Mythville

The Sniper

He lived fierce

but not long enough

to clear out

the elegance

hidden beneath

his cloud, red

as the liver,
silent as a sniper
in Laos

He used all of his hearing

on Deep Purple,

the Allman Brothers

and trains rolling

both ways along

Route 66

moving nightly, daily,

always east and west

for the resupply ...

Semper Fi! Semper Fi!

That was his religion

after the Catholic

do and die ...

His duty was his

faith and he loved

defended even his wife

in death

He lived his life,

left nothing to spare

didn't waste a thing

for the resupply

II

We made this place up. You were used,

brought here to recite Faulkner,

to champion great beasts from the sea,

thwarting the diamond-hearted vistas

of America, sold, bought, traded ...

No, another scene: Closer, a yard

of broken concrete, cowards,

laughing, chasing some old lady,

down the road ... No, closer, closer!

You called the police car. You!

Now my nerves are jangled

and the ambulance is gone

and the TV news crew

never arrived like it does

in the movies and the

music is the reason

why I cannot live

without you.

Closer? Can't be. Just can't.

I mean, it's too close, too soon.

The curtains, full of holes,

like a planetarium at mid-day

of endless siestas: My god,

you stayed here with me?

You endured this tormented

corner of trains going in both

directions and audible

rattlesnakes ripping

through the night

and automobile drivers

who just don't get it

and never will?

Don't you see who I am?

I am a man who cannot

even think about leaving

because if I do, it will be

the end of music for me

and I will have to walk down

the straight without your

sweet warm palm

inside my hand and man,

that's just to close, woman

You got no right, just no right

to shed such salty tears

on my brow as we hide,

trembling, behind walls

stained by forgotten

details, jagged angry

mad loafers who once

made these roadside

spaces home

III

In the stillness

only gamblers

light their fires

In the forests

of time, money

where no choppers go

and Captain Napalm

can't command,

the likes of me

always in demand

One-eyed fire bird arts

at the secret command

you'll feel no detection

when your dark heaven

is my cross-hair selection

Semper Fi! Semper Fi!

Nixon called

and I denied

never knew a camera crew

I fought, you died,

that's all we knew

IV

Covert, overt, bread crumbs for crows,
with vows on the dangers of falling in love
over roses and medical records,
building enemies golden bridges to escape from,
burning down the lines of supplies leading into Vietnam,
sucking in the agent orange, dirty in black and green face paint:
All of these things he did for you, or so he thought ... well, anyway,
did what he was taught, which was the honor onto itself

When rising blood bruises arose along the arm, he kept covert,
secret in the protections of you, again!
And when I took out the trash and got in the scuffle
with another of your walking wounded,
he urged on the fight like Johnny Rebel
and later we all apologized and hugged and tried to move on,
but we never did, never do, because of the ripples
now running in tsunamis across the seas

When he came home he was told to stand down
when the Hari Krishna spat on him at LAX:
Must have been like, relax, soldier, stand down, man,
just stand down, keep it quiet, to yourselves,
because it never ends ...
Never will

The'Sun King'

Should We De-Fund Congressional Health Care and Other Perks?: Most assuredly, it would even the playing field ... By Douglas McDaniel ...  http://mythvinformation.blogspot.com/2011/02/lessons-in-social-dysfunctions-101.html

Memory Echoes Ink: And now for the latest from Nickson Bluffs, Iowa, where the hum hummers at the diner are reading their latest "Chuck Grassley is Always Greener" tweets to the low-register, piped-in tune "Sweet Home Alabama" ... By Jaimie Ondrea Dunn ... 

http://memoryechoesink.blogspot.com/ 

Interview with the Mr. Nothing is Sacred Architect: "Mr. MaGoomeister, just groaned. It had been a slow starting day, due to complications due to the way one shower head lined up with the tile, considerations well beyond Mr. Nobody's talents or interest ..." By Douglas McDaniel ...

http://radiofreearizona.blogspot.com 

Many Days in the Life of the 'Real-Time Poet' and Other Notices ... http://www.examiner.com/places-and-faces-in-scottsdale/douglas-mcdaniel

 Other Publishing around the Realm, with a Very Nice Portrait Done on an Old French King ... This Week Under the Sun ... http://thisweekunderthesun.blogspot.com

Plowshares

Eat, breathe, sleep, dream,

so when we wake 

we can face the cold wind

burning of death,

brave and bold; 

Let those who find

the merchants of fear

behind their backs turn

to face the paranoid fringe

down to fire off memos

for one-thousand-year laws

to assuage disbelief

in the disinformation

 that we are separate, not One: 

Let the dawn rise

for the information farmers,

the witch doctors, the divine women,

the primal poets, the horsemen

melting their brands into plow shares,

the cosmic truckers and spinning ballerinas;

Lead these bright sons and daughters

to contentment beneath

the new Sun of Creation

and then, let them eat, breathe,

sleep and dream again beneath

the Old Moons of the imagination

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.