Mythville

Resolution Revolution

Nobody is going to rob me of my joy,

not even here in this deepest and coldest

of winters, this dark place of toothless

tormentors, of mouthpieces spitting teeth

of fights you lost, howling mad, decades ago,

not your droning, green or black helicopter

sad, money grabbing, cash registers of pain,

clinking in metallic perfect motormouth

mullahs of intense, sugar-free MSG,

sputtering a doormat out for me,

as if spirit were a mere rumor

created by the machine-heart

doctors on the twin days

of my Capricorn birth,

somnambulatin' an echo

of my perfect ear

for the loving

beat of your heart,

true art, not the furies

of hell-bent masters

of enclosures

cast in the bitter

pounding of hammers

intended to wound

me, not the ever-growing

radars of fear, nor

the trenchant statistic,

nor the static

clinging to your

clanking chains

of the dissenting

voice that believes

it can keep me

from speaking

love's name ...

Nope.

Note to the NRA

Show him the mountains,
the land, the sky,
let them drop their guns
for ploughshares,
stop 'em from asking:
why O why O why?

Show him the victims,
the blood and the gore,
let them them raise their guns
in exile
on the fifty-first shore:
They can shoot themselves,
fer sure!

And now for my review ... Here was my 2008 prediction on how the real-politic would fare during the first term of President Barack Obama: How well did I do?

The whole nation is more or less a 50-50 split between the urban coastal zones of the free-flowing, electrified, amped-up monoculture of the cities and the hunkered-down dream towns amid the moms and pops and Plumber Joes of rural and suburban America.
But it’s really not a fair game.
Under such conditions, it appears to be safe to say that he who rules the boundary-bending technology, and the grass roots networking, forces unleashed for many months in ports now both cyber and dirt-real, will manage to change society.
This will be done by filling every port of information across the land via internet, TV and so on, creating a marvel of saturation not seen before, transcending even those same 50-50 boundaries of metropolis and yes, the fabled “Green Acres” of rural America, making the mindset sufficiently the same to do at least one final desperate progressive thing right.
That we still have shreds of the country left is, yes, I suppose, just another cause for celebration. Almost. Though nothing has been harder than trying to see some pattern that might follow after these elections, a drifting kind of wrecked ship is all I can conjure up to this point. A wounded cruiser with its guns still blazing into the fog of war, wastefully firing on an enemy as invisible as the word, “terrorism.”
But after eight years of Bush, while living in that same rural America of “Green Acres” fame, as far away from it all as the Shire, I can only unfortunately count the collateral damage in terms of personal calamities. In fact, I think, based on this input, it’s safe to say the extended wavelengths of pain have been getting wider within the years, then months, then final days, then hours, since George Bush's rule.
The wavelengths of pain have been extending outward, ever since. Same for the general death count, per capita, globally.
And the election? That somebody, anybody, nobody even, would want to man the throne for a critically wounded empire capable of finding a second wind, is reason enough to celebrate.
But there’s not much more caution in the winds, either way.
The the late-campaign anger and resentment of teaming millions who lost an emotionally charged election working as the main sword of the John McCain campaign, with Sarah Palin out there whipping up the primal instincts of the worst, those prone to believe in dirty, unsophisticated cheap shots, one can only shudder at the antipathies being wrought in rural America should Obama win, again. One shudders at what the outcome will be ... after the election.
No doubt, Palin stirred it up four years ago for a unique new cultural junction speaking from somewhere out in the Searchlight deserts of Nevada to the post-mod cobalt red distortions of the late-American KKK, just now retreating from its bridge to nowhere, Occupied into the dustbins of history, all hummed up to the surface after many years of practice on World of Warcraft. One might imagine the ugly bits, the eddies of angst, that are now set spinning from the sidelines of the fringe, from the sawed-off mountain folk types out in the crowd. From pissed off people calling for blood.
If you remember the Clinton years, there’s nothing like a Democratic presidency to stir up the home-grown reactionaries and yes, terrorists, the Timothy McVeigh types, those Monty Pylons and other sub-patriotic posses forming in the hinterlands of the West.
There’s a seething misanthropy out in the boonies, indeed, and they just may be waiting to erupt.
That Obama made some references, much ado made of it during the Democratic primaries, about rural residents, in their anger over how poorly the overgrown cities are managing things, especially from Washington D.C., only to turn to religion and guns, might make more sense than we know right now.
Is it better to have a global reformer like Obama in office?
Let’s just hope the idealist, the great communicator in this scenario, points people toward liberty’s light within these shores, not just abroad, because the divisions of rural America, that xenophobic place where the wider world is ever more bizarre, and threatening, can hardly bear to withstand the disappointment.
Since that’s how these things really get started … in the provinces and out lands of the dispossessed. You know, when expectations, once raised, are dashed for one final time, where the dissenters voted for “change” but only get more “chains,” and “revolution” is the name of that thing.

Morning in Mythville

The heavy woman drew a fang
and I resigned to the sound
the fat lady sang

Game over. Game over!

