How We Lost the Drug War

"Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth."

~ Will Rogers

Tennis shoes tied together,

pink as sin, high on a wire,

a signal for the Tricky Dick boys

building prisons for prophets,

profits for polarities,

warehouses for secret cocaine

futures, hemp rope for hangings,

skull stems hammered on,

amped up for echoes

on the dark side of our

personal moons, rigid codes,

cancer loads, injustices on loan,

cowboys as cash cows for the state,

sharks driving spaceships on wheels,

for long thin men in red beanies

surfing the parking lots

in the pre-dawn shadows

with silver flashlights

poking their hungry noses

into snow-cold super trucks and cars,

breaking into the momentary

silence of your homes,

your minds, your memories,

your anguish and your regrets,

robbing the cold, bringing the heat,

the cops needing capital who will never leave

you alone, tapping your computers and phones,

crashing through the triple-bolted door

without even a false premise

to excuse unconstitutional thrones

of mislabelled power, big pharma towers,

out of pocket by the hour, side effects

diminishing mere disease, minutes of unease,

seconds for wishing, cell phones and dirty dishes,

inquisitional questions, shouting for answers,

stun-gunning you, with photo radar gone fishing, 

fast as bad acid to put you on the floor: 

Mi Madonna, mi amore ... Master lock and more:

Saint Peter, Saint Jesus, Saint Brahma,

Saint Paul, here are your chains

when you've done nothing at all

The Librarians of Chiron

Running the place

like the see-yi-aye

she fills the Void

with restrictions,

a curious intradiction

and curio cards

of information

for my memory decay

My new library card, plastic and eternal,

is withheld, kidnapped by civilization,

held back from the fool, the child, the saint,

due to the sanctity of property over people,

information over sanity, the know-nothings

of gardens long gone, restrictions and restraint,

of the fool and the child and the saint

Sitting flat on her

officious frame

time ticking off

as the taxpayers

run on by seeking

out ruinous rumors

kept in a data-bank urn

Unlearn! Logic is a sequence

for digits on her personal

fussy budget spool

as she teaches me

her golden rule

running unevenly

for gasoline-mad marines

and payday loan Paulines

seeking out academic assignments

about banks and bombers,

bombs and U.S. Treasury robbers,

about skirts that sway, tweets

of high flying interest,

planets gone sad, asteroids

in full bloom, octopus arms,

The New York Times, O, woe,

there is a suckerfish upon the People!

Upon picture books, bar-coded,

featuring western Iowa churches

rebuilt every decade or so

by mountain-built storms

thrown east, wrecking their steeples,

by tornadoes feeding upon the People!

O, cookbook of comfort foods,

converted into kitchen-witch actions ...

O, four-year-old compact disks

emotions emo autodidactions!

Hear me. Hear Me!

The sun will come, each day ...

Hear me! Burning the shadow off

the mountain as I boil, too hot,

just too damn hot overdue

her library card denial transactions ...

And this is why the library lady

is so damn mean to me:

For if I am flesh she is bone

in a world that's all on loan

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.