In the Beginning There Was a Word from Our Sponsors

Welcome, O welcome 

the many winged archetypes, 

supple and black, 

enfolded in milky white, 

milky way white, 

hanging in midair, 

peering through 

the portal, the slinky tube 

of the time traveling 

Dream Catcher wheel. 

Help is on the way ... 

Hooray. Hooray. 

Help is on the way … 

Hooray. Hooray. 

For whom? 

I cannot say. 

They exist in the imperfect 

Shapeless spaces unifying 

Our oppositional own imperfect 

Spaces. They resonate in 

The ripples of the swimming 

Pool light at moonlight, 

And intimate choices 

Made by man and volcano 

Long ago. 

Help is on the way … 

Hooray. Hooray. 

Help is on the way .. 

As they wave, pleading, 

Begging for business deals, 

Moving closer to our dreams, 

Tumbling through timeless 

Synchronistic switches 

That speak our name. 

They twitch in the fierce 

Firestorm of the Eve-bitten 

Apple, and dance, 

frightened and purple 

Help is on the way, 

They hope and pray: 

Hooray. Hooray. 

Their master, like ours, 

Has up and gone away.

~ Mythville

The Free Emergency Exorcism (Phoenix Uprising)

The media eye

with the Phoenix police

in the tear gas times

sittin' in with the news models,

are chillin' in the sussustudio,

but at Second and Van Buren

the naughty are brewing for a fight

covering their eyes with their hands,

flying under the radar, naked in the desert lands,

charring up their fairy bones

and she gotta work in the morning

but now she's gotta go underground,

seven years of peace got no peace,

seven years of yeast infections and got no lease

and nothing to do but now, with two options,

fight or retreat, the sulfur fire burning in the face,

facing the master race, the canininites out in front,

the Trump channel turning on,

with Willie and Bernie and Babe and Rat Bear,

fired up in the fat fog, crazy as the Fourth Estate Guy,

who gets it next, they grab him by the neck,

with the K9 unit comin' down to bring the Jesus ...

If only because there is hope for all of us.

If only. If. Only. Hope for all. One nation,

under great odds. One nation going quite O my gawd.

One nation under the heat. One nation under many storms, 

within, and without, increasingly so more without, than in.

We the people who formed a better thing than the One. 

We the people thinking outside the box of lost frogs,

running in amok, in the muck, like dead peasants, dead ducks:

One nation running out of luck, dying in the yuck, what the fucks

while money is speech, and speech is drowned in the diffusion

of the quickening, the quicker, the more dead. Ain't it so, Fred?

One nation, screwed to the floor by the Fed. 

Many who are now dead, 

One nature under the unnatural

with enemies from within,

enemies from without,

with no time to twist or shout

E kay Gee. Spy king of the KGB. 

Tree sap sucked out of the trees,

quite untested and without a teevee,

can't even afford a teepee, nor TP;

Oh thine eye that always sees,

we are all more nerve-wracked

than sea-sickened honey bees

Could it be the sun?

One nation under the gun?

The dogs set loose to run?

The mysteries of the sea?

The networks selling beer,

fear, the diva of the year?

Is it all above as so below?

Do you have an inkling, Drumpf,

do you even know?

This is more than just your reality show.

It's all about the gas, man.

It. Is. All. About. The gas.

To keep us running fast,

to win the future that never exists,

running past the master plan,

the Season of the Man,

the runover Santas,

long gone since Viet Nam,

on the long gone corner,

holding out a can

for loose change,

answered with a "Thank you, mam."

And then there's nurse named Mary, 

who died at the crisp of the Great Recession

The daughter who lost her mind, 

only to become wild

in the whoosh of the North,

now a witch, living in the woods,

living in the ditch, hounded by the cyclops,

who beat her back down, black and blue, bruises to prove ...

the soul-eating Egregore is born in red, white but who?

But they hesitate to arrest her again,

since she knows her God-given Black Madonna Gothic civil rights,

and the peace officers don't need that now, not tonight

Oh Lord! O gawd no oh no. Oh Lord. 

On the day the telephone call came, 

hearing of her mother's suicide,

after losing her job, her home,

her pride, all in one week,

She was never the same and neither was I.

One nation of fevered 

beauty queens to the south,

cast in a world of doubt

Fighting their way up the ladder

in service industry jobs.