My voice, quieted, speckled
with old smokes, wolf hair:
I was alone in a crowd,
screaming about
the unbearable weight,
releasing my hold,
entering the altered
united state of freedom

As an actor with my mask on,
young bodies, old maids,
the wild ones in the mid range
were hooked on my lines

Time to kick. Time to kick off,
so, kick off, old fears,
feel my yearning
of the hard learning
of many years

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

 Polemicomedy

You saw me at the life boat
screaming cartoon whimsies
at you, the golf power driver fiend,
the sports jacket green wearer,
the straight Jack of voter suppression ...
And as you said, "Tisk, tisk, tisk ..."
even as your grasp of gorilla Democracy
is lost in the mist of electronic blue,
the perverse fortress of your sins
awaits the storms to come ...

The Bicycle 

Back in Chains Thieves

They awake

numb faced

and spacey

like their favorite

characters

in "Breaking Bad,"

noticing no cash

in their trays

Pawn shop kings,

bold brows, bald heads,
 eyes that don't blink,

mouths of fur,

teeth, all covered

in scales, lips

dry and straight,

poker faced

Nothing in the tray

They frown at you,

feigning power,

they mock at you,

at your worthless

treasure, same as

all of the other treasure,

they have in the place,

but your treasure is special,

because you are extra worthless ...

A toothless smile

They pluck a man out of a river,

which has flooded, quite suddenly,

in a flash flood, and the media mouth

coos a bay sound: "Stupid motorist law,"

tisk tisk, tisk tisk, tisk tisk ...

Should stayed outta da' way

of that hurricane ...

Tisk. Tisk. Tisk. Tisk. Tisk ...

Man crawls out of the New York harbor,

scared to death, fish outta water logged,

hypothermic, climbs over a wire fence,

starts to bleed but relieved,

his survival hero, a gold-medal winner,

scurries across the tarmac, a rat amazed,

dripping cold, the Raytheon eye

slipping as he slips through nine kinds

of surveillance studs, creepy crawlers,

twelves dens of bicycle chain thieves ...

Another miracle ghost walker

wandering through the shredder,

unscathed ... enters the terminal, saved:

He's looking at nine to ten today,

with parole, for finding a hole

in Homeland Security

Pawn shop man.

Pawn shop man.

Putting his misery

on you ... his failure,

not yours

Nothing in the tray,

pawn shop man

Your lost secret

is ours ...

Pawn shop man

Pawn shop vulture culture man,

nothing in the cash tray ... nothing in the cash tray

How can I put you to shame today?

We are all ...

combinations of aspen stands,
of psychic monkeys, of leaves of grass,
giant barking prairie dogs, grey ants,
and leaping lizards, which is why
failure to help, feed, house and dress
one another in glorious white linen robes,
acts murder, genocide and failure to listen
to one another are timeless sins

and also why resistance is so futile

 

Don't Fear the Green Men

(To be read to the melody

 of Blue Oyster Cult's

 "Don't Fear the Reaper")

Once on Mars but now we're gone

Hear this summer song

Forgot about moon madness

Returned to Mars with gladness

riding motor-bot bad ass machines,

out of the dark, for one day's

thunder, burning atomic plunder,

every day I wonder:

Where did we go wrong?

Could have played ping pong

Could have wrote this song

But didn't stay on the Moon

too long: Blew right on through

to Earth, right on!

Walked ten-thousand years

through the snow and rain and sun

built up the pharaoh to kill the pain

Now he rides a dressage horse, top hat,

and the whole rest of the world

has gone insane ...

Don't fear the green men

Don't fear the green men

We are all on Mars now

good as any place to be

Find some humanoid landlord

or just sign the long lost lease

We are not just broken toys,

live long in love at least

(Editor's note: As far as we really know, this death guy was actually an alien who told Goya to make cartoons to throw the whole paradigm into a weird revolutionary spin because, well, you know, these things are necessary during every solar cycle or so ...)

Corn Syrup Blues

One more sip of water

One last ear of corn

At the Big Pharm

Earth's daughter

is refused

her prescription

to kill the pain

Just bought a rice cooker

From the Chairman Mao

collection: No laugh,

No seed, nothing

to do but sell

the fifties' era

posterized sign

to kill the pain

Baby strollers

not available

in stores

You just wake up

to Al Roker

to keel over

from the pain

Summer games

Terror claims

one more day

with no more rain

Lightning whips

as the highway slips

with hailstones big

as baseballs: Urban

nation city state,

they who live behind

their O so golden gates,

ethanol gas cam men

green with greed

won't be safe, 'cause

no one is safe, as the world

turns a bit too late,

nothing left to satiate,

or kill the pain

Clean, serene, campus of green,

the free will of love is blind,

but choice creates patterns

of regret, we fret, a swimming

bassinet, floating to malignant

fates, toward the Void

at the edge of the known Word,

Black ravens bleat at all we speak,

even King Solomon can't get

enough to eat but screeching metal

sounds swirl in dust cracks

from underground

and water, sweet vapors,

saturate these fears with sounds

yet love for sale is still around,

and faux formicas, wallpaper,

if overlooked, point the way

as you walk through the shade,

pondering the female for, Eris,

the mourning glade, the blue,

green-eyed mother ...

