30.7.17

Do You Know Me?



Night basement
alley sweats
meet on
the fashionably iced
mountain resort street.
Our time together
is the fate we keep

Strolling circles
bone to bone,
the Maker is making
our Time together;
Time that bends
with the wind.

We got silly with sin.
You played a game,
puckered and stroked
and waved me home

You know where I live,
and lived with you I did.
My penny price
was a plastic flower,
and poetry …

Enough!
Magic in a broken
bottle of vitamins.
Enough!

William Blake
kissed and ran,
ran and kissed.

Albion’s son took
safe harbor
in the box canyon's shadow
of mountain and mist;
Lingering there in early
afternoon cold shade;
and in the darkness,
howling at his phantom's
fire by electric streetlight.

His mind got quiet
out there, somewhere.
She saved a single
scrapple of soul,
petting his dry skull
as the river ran by.

He starved her,
got sorry later,
and fell in love.

Creek water ran
through their veins
and cleansed the salt
from his tear-duct dreams

They matched steps,
and in stepping claimed heights,
then showered to be sanctified,
then wined and dined, borrowing
on Telluride time ...

He wept and feared
and feared what she wept.
He wrote up a list of his faults,
or fell dead asleep trying:
Pride, shame, manic moods,
moments of empty bliss.

She pegged
her donkey
to a target,
sealed it
with a kiss

He was stunned
by the beauty
and purity of this.

From "Angel of the Avenues," a book of poetry by Douglas McDaniel

18.7.17

Want to Be a Bard? (Highly Not Recommended)

                                           
During the day tether down

your poor lonely lost soul

to the sandy shore

At night: The light. The Light!


Leave as the sun sets

Make like a bird and fly

in the direction of any wind,

talk to everyone,

feel every thing,

no matter how scary

because you fear not!

No matter how much

you scare those fiends

in the night, no matter

how creepy you are found,

follow each sound high or hollow

with your freaky Gnostic prescience

Be beyond all that fucking science!

They just don't know.

They just. Don't know.

They. Just. Don't. Know.

You know.

You. Know.

You.

~ Clancy's, Scottsdale, Arizona, July 17. 2017. 9:30 p.m., as the night's monsoon storm was moving in



13.7.17

Poolside


Four pigeons
by the whirlpool
coodling up chlorine

Flying life, safe as ginger
in a cabinet,
extrapolates lifespan

The wingspan
of swimming pool pigeons
is dependent upon supply,
depth and demand

It is to the good fortune
of the young chicks
that their short necks,
soft beaks, cannot
reach down to drink

Six poisoned pigeons
find survival in the short-term
risk at the swimming pool lip

Later, they will plummet
to the floor of the cooing
concrete cooridor

Anonymous slaughterers
break off with the wind,
bleached and careening

6.7.17

Bull Run Fire



Five miles east

wind in my face

and the fire plume,

a violet volcano

Five miles east, but close enough,

the white wash coat of burned juniper

forcing the Saturn in the nostrils,

Hackberry Mountain, fizzling out

in a downpour, monsoon downdrafts

blowing ash into a many shouldered beast

We went home and made a list

of what we would need when

the call for evacuation came,

craving a disaster to bring

the memory awake, the dreaming down.

Great thin-legged clouds spiderwalk

their way across the purple ridge,

purple with weather; precious things

shake in their cupboards, forgotten.

Lightning pounds the mesas,

the wind pushing down in atomic bundles

of white orange flasks of violence,

a curtain on the sun, a dirty window of light,

a blowout of compressed desires

pressing the sky, re-animating us

2.7.17

Dying Satellite (Was/Not Was)


And so like Icarus with wings
breathing of Promethean fire
stolen from Zeus
cast down from heaven
a Satanic star tumbling
through the void
this mixed red and green lit
metaphysical mixed metaphor
tumbles down to Earth 
for the laughing hilarious
amusement of all who roam
all who crawl on dirt
all paying good money
for a public fireworks display
all those never understanding
this will be they someday