Feeding the piggy slobs,

reptilians with their morning eggs.

Swabbing the decks.

Driven to exhaustion by the heat,

carbon dioxide

and conspiracy news.

Working double-time

to make a dent even close

to the way their father had it,

their grandfather, even harder,

since the farm is gone.

The trouble all starts when the land is sold. 

This world is too old. 

It's gone into retro,

and softly luminescent

in the swimming pool

moonish day-glow.

Enemies from within, 

tangle like the angels and devils

of our best and worst energies

with the enemies from without ...

No one's got no clout. 

It's money that talks. Money that shouts. 

Generation boomers,

checking on their Bloombergs

in their Sunday morning bloomers,

saying fuck them man it's me firsts,

me precious, me firsts. Me. Precious.

One nation under the fog

in breach-birth and stinking of bongs,

trying to just somehow get along,

singing one long damn "American Idol" song.

but the video goes up and it's show time on CNN

with the feedback meme running just a little too long.

but she made the clip, she tragically hip.

You can see her in the light

O gawd no. No. Can't be. Mary sweet God No!

Not My MOM! No!

Hidden in the fright. Full of worries,

nothing ever new, nothing ever right,

just her truth and her second sight,

asking the Baphomet what to do tonight.

Feedback loop. Fruit loop truths,

in the ultra violet byte,

killing the metaphysical germs,

living with the worms,

just past the portal

the truth of our most ancient

ancestors wrestle with their immortal,

just closing their eyes to feel normal.

We are one stand.

Like the Aspen, man.

Listen. Just listen. If you can.

Look into the free emergency exorcism light,

then you'll feel a little sick,

did I mention Tricky Dick,

or is it "And Ronald Reagan,"

what is the password again?

You been hypnotized, again and again,

I know you don't remember and it ain't no sin.

Now you can be just a human being

A human being. A human. Being.

O say can you see by the dawn's early light,

Jack the Jester and the Bard are here with you,

holding your tiny little hands

It's no shame, man

You can still be a hero

to the everyman

~ Douglas McDaniel,

Phoenix, Arizona,

August 23, 2017

Douglas McDaniel does way too many things at once. 
but if you Google "Mythville," that will be him, for you,
 one damn googlewack in the morning hue.

Wellington Station

Wellington Station

I saw you across

the commuter aisle

twitching and huffing

at Wellington Station.

I, too, am a loser

in the war. I lay

down my sword.

Set my auto alight.

Left it a funereal husk,

just a memory

to the challenges

of sunny October days.

Be still, my brother,

my angel of anxiety.

I see you gasping,

reading the news,

oh so careful

about what you touch,

what we all touch.

We meet in common

places of terror, our

shared communiques...

Oh veteran.

Oh war lord;

I lay down my arms,

I comply, I let go,

I ride smoothly

into the inner-city

bowels of tension

and glittering dreams.

Then I will take on the attire

of Napoleon's three-pointed hat.

I will curtsy, bend, that is,

into the sweet reflection

of what a peaceful city

wants to be.

The war news is hard,

ubiquitous as pearls and steel

and mobile phones.

My train runs silently,

beneath the stars and stripes

of all conquering heroes.

The Bunker Hill spire

is muted through glass

running by in the opposite,

direction. I descend

down the catwalk

of morbid hell. Silence

encloses me in a weightless

pipe of dread.

I am a monster.

I confess it all.

Just this, please,

after this night,

on the battlefield

of Boston,

will you let me

safely caress

my love, my sweet

daughter's face, or,

anything else I can keep

perfect or sane

for a whole rail yard

of days.

Let me retreat

with my bag of games,

my pen, my spear,

my telefrantic machines.

Let me walk, just one more time

into the target valley

of technology.

And though I will breathe

the very microbes of hell,

through pile drives, tunnels,

lost wheels and poisoned wells,

the endless botched catacomb

of the world you made:

Oh Wellington, allow my return

to Corsica, even Elbe, I will allow.

Where I can be at peace.

With who? Myself, at least,

as I wait for the night

to fall upon your victory.

If Napoleon could stoop

this far into the refrigerator,

he would have become

a suburban monk like me.