From such perils

we shall find

no magic, only mystery

as she unwinds, cools,

like the spider, Sutanang,

O Eris of the Mirror,

your vanity but a pitter

of my patter, my forest

of error, not finding even

one Tree for shade,

for Satan is only

skin deep ...

II

I get up and airbrush myself,

putting all logic on the shelf,

thinking of all of the pretty

pink thinking things I can buy

to support Big Bacon

The meanest lawman

in the uncorked state

of the fattest

of fifty nations,

wish for a fifty-first

by the time

the sun goes down

Who gives a hootin'

about prairie dogs

or Putin? And about

ma' pollutin'

there is no solution

Obsessed with Obama

who killed Osama

Linked out of Lincoln

without too much thinkin'

put lies to leather,

winds without weather

A political mammal,

forked-tongued animal,

Democratic camel,

Adams, Samuel

and Tea

III

Buzzards circle

the Ralston-Purina plant

as I take in the stench

of dead horses downwind

Vulture culture,

Vampire sirens of Sears,

take a break beneath

two Cottonwood trees

at the hidden plot

behind Mall America

They gossip about fancy pants,

her bad taste in Stilettos,

smoking for ten minute ghettos

of passive aggression, cell phone

chatter, jaunty pitter patter ...

j'accuse, j'accuse,

then return to the simulated,

overstimulated nation,

weary of their world

III

Mall security man:

Him Big Man

on little pond

of pavement,

convinces

the perfect princess

of perfume

to check on me

outside as I revolt

in my report,

get it all down,

not realizing

the many crimes

in town ... Sure,

he's needed,

since we all can

vanish in the waspy,

whispy, whispering

molecules of air,

as dark clouds

overhead

hug a burned bald

mountain, burned

bad and sad

during last century's

forest fire

A Red Eye 

of the Tenth Kind

The coldest winter

I ever spent

was the summer bus

along Route Sixty Six,

so I jumped off,

shedding the invisible

air conditioning

like a lizard skin

Chuck Berry crossed

state lines, found love and law

and survived to sing of tales,

now immortalized,

but he can't beat the heat

Found a town, ensconced in trees,

paper tiger pleas,

air thin as little Americans

awakened and wise as young girls

who get to slumber, sleep disturbed

by long military trains in the night,

shuttling in the reverse reverb,

set to perfect the pitch,

of faux train wailings,

remembered warnings

of guns pointed at her

for a good morning

The noisiest mid-sized compact city

in these United Plates ...deaf

jangles to be jailed, came and went,

fast and furious as SWAT teams

in lower elevations, where flags

fly high, saluting to the radio active,

indoctrinated sky

II

Faux universalist

Star bucks, quarters

Star nickels and dimes

Star dollars, saved

my world one day,

with a drink, a toast,

for the pickled pinks,

rushed in wolf packs,

heavy in fuels, feeding

the fires of accusation

burning within

I lost my mind

and lost humanitarian

concerns about grasses

growing betwixt concrete blocks,

concrete trucks, the concrete truth,

telling me secret messages

of liquid worlds squeaking

in magical logos, symbols,

lucky charms, privates snakes,

seething in the wind

Daily rates, weekly skates,

running wise but scared, shaken,

three rose bushes burned,

a single rose, taken,

one meme shrouded

in the fog of war,

left to walk the streets,

fumbling, concussive,

left with nothing but to wonder

about what's worth fighting for

Last Water

in Meteor City

The bull came full circle

looking for water and found

but a trickle.

When the moisture hit the ground

the U.S. Mail was delivered

without a sound, and the mailman

dried up and blew away

Monsoons of summer still

maybe a month away

and the gathering

glittering diamond

of the world

the demiurge made

phantasm illusions

of enough pale light

to burn our souls away

Simple life, Thoreau's delight,

just a pimple on the promises

they made: With ants

running riots, casting shadows

in the shade of great cities

that still consume massive diets

of sugary sweetness, swishing deep

in the hide and the huntress

of haunting violets.

They are all delivering violence

upon the windy world unmade

Sun-burnished pilots

drop their loads

to shake the season

out of conscience

in the world

the devil made

You can't make a horse

drink, but at least the grass

doesn't complain

when you pour

a cup of water

when it doesn't rain

~ Meteor City, Arizona

Of Mountain Towns

and Summer Clowns

to Come

In weasel words of May,
of might, and lite,
of sub-areas in meltdown,
macronomics imposed
with enough loathing and
forced dreariness to make
Michele Bachmann's village
a town for invisible,
clear clowns, dark alleys
to run around, the vision lost,
all lost, and the Mayor
of Shark City, sounding
so world-weary: Here's
my theory ... a returning
to ghost town roots,
where the chiron cimarron
of suns, moons, fools on hills
are setting, how bad,
can it all be, with each day
a wedding day beneath a sudsy,
budsy sea? And what has changed
over the new century to make
for curfews in the park, where
Miller hi-life was once a lark,
where blues is bruised, and every
chiming riff and noise is intended
to drive people, like cattle,
into the bars ... O how old sound
gets louder in corners so sharp!
And how can a ruling body,
unable to even get a phone call
from an interested party wired on in,
supposed to rule on a "disaster"
to capture the unheralded howl of the wolf
after dark? And how can a ruling body,
hazy as horseshoes, sanctions on air,
water, and silencing speakers energized
as they sound more empowered, speaking
to power, as old sound gets louder
in corners, and ol' Sam Bush is witnessed
in the mayor's bedroom (Boy, was he lost!)

