Toward the End

of the Beginning

And so the Sun said onto them, "Look" ...
and they all went blind ... And the Moon
said onto them, "See? He's crazy!"
and then turned back upon the Sun
and beamed, brightly, saying,
"I told you they wouldn't get it."

So the Sun turned back upon the Moon,
and said onto it, in pity at its barren soul,
telling it, with August pride, "Wait till Eight!"
And so the Moon died, pitted and cracked,
and Man, having learned to look away
from the Sun, humble and on his or her knees,
cried out to the cruel, angry bright orb, "Why?"

And so the Sun answered, "Love, Me,"
but they could only answer back, still blind,
deafened by the roar, asking, "Who was that?"
And the Moon waited and waited,
circling like a one-eyed Horus Hawk,
and said back to the sun, more brightly,
"See ... see ... see? I can anger the sea!
I told you they would never get the Joke."

And so the Sun burned ever brighter
every vivid century, every thirteen years,
saying onto them, "Really, really, really ...
Love, Me ... I'll even hand off a single Flame
for you to abuse in my ever-brighter Name."
But they only burned brighter, and the Moon
laughed and laughed, turning to blood-red,
drifting, dreaming blues, and jeered back
at the Sun, "They need a flood now, Fool!"

And so the suspicious Sun sent them Flood,
and Fire and all but a few of them all but died,
and those who remained cried out to the clouds,
"O why? ... O why? ... O why? ... O why O why?"
And the Sun, hearing this, said onto them,
"See, see, see, learn this and I'll burn brighter,
give you a lighter, a brick and more mortar,
so more of you can begin to understand, each day ..."

And the Moon, still waiting, swayed and shook,
struggling to break free, laughing hysterically,
in a mass media breakdown of social disease ...
"I can divide, conquer and count to Three!"

And so the Sun, out of incomplete frustration,
said onto them, "Okay. Okay. Okay ...
I'll just burn you silly motherfuckers up,"
sending a purple and orange plume
of fire their way, every three days,
and they said, "Seems to be neither
oops nor here or what or why, just sky,"
while the lands all burned and the seas
all boiled into steam at the year Thirteen,
killing them ... and the Earth, quiet again,
whispered, "Cool, I can finally get some sleep."


~ Morning Sun, Iowa
http://mythvilleondemand.blogspot.com




The Solar Bath


She awoke
shapely but shaken
And I watched her bathe
In blinding electricity
Beneath the solarized sky
Tiamat met Zeus
Were unable to reach
The porch to punish her
And over the cornfields
Of Republicanated Iowa
Thunder a’ trumpeted,
And Tesla’s lightning
Failed to defeat her,
And solar light bounced
Off the feet of her
Bouncing upwards
Off the earth, to fire
Up the weaponized,
Quite culinary clouds
On the ninth
anti-anniversary
Of September Eleventh
She awoke shapely but shaken
As the neighborhood watchers
Faded away like gargoyles,
Draconian unbeings,
As the Ta’ Iowan
dawn made
The winds sing
A new day, and all
The old fucked up
Old ghosts all
But ran away
I watched her bathe
In electricity last night
As we watched the watchers
And then all of the watchers
Started signing in Morse Code
And before dawn we chased
Each other around
Wondering which one
Was pretending to be
The scariest and smartest
of them witches on
the mirror ball wall
And internationalist
Viagran huntsmen fumbling
For newsy spells to foul
The electrician’s switches
As the shapely but shaken
Wake up call doomed up
A first breath of hurricane fires
Churning up in the earns of the earth
And I imagined how the tectonics
Of the globe might burst
Sending more seawater, yes,
Up from down below,
Way way way down below
More even than
the moon can send
if Zeus ever came back
to toss that old rock
down again
And before dawn she bathed
In a lake of fire
Sent down from the sky
And we all chased down
The shapely but shaken
Without causing a ruckus
Or a Venusian star
to start screaming
About her long lost
Gothic Civil rights
 ~ Morning Sun, Iowa


