … maybe. Also, sure, I egg-headed him on, even though I know full well you aren’t supposed to argue with crazy people, because I needed to convince him that, according to the FCC regulations, he could not hinder me from getting a wireless dish placed upon the space I rented.
However, arguing how code is law is no way to talk to a new landlord. Like Kevin Costner might say in “Dances With Wolves,” making claims about such legal fences makes for bad future ex-neighbors.
I did win the argument, though. I knew that while arguing my points before AA’s son, a man of my generation who actually used the internet for work and play. He agreed with me: Yeah, hard to work on the behalf of my own “personal data responsibility” without using the fucking Web at home to win such freedoms to, you know, respond to life in the U.S. to any favorable, or, flavorful, degree.
I knew I had won when, AA’s son said, “I see what you mean,” and Art the Architect, limp and all, went flying out of the room, out the front door and up the basement stairs like, quoth, “The Raven.”
However, when the local internet provider showed up for his appointment about a week later, he refused to take this FCC rule, that such exclusions couldn’t be made by any landlord (even though the install guy was the person who told me about this law to begin with), to heart. He looked at the situation out front, planted the root of the dish device, then, after I sighed (I guess the whole thing failed right there because I was “personally responsible” for musing about how AA wasn’t going to be happy, and this might cause the internet provider some business in the future next-apartment-dweller for the building).
“Nevermore,” quoth the internet provider install laymo: “I’m not going to sell it to you.”
And then, he left, pulling his wireless spear out of the ground and putting it back in the truck.
With me, waving, saying, “I’ll be sure to recommend you in the future!”
~
There are very good reasons why people think I’m an asshole.
~
Clearly, during my debate with AA we were both right about this national “conversation” about “personal responsibility.”
Hence, the confusion.
~
It all started at the dog park. They started to put up yellow streaming strips of police barricade walls inside the enclosure, which the people followed until their dogs failed to ... and then well, a classic comedy then began to unfold … There was a large dog riot, and then their owners started to riot, too.
Or, maybe it all started before that, when my C-pap, which I have to use for sleep apnea, one morning burst into flames?
~
So they all decided to turn right at the first opportunity they got, which sent them straight out into the great prairie of America. From that point on, the comedy had ended, and a real shit storm immediately began to get noticed ... while the watchers watched them, watching us, you, everyone, for ridiculous and dangerous reasons.
He had been on that road before. But she, not. He knew better. She, not. It goes forever into eastern Colorado, out to places they now say their are secret military industrial parties, MIBs, black helicopters, all swooping around ... your tax dollars at work ... and what was that mystical veil of cloud sweeping up from the southeast? ... No, nothing looked natural ... especially not that ... but hell, once you make it out for a sail into the Midwestern U.S. ... does anyone know what they are looking at anymore?
Pretty soon, the hills turn into great big containers for lakes, empty now, until it rains ... and strange colonels, retired spotters maybe, popping out from nowhere, like jack-in-the-boxes ... watching your every move ... He remembered the blocked turnoff ... might put you out about where the strange summer cloud veil was landing ... sweeping up now to meet the southern edge of the Rockies, moving in on Pueblo, Colorado Springs ... as they flew further out, nothing out there ... especially not gas ... They would never make it ... He knew ... so he had to turn the moving van, a unit in the U-Haul Army, around, on a tricky hill near a cell phone tower ... She got out of a truck, since the space was so tight, to give directions ... and out from nowhere pops another one of these retired hawk-faced men, in not so beat up green truck, obviously unpleased with our presence, as he lingered like a raven …
~
On Christmas Eve, Art the Architect decided it would be a good idea to punch a door-sized hole in the wall beneath our apartment. I did my best to keep Jai-O. from losing her mind from the thunderous sound it made. Sure, protested, Art did. Seemed to have trouble understanding why an unannounced sledgehammering on Christmas Eve might be disruptive, to myself and my neighbors, just a tad ... He agreed to do the work for only four hours, quitting at one ... but he's back now, jack hammerin' away, all fresh and ready to keep at it til' doomsday, this a.m.
I do remember that on the morning of Christmas Eve , I had asked A.A. if he heard any birds. He said, "No." He added he could hear the cars and trucks going by, whistling, as they do, down the well-trodden corridor of the sound-barrier-improved highway. I also remember it was real silent, mostly. It was a nonetheless, silent morn', more or less, save for the vehicles, the hammerin', and the sound of a nearby single Raven's crow.
I asked A.A. if, at 77 years old, he could still hear the Raven. He said, "What?"
~
There are very, very, very good reasons why people think I’m an asshole.
~
Keep looking for more American Mythville "reality lit" and poetry by Douglas McDaniel ... http://mythville.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/
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
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/
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/