Old sound gets louder in corners.
Old sound gets louder in corners.
Old sound gets louder in corners.

In time, and sophistication,
a senior-made nation goes hard
of hearing ... and so
the real-time question
becomes who is so cardinal square
when you can't dance anywhere?
Why can't a baked man even define
"food," be it doughnut or whole?
And who calls the lifeguard
when the bucket of booze,
enough for a swimming pool
is nightly emptied into the brain?

Old sound. Old sound. The owl, that's who!

We the People, 

in order to get out from under authority's boot,

 have been politely wondering, 

for some time now in the streets of America,

 where is our militant's parade,

 our cannon shot of glory, our right to file our own single sheets of official government paper,

 to put our minds at rest, knowing justice will be done for all ... Why is there no Memorial Day holiday for the innocents lost, beaten or chained on the war currently fought, every single day, on battlefield America?

~ The Bards of Mythville

To Maurice Sendak ...

Upon hearing of your passing

I immediately wanted my mommy,

wanted to take all of the wolf hair

my lady is sucking out of our rug

with a vacuum cleaner,
after we just wept and cried and hugged,

cover my body with it

to go flying out

the door

hooting like an owl,

flapping my wings in the air,

running to the first cattle yard

I can find, or, better yet,

swimming in the Pacific

to Catalina Island,
shaking open some angry locked gate

to let all of the buffalo roam
to return, like baby turtles,
 to the foamy sea

If that's what baby turtles do.

I want to forget how everything works,
especially clocks, cashiers
and internet cache dispensers,
... how ten pennies make a dime

It's not that I ever knew his name,

Maurice, but the phrase, itself,

"Where the Wild Things Are,"

echoes in some lost and unrealized

chamber of my soul,

where I still think Captain Kangaroo

and Walter Cronkite are the same person

and the dirt I threw in the air

thinking it was making fire

eternally burns

Here's to William Blake, that lone voice in the wilderness
 of man's wretched over-thinking mind: Here's to Rachel Carson,

Edward Abbey and the holy holidays in the Sun,

to Puff the Magic Dragon, the silver spoon,
 to everything with wingspan that can jump over the moon,

to every last shining shred of everything decent

and alive and eating the technology zombie

out from the insides, that thing still awake, aware,

pure, human and unspoiled in us all,

the innocence of miracles,

the mysteries never to be solved,

to pancakes that finally get cooked

at the high altitudes, too much syrup, too much butter,
to cabin mice

that keep your feet from the floor,
terrified in spider webby dark corners of creaking wood

during forgotten vacations in the Rockies,

to birds, tweeting things I imagine

are words ...

I want my mommy.

I want my mommy.

I want my mommy.

What a blindside! Wow.

A little child isn't

lost in me: It is found.

Observations 

of the Land

of Godz,

Cars & Cannon 

I scribbled a few now-forgotten notes,

before I jumped with no parachute

down from Satanic skies above New York,

with nothing but a Chinese-made compass

and somehow I found myself up a tree

in Concord, Massachusetts, and I crawled

to the Milldam cobblestone street square,
head aching, General Gage on my tail,
too much God & cannon coming up the road,
I scourged for food sleep love, my long-lost