~ Boston, Massachusetts,

written October, 2001,

for the commemorative book of poetry,

"Ipswich at War,"

and includes the following two related poems ...

Have you considered insuring your personal airspace?

Image by Max Ernst

And Now for a Few Notes on Watching the Watchers

The other day I was in this coffee house,

 which I won't tell you the name of, 

and there was this old

guy in there who had the look. 

An older gent, who looked at me blankly

as if he hated me from behind these dark sunglasses. 

It was kinda creepy. 

The only way I can describe it is it reminded me

 of the stoic baseball manager stare.

Then I noticed the person I was looking at 

was merely a reflection of myself. 

I was staring at myself.

I had the stoic manager stare.

People stare from behind dark sunglasses a lot,

and one supposes it might be because they are

hiding.

Or it could just be a fashion thing.

Nobody smiles in public anymore, 

or so it seems, 

behind sunglasses.

That's most likely because the times are so hard,

and perhaps many people who stare blankly

with the stoic baseball manager stare

because they didn't like baseball, 

or, simply don't have jobs,

 just lost their homes in some financial,

 climate-related disaster or all of the above.

 Or they are voyeurs.

But most of all, staring is rude.

It's a kind of surveillance.

 A really, really crude kind of surveillance,

but surveillance nonetheless.

It needs to be turned into something more productive. 

People need jobs.

Cuts down on staring time. 

But staring skills could be better employed.

You could, for example, 

right now (operators are standing by) apply

 for training as a remote flyer of drones. 

That's staring on steroids.

Since the best and brightest of our generation

have determined surveillance society

is good for the economy,

and the encouragement of drone technology

is all of the wave, let us consider where the jobs are

 ... staring at a screen for drone technology.

First and foremost: It's the best short-cut

there is in the motion picture industry.

I know this because of my own experience

in film and television and motion pictures.

Fortunately, even as I write this,

 my life story is pieced together

 as some odd duck shot on the public

patois of surveillance society for posterity's sake.

 We are all pieced together this way. 

Or, we can be reconstructed that way.

We all have a legacy in film to be pieced together. 

To produce a full movie,

all you need are the necessary security clearances

 to obtain this productivity en masse.

For example, I have appeared in such films as "My Left Foot by the Laundromat," "Photo Radar," "Coffee and Cigarettes by the Convenience Store," a very Jim Jarmusch-style series of daily

sequences, and "Leaving Las Vegas with Less Money in My Pocket Than When I First Arrived."

Numerous bank, library and national monument documentaries.

 I have been a star walking

down the street and driving up and down

what seems like every road in America.

 You get the picture.

All of these films about myself are in pre-production

since nothing bad happened in them.

Unfortunately, great stories need conflict. I went to the Twin Towers a few years before 9/11, but that

film, "What the Bleep Do I Know About the Location of the Restroom," also is lost to the dustbin of

history. Another short film,"Cleanup on Aisle Three" has some comedic value, but short films don't

appear as fodder for theater matinees anymore.

Anyhow, I lack much conflict in film. Terrorists get all of the play these days and I'm not a big fan of

the genre. News media outlets, purveyors of such films, with tight controls on the hype, distribution,

serializations and so forth, like them. They get big repeat business. Horror films and fear-based stuff

is big business. Bigger than sex, in terms of theme, I suspect. However, as a long-time film critic, I

find this trend most unfortunate.

Still, it's a booming field, especially if we consider the future prospects of drones. Oh sure, the

blessings of such technological miracles come at the expense of the sanity of many individuals, but

look at the bright side. If every inch of the earth, every town, city square, park or, hell, blade of grass,

were under drone surveillance, it would force job creators to hire millions, perhaps even billions of

people to process the information.

It's good for lawyers, too. A whole new field of privacy law would need to be considered: personal air space. Could take a century to adjudicate. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn't even been able to update the 1872 mining law allowing individuals and corporations to plunder federal property for

valuable minerals, despite the ecological damage to such lands beneath our feet.

I'll bet personal air space isn't even being considered.

I have my own mind on a film called "Bang the Drum Slowly in Personal Air Space."

 It combines baseball and horror into one big basket.

 It starts out when one of these airborne, dragonfly-esque,

nanotech devices comes toward me 

and I swat it with a baseball bat. 

I will do it mercilessly, 

with that stoic baseball manager stare.