Gothic January

Two lovers shared
a broken tree
to burn a fire
to stay warm from thee
while the knight
took the queen out
for a dance
beneath the sun
the military marched
to the frozen One
and success, and strife
rode a chariot
to a star
to make happiness
a drink
at the oxygen bar
and I told you,
"I can't boil oil now ...
I'm kinda in the mystic
just a little bit;
in circles, in pinwheels,
in cyberstazi
and the FBI,
in the lLamb
who walked
beneath January's
darkened agnostic sky ..."
as the lovers dreamed
and the gargoyles stood
in summer corn stalks,
in frozen wood,
within a circular steam
within a steam
and you laughed love,
come back to me

~ Iowa City, Iowa

By Douglas McDaniel
http://mythville.blogspot.com/


Hermit By the Sea

Were I but a byte hermit
I'd sing of thee from distant shores,
but God was just a comet,
no Martian, no comment,
nor mere baseball dream
...from some Elysian Field
of Soprano Land, Idi Amin,
but a stellar dark star dwarf,
who rules now like an oaf
on Egyptian soil, living off
your sweet sugar's gasahol,
your machine asp ass sugar loaf!

~
Douglas McDaniel
Mythville, America
http://mythville.blogspot.com/

Serotonin

How different
might history be
if Hitler is able
to take a three-hour
nap on a certain
New Year's Day
of America's choice?
If he had been able
to feel the cool alert
behind his eyes
that his view
had been a bit
cross and yes,
maybe a bit more
blue oil paint
would do and yes, yes,
that Leonard Bernstein
cat is groovy
and yes, Custer,
that guy, had turned around
to let the sea
of the dispossessed
catch up on their own cruelty
and consider to let just
a few of those bastards
live to tell a real story
of mercy to the newspapers
back home, that to win
a war of genocide
was no mercy
and the cornflakes
in my own head
were nothing but alcohol
stains upon daylight
clouds of peace?

Bombing Run

Say what you want
about the low lifers,
tyranny begins
at a very high
altitude
because,
gosh darn it
beating my guts
in Oppositeland
is very high praise,
because what you call
a Tea Party is really
not even dinner,
because ancient drums,
the many tom tom toms
are just the steady
pound on a tenderloin
of the mind
turned into a tender drum
sweet and kind and pure
and even if Walmart
broke the place up bad,
one more purchase
at the near-dead
country store
just might
make just enough
difference

Where Sir Freudo
Lost the Ring

The morning began
and never ended
quite unlike many others
as I stood like
one of those granddad old
palace sentries
who guarded monarchs
at their pearly gates,
expressionless, zombiefied
in next to last Templar mode,
poised and posed, metalurgy
realized to be hurtful treasure
for TNT people, useless as they
come and go, now rendered,
once again, quite pointlessfully,
as a word picture with a blue sharpie,
purchased in San Francisco
by Saint Francis of Assissi ...
upward, turned back toward Zeus,
his challenger ... Him who once
maintain in Spain great
bloody mountains of gold
taken from small brown men
who knew of nothing more
to see Sheriff Joe Arapaio
as nothing less than
an avenging Lord of Death ...
He from across the sea
failed to learn more beautiful
things than bad code scrolled
by a false fundamentalist God,
false single immutable sword,
a word that can't be weighed,
edited, reconsidered,
in a Bible black brick
by burn barrel people
who, iron cast, in their rejoicing,
instead deciding to send
the Ring of Doom
back to his maker
at the foot of Father Washington
in a statue beneath the snow

~
Douglas McDaniel
Washington, Iowa
http://mythville.blogspot.com/

GNP

Gone Nuts Planet
is outta sorts
every thirteen years,
the sun says

Unreadable tattoo,

from the men made
of bamboo

Railroads are nice

But I can't pay the price

Is it too late to lie

or become a ballerina?