treasure trove, my cannonball tea, my peace,

in the spoiled woods of fabled Walden.
I made a roommate of the DNA daughter
of Henry David Thoreau. We shared bed, bread.
We were in love at Thanksgiving ...
Now Plymouth Rock leads to
a bloodline of highways with no horizon,
A string of tree-lined tunnels, dirty snow,
beer cans and cigarette butts
sans a sniff of smoke for a soul.
You, the cool clear impossible place of my desire
became my jumbled and jumpy New Jerusalem
of steel and stone. The pond was surveyed and sold.
Henry David's daughter, she became a bit of a bore,
What's worse, she snored. Now she's a new shoe style,
Sturdy and rubbery and oh so dysfunctional,
just a cautionary tale sold over the electronic Web of Life
via a mass major national megastore
From sea to shining shore.
Came and went, she did, as an angel of light.
So I moved West, following a tattered map:
Where the Tasty Freeze is going to be,
next to soon-to-be the Banco de Post-Democratica,
next to the next nouveau salon of old Saint Lou,
next to the yet-to-be named municipal zoo.
Still I trudged, and entered a golden Anasazi ruin,
sun-baked brick and clay, a chimney for a tomb,
a below-ground tunnel temple to the last great escape
for threadbare me, impossible though rational you.
Somebody, some angel, fell right off the map,
and left me here to consider both an arc of light
& the fly-shit tempest of a teapot domed scandal.
They left no other marker, but a megalith of rubble.
My compass spun wildly, and the wind swirled up a scare.
And now we pass through a narrow port.
From Concord to discord ... eventually ...
Ah, I know this much: There's no such thing.
There's a long-running song on an ever-running string.
All ripples, soft or made of jade, will eventually still.
I moved further up the hill, following a wire.
The wire led to a hook, and the hook led
to a phone. But the line was dead.
Finally, I thought: Paradise, silence.
This last great emptiness is my consolation,
This last dime I spend, a mere dollar in a donated nation.
So let us learn from our mistakes
on lands south, over the range, down the road past
Ralph Lauren's ranch, the sandblasted expanse,
the holy lands ... Arizona looms ...
a dime in a dollar nation.
Hear the rumble of cattle trucks at 3 a.m.,
the tumult of Ohioans fleeing tornadoes,
bankruptcies, divorces, economic forces,
see nickel-made cowboys on false horses.
In Chicago they read magazines about Sedona roads
and they run there, trampling the Navajo, the Apache, the Hopi,
who are holding back the end of the world.
Feel the hot winds smooth the sandstone,
the cold river California drinks.
In another time, they'd be a happy, redoubtable people.
Count the three million men, women, children,
dogs, llamas, circus elephants ...
When the army came to imprison the Apache
they left experimental camels
to wander from here to Harqua Halla.
Get a good price for a skull
in Skull Valley. See the hollow nostrils,
blood fright, little white lies
about real estate & the fourth estate.
Touch the bomb trigger that killed Don Bolles.
Feel the dying pulse of Goldwater Republicans,
the furnace of God that makes churches and cannon
Glimpse the ancien' regime, the descending gyre
of infused Northlanders from New York, Minneapolis,
Acropolis, too (by two, by two ... Hey, buy two!).
See that man is a city
& the city is a man.
Kiss the fine girl there
with a Greek name, buttery desires.
Read her awkward green eyes
on the way to her dead-end job
in the half-filled office complex.
Analyze her weakening resolve
at the touch of my hand
on her smooth brown knee
-- her shudder engendered there.
Then see her drift away,
seeking younger men,
who keep coming, coming
from California,
which is pushing east now,
which is pushing pestilence
like a salesman,
carbon monoxide in winter,
the angel's breath in spring.

~ Douglas McDaniel
Meteor Crater, Arizona

Trespassing in America

Walking toward the phony duck pond

made in a one-pony subdivision

in some desert in Southwest America,
pit, plotted, planned, cheaply

made by a dishonest developer

who eventually rotted in a jail cell

for a lie told to rich old maids in NYC

because he had promised lakes

pumped from a river, rotting dry,

like the pond now, where geese

have gathered and school busses pass on by
along winding roads

lacking sidewalks, lacking

thoroughfares for little children

who would be O such a shame

if run over by said same school busses

because there's only one pond

now and empty electricity boxes

still haunt the highways lined

by properties illegally lot-split

by old Ned Warren; he who

made a mint, who sent postcards

back East promising paradise

to a lie, no, overstating,

but nevertheless sold out by some

now laying duck in Washington D.C.

But you are that walks, talks tax-paying duck

now, that Walmart greeter,

and today I found

the most previously

nasty thing I'd ever written:

That senior citizens

were considered to be

the most dangerous

creatures on Earth

because they have

a piece of paper

from some laying duck

in Washington D.C;

 but this book, see,

Freakanomics,
(so now I have independent confirmation)

also made a mint

with such carefully

rendered lines

as "superpredator

versus senior citizens,"
thus making its mint
and, of course, target market

We walked toward the duck pond

wolf hairy, feathered, lined with brown scum,

candy bar papers, car parts,

beer bottles, broken plastic

parts of Pez dispensers,

left by school children

who could now give a fuck

because their daddies cheat

on tax returns sent to other

cheating fucks who could

also give a shit about you, me:

I've got one blank sheet of paper

downloaded from a Web

made of ether, all created by

one lying duck in Washington D.C.

The pond is peaceful now except

for honking echoes of bright green mallards

who haven't yet turned greedy by little old

ladies who run the world,
throwing out bits of bread from porches

overlooking fenced in portions

of an artificial landmark, made of water,

promised to them, or, people like them,

who were once promised refuge

by long-dead Ned Warren

that such villages along the Verde

lined with steppes still cluttered

by Apache hand bones still clutching

single pieces of paper signed by

some laying duck in Washington D.C.

Property. Property. Prop. Prop ... er, Tea.

II

I've got a stack of papers

I can't get to because the one

I love goes into fits of grief and rage

over invisible digits of cash

that disappeared into said same ether

and now those lone gone meat locker loins

must be beefed up again to make up

for the losses caused by greed-head Bernie Madeoffs

who lied to little old ladies and mere millionaires

also rendered lifeless by empty promises made

on eight-by-eleven sheets of paper

signed by laying ducks in Washington D.C.

and not one damn sheet on the dirty old paper pile

will ever work in my favor, so why bother?

Property. Property. Proper tea.

