13.2.13


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 ... 

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 ...

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.



Photo

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




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?





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!




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.