And turning off the rounded lanes,
we have ourselves a polite little party,
laughing ourselves into parties
celebrating the quail who slip in and out
of artificial worlds

lacking sidewalks, where we find a well-worn

trail trod by anarchist atheists misled to believe

there is no god when in fact there is, but, hell,

they are actually referring to the demiurge churned

into trash lining the bone-dry portions of the pond,

perfected into a beautiful life-saving reality

made easier to believe by some duck who lied

in Washington D.C. ... but the dead can be brought

to life no easier than the muck can be raised

to rinse the once-clean waters of the Verde

And off the road, where the Mustangs and Escalades,
made mavericky,

speed on by,
rolling on gasses, endangering

school children, lacking sidewalks; who run

home to play on point-and-shoot games

because there is no place to play

in the faux hopes made by grey old men

who promised paradise to little old ladies

in Washington dee see of we sing ... off the road

there's this well-worn trail only misfits

like me can see or be and she now crouches

to peak into the weeds and sage to hear

the cackle of pheasant hens rendered

accelerating life force made mad by the Sun,

which is overheating now, in mad pulse paces,

mixed in with Venusian skies, pitiless star gazes,

and we move on between properties, made proper,

by little pieces of paper, now lining cages,

feeding parrots who repeat perfect truths

made so by Madeoffs advertising safe acres,

security mom spaces, relying on promises

made perfect by little pieces of paper kept sacred

by men who lie daily from remote high places

in Washington D.C. ...

Property. Property. Proper, E.T.

III

Among the many mistakes I've made

in my life is turning right, instead of left,

up this well-paved hill leading to

a manicured driveway ... So she,

who hasn't been outdoors for a month,

who might start screaming at any point

of the day because she, made of soft flesh, saintly blood,

is roiling with so little electricity in her head

her once-brilliant mind can only meekly protest

my attempt to blaze a new trail up this steep incline

leading to a canyon, along the steppes, along the Verde

And this Walmart greeter pops out from behind his usually locked door,

now doubt interrupted from watching Poppa rail and bleat

about how property is the momentary might ruining

the likes of me because only I ever saw the truth of a possible

pathway that, if placed into the hands of currently more

enlightened civic minds might form task forces

to imagine places where children might play

and both little old ladies in electrified golf

carts might pass as easily as javalina family trios

and rolling hungry hordes of courtly coyotes, but no,

the Walmart greeter has to pop out, a Jack of his box,

to ask me, "May I help you," inferring later, in review,

masked hostility, happily rendered now at me, a happy target;

and now I turn my back on his perky little puppy

barking out orders made possible

by a little piece of paper signed by,

this shit little paper signed by ...

this fucking shitty lie made perfect ...

I turn, the sudden wolf, and Toto runs away,

and big Him me, who saves the day

has his own damn sheet of ether now

along with the memory of this proper path

where there is a canyon made of crayons of what I know

about eight-by-eleven sheets of paper

signed by ducks who lie daily

in Washington D.C.

 (Editor's Note: This guy above, in addition to serving as the perfect pictorial segue, is also pretty damned mad about the fact he has a $250 water bill when he, just a month before, was paying maybe a little over a tenth of that per month ... but he lives in some Southwestern desert, too, and he is indicating in the photo how angry he is that the last water he'll suck down in America is going to, in the future, going to cost him more than a pretty penny ... See inspirational story ...)

Piggy Taking Inventory
 
Thou earth mother
whose art made a heaven,
hollow is thy name,
hollow as a doughnut hole
downed by Dunkies sugar suckers
Across this dirty BVD
they come in, unsalted and mean,
sucking dry for purple and orange
styrofoam cup containers,
cattle car crates of doughnut holes,
great salty sea-vats of caffeine,
alkaline and molten H20;
See their blood boil
Tremble at the knowledge:
To know is to burn
High blood-sugar zonks
the dust of freedom
moldered in solo doughnut hole
clusters. They cram their gassy
gutter rollers up to the bar,
slamming their BMW brakes,
coming to a halt, dead-walking
out of the morning light into
the Orange Coated Cluster Pill,
pulling Dunky air in behind them
in gentle whorls of ache ...
Piggy needs to take inventory, Piggy needs to take.
Not so lean and snaking mean, she sucks down
a doughnut hole as her last breath
and testament to the desert ...

II.

I dreamt of your skull & crossbones
and it read me like an X-ray machine
as you lay there, the master,
in our silence and slumber:
I skulked about the place
Lightning last night;
It licked the world mean
and Piggy called six times,
six! Just as we had discussed
the ghost dancers' return,
the rent of the buffalo,
the assassination
of Sitting Bull
Just as plasma fields, unified,
rippled in the chemtrail orange sky
as it tumbled up and angry roll
of pressure and purity
friction and dread.
Piggy called six times, six!

III.

You said the desert sheds
us of our vanity
as the wind blew a scare
up the trees.
You awoke in a stir
of anger and vengeance
raving about "The Law Of 3s."
You awoke in a stir
and everyday I wonder,
why Gaia? Why? So nurturing,
so pure. Why so angry? Why!
Tremble to know the angel
of vengeance: To know is to burn ...
You said something about the dark,
but light was everywhere
in a system of pretty pearly stars

IV.

Piggy crossed the desert in a Humvee
moving eastward fast, loaded down
with software and stolen sacred relics,
as her brother Jacob threw beer cans
along the long, twisty road, northeasterly ...
Piggy crossed the desert
and the mirage followed her:
A man made of metal, in a mod
fright wig, shreeking laugh,
a blast of gunmetal, modal fire,
schist, plaster, a blast of rock.
O man, you left a mess,
tore it all up out of spite,
what a waste, this scorched earth,
bedding tossed like a body
into the garbage pail pile

V.

Knocked to my knees
but bleeding clean,
Man rises and thunders!
Three a.m., O son of Sam!
She didn't consider
that castle re-enter
When all is dark.
The message:
Clear. Clear out!
Gaia scooped me out,
sucking the cold, even,
out of the refrigerator!

VI.

Piggy needs to take inventory,
Piggy needs to take.
She leaves Ulysses on the shelf
a misquote from Sir Thomas More ...
flower petals on the white tile floor.
Then you hear that sucking sound
Then your hear
that sucking sound
Coming down the highway, Whoof!
The missing inventory includes
but is not limited to:
Three red maple leaves from Walden,
one copy of the Grapes of Rats,
one moonbeam, one bolt of light,
lots of lights ..
"I am the light taker of the world!
There shall be no
interior lighting
without me!"
Light bulbs missing. More than just three.

VII.

Ozo sam
Urizen Man!
Christian saint,
O, house full of pain
Twisted rock
upon the oak
the river bends,
it bleeds and dries
See them, over the expanse,
the hot rubber wheels,
the Holy lands:
Of e-mail shouts,
the doctor is out
Piggy has left the building
crossing state lines,
crisscrossing America
O house full of pain!
Urizen man!
O Christian Saint!
A road made of sand!


From, Angel of the Avenues ...

Don't Talk About the Weather

Looking down a stream of broken chocolate

in the twilight, summer roads and heavy loads,

tipped, from their gravitational thrones,

asking the sky for answers ...

But there is "None," says the infant in the rain,

"Go," says the angel in disdain, "give yourself away ..."

The sublime country of ownership

is now in possession of the Mutual Dread Inc.

angel of the night, who mouths out the sorrows

with avowals of "How?" and "When?" and "Why?"

Agent of ill winds

Angel of Anxiety

No matter how bright angels beam

We can't stare down this melt

of frozen stone nor satiate

the silence of the sun ...

Energy is fire and fire is everywhere ...

You are afraid of fire, but do not worry:

A fire hydrant stands nearby

Controlling mechanisms are everywhere

and public safety is ubiquitous

The fearful want to burn us both

Hot and cold is the Way.

No matter.

No blame.

Walk the stones, simmer down,

walk the soured broken grounds

weeping, sweeping up categories

as well as the lies swept away above

these basements of regret,

these closets full of tough old rules

forever present on the earth

Stripped to the bone,

The endless reductions

You make of me,

Rendering sand

Becoming time, money,

The pain becoming sheer

Needless fumbling in the morning

For meaning

If I spend another minute

In your hallucination

I will dissolve into many planets,

Tiny orbs ready for wars

Against the wind

A Brief Visit 

to Ballpark Earth

First thing I've got to say is this:

I'm pissed I never got to play

Major League Baseball

Second, and this is a big one

She looked so good

in her fishnet stockings

and we were in sixth grade still

and I still haven't

been able to keep my eye

on the ball

ever since

Third ... sure,

the psychologist

apologized

for getting

the whole thing

more than half wrong

and these are bad

percentages

and you paid

the bill to guard

the lunatic asylum

and it sure doesn't

bring all of the dead

dead doggies all back

Fourth, equally unimportant ...

Just who is keeping

score, Dear Lord ...

Who has all of the stats,

Stan the Man,

and who is keeping

the big statistical

law book of life?

I mean shit, shit, shit ...

I can't even spit here

and I have not looked

at a box score

since last spring,

when I still had hope

for the Diamond King

and sure, forty thousand

princes and queens are seated

in the stands now

text messaging, waving

to their kids back at home,

but they aren't watching anyway,

since fishnets are back in style

and so are their fuck me

I'm a ho tattoosies

on the telly and the Jumbotron,

which caught them kissing

doesn't even record,

just flashes,

then flies on by

Rain Station

The hurricane journal colonel

meets the wind at the Porterville

train station as birds fall

out of a fallen tree

Shoeshine wet steel along

a busted up railroad line,

heading to nowhere

in the eternal now

Isaac Smith took the first

bullet train away from the coast

and the pellet is  a richochet

from sea to sinning sea

Storm riders in white robes

lost the battle but won

the water war: The one-eyed leper

watches the stain running up

the wailing wall ...

Meanwhile, back at the submarine

boat show of snakes running

beneath the floorboards of Boston

to the Milldam corner of Concord,

discord cannot carry any cannons

across the creek as history repeats

each and every morning, twice,

and the ripples still by morning light.

The Secret Report
of the Night
of the Last Knight

He was once

a young man,

dressed nice,

in a blue shirt,

red tie, driving

a green Jag straight

down white lines,

but the T-shirt underneath

wore a pirate skull

which he only threw

into a laundry bag

maybe once, twice

a month, and his pockets

were only full of change.

He was the last knight last night.

He was swept away in a summer sandstorm.

He was a seven-tweet non-talker.

He was definitely not the lady stalker.

He was more of a pre-planned thing.

He who came to get one key,

was found to be missing,

like dinosaur chasing

a lightning bolt gone crazy

in a Twenty-first century

schizoid void.

And we were all watching the war.

And we tied ourselves down and faced the wind.

And we were all watching what water does.

And we were all claiming the key was gone.

And we were all eating the Tin Man's heart.

And we all threw the bones to Toto, too.

The sea was dumped into a pail

and then wifi came, he began to sail ...

and then whiff, whiff, whiff,

the water sank ... and whiff,

whiff, whiff ... wifi sank

into cracks in the earth,

and mud gathered in the corners

of the earth, and the high school peak

of alchemical man all fell down the hill.

A detective was hired by a private firm.

A detective was hired to learn all he could learn.

A detective returned with ashes in an urn.

A detective said sorrow was a golden tax return,

that the guardian was gone, had run away,

and it definitely was not a pre-planned thing.

So we rebuilt the modern world.

So we went up and down, burning it all down.

So we fell in love with the dragon girl.

So we stole the thunder and lived in rusted ruins.

So we made the waves to make steel shudder.

So we served the sheep dog meals of bones.

So we drank the waterfall down to fountains

of dust, stunned to sleep before the golden dawn.

It was O so definitely a pre-planned thing

In Memory 
of 
a Lady Judge ...

Met her once at the end
and beginning of a solar cycle,
and now I'm humble, in awe
at the news of her passing.
It was thirteen years ago.
Her vehicle had slipped
off of the ice between
Ridgway and Colona.
I had just arrived
on the accident scene
from New England,
in a white truck after
hitching a ride to T-ride
from a well-loved Ute leader
who seemed to know everyone
in Montrose and my phone
worked and hers didn't
and she said she was thankful
for the rescue and it seemed
so ironic then that a judge,
under those circumstances
was thanking scrambled brain me,
who at the time, needed more rescue
than I could ever explain:
Though I tried. She thought me odd.
Later, after the Chocolate Lover's fling,
we spoke again, but never after that.
But she tolerated me, kindly,
and I thank her for that.
Can't imagine why events
take us so young,
at fifty eight,
in Baja, California
while doing what we love:
Tender consolations,
to all of the Telluriders
who are able to pass
while on international
adventures because
that's what we always say.
Humble, in the mystery
of her passing, at the ending
of yet another sun cycle ...
Humble in the thought
of how difficult it must
have been to be
a judge in a small town,
a fish bowl, where you can
walk down the street and meet,
you know, the accused, damned,
and so on ... humble
in the beauty of someone
you never spoke to again,
because I was odd then,
I'm different now,
so was she, must be ... but I
remember, every now and then,
we'd pass each other,
and we'd sort of just
acknowledge the passing,
and in acknowledging her
passing now, I am quaking,
in deep sorrow that more
wasn't spoken
between now and then.

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

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 parallel

"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 anointed 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 transistor 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."

Shyla is Blue Love Now

for Shyla the Sheriff, 1998-2011

You will find her

beneath the stairs

staring at your feet,

but seeing your head,

all white-masked and wolfie

Ordering in, ordering out:

You'll find her naked,

running mildly about,

rocking chair and bouncy

When the pizza man

Arrives at our doors

You'll find her lighter,

mightier, than the most devout,

far better than fighters and dividers

in Las Vegan, New Mexico,

Keeping me company

When you, my love,

Have gone insane and winds,

Solar in nature, terminating

The phones with crackle

And invisible light,

Make it impossible to speak

They find her in Las Vegas,

at two a.m. times two,

turning toward the TV,

With ears for radar absorbing

The stirring sounds of the Earth

And growing sicker, each day,

For debates about the deadbeat,

For laughter on the sell-out shows,

Her old lady fur coming out in tufts,

Ready for the door to open,

Mouthing the words, “out, out, out.”

You find her brilliant, lit,

deviate with experimental DNA

and sane, still as death: listening

for the Jefferson Airplane

To land on ice,

for the sound of scraping,

for the blue-shift echo

of the first sounds of defeat,

for the skeletal sleds

Off-shore, behind

Snow-dabbed trees

in British Columbia

You'll find her in forty eight

states of being on forty eight

motel room keys, thumbing dumb,

The door monkey: O, if she can

Only solve that one riddle,

The door nob, then she

Won’t need you … we, us;

Because she only needs

The scent of roses,

The yellow pedals, in a slow,

Elegant walk, a well-timed

Roll in the grass,

The one thing you can depend

On, like the rising Sun, the spring,

The Malamute shepherd wolf-bred

version of the moonlit Angel of Mons.

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 pony-tailed

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 turquoise 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 blonde

bird driving a white trash Ford.

-- Douglas McDaniel

Aurora, Colorado

For more Mythville originals, go to ... American Mythville

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