Networked society

is seasoning anxiety
and for all of our
dispassioned new
sobriety, we missed
the point, entirely

~ Douglas McDaniel
Mythville, America
http://mythville.blogspot.com/

CC: http://cccomeseejerusalem.blogspot.com/

Penumbra

This is about the word, "Satan"
This is about "Jesus," chased by light
This is about the demarcation zone
     moving on the moon

This is about the sun
This is about the earth
This is about the material world
     shaking like a ghost in the machine

This is also about Elvis and JFK
and Herbet Hoover and Sheriff Joe Arpaio:
This is about all of the snakes in the grass
     hunted down by electronic kittens

This is also about, but not limited to,
the undefined demarcation zones
of the infinite, worlds within words,
     rescued by the rational real mathematics

This is about the question of which is better,
Driving to make good "time," a joke, distance ...
This is also about noticing more details
     by walking to your mailbox

This is about the frequency, Kenneth
This is about the code for those in the know,
and the great whole planet of supposedly
     lesser souls, who don't get the signal, yet ...

This is not about banks
This is not about tanks
This is also, but limited to
     the narcolepsy of football
This is not about the eye
     in the pyramid, nor the AOL
     of the mind's eye

This is about the eternal robust
engine of change and the need to conserve
the present in its proper place, lacking time

~
Douglas McDaniel
Mythville, America
http://mythville.blogspot.com/


Devolution of Arizona

Arizona, I don't recognize you anymore
Your creosote roots lie beneath
the perfect piles of McDonalds parking lots

Arizona, an unequal symmetry
of rubble piles collect
Ten thousand miles from here,
the angry sun awakes, a lion,
the wind pulls sacred smoke
around the window
and out the door

I scream into silence

Arizona, you are responsible ...
The middle-aged businessman
with expendable income
sweats for pleasure
and I feel
"pretty peppered"
by it all

Arizona, when can I stop swearing?

I swear in the heat like a pizza oven
Arizona, you are a car part store
but you got no glass to see through
and the beige collection
of air-conditioned caves
are conditioned to respond
in all the right meets wrong ways

The forests are in ashes
as the governor gapes
from a helicopter high
for the diversionary tactic
of the the unrael politic
and asks the spotlight
to "move on"

The spotlight will not
"move on," the world
is watching

Arizona, I can find no fluid,
no friend, nor car phone
to lean on
for company ...

The wolf is watching

By GPS, without your bullets in fistfuls
you can find me in the living room,
darkly lit, with rayolight flashing
bible black blurbs
on non-violence
cursing your name

Arizona, not even Ginsberg
would gripe about your tripe,
so blurred with anonymity
hell hardly matters anymore

Arizona, my life's belongings
are melting in a storage facility
and there are more things that beep
here than I can count
my frozen assets
of the heart

Arizona, you haven't hassled me for a while,
though I'm a loose cannon at the mousy mouth
 ... The world is flooding, bleeding,
burning blinding in high winds from above
as you dry up and blow away

Arizona, heart patients are being denied,
a kid got crushed in your parking lot
and I went to one of your social service buildings
and was amazed about how many homeless lurks
were sleeping in the lobby,
dreaming of Mississippi burning

Arizona, I can't get assistance at the cash register
and the mountains are closed, cats run free,
the lizards have disappeared,
to plot secret revenge
to assuage denial

Arizona, you are sucking in souls,
eating them, spitting them out,
at very low wages ...
of sin ... I suppose ...
and six are dead now,
six!

How long? How many more?

Arizona, I think you should
battalion the borders with snow
and big bad bars of soap,
painting you headless
telegraph cross with wires,
tin cans of TNT
and a sacrificed fox
also known as "truth"

~ Douglas McDaniel,
Iowa City, Iowa


Beepee City Blues (Forgive But Don't Forget)

Awake in a captured American city,
wide awake, uncommon and conquered
by Beepee, of thee I sing: see the greenish
star sign, flag of my new queen, no king ...

And so this is the new valley, forged
by a poisoned sea. You see? I stared
into your dark and bubbling gurgle
of gore, too long, and now I have lost
my heart, owning my death, drowned
and alive, in little bubbles of grease ...

And yours, in these hours, drifting back
into sleep now, uncovering the brown loam
of anguished grief, in the Paris of the prairie,
dreaming of the fairies, who bleep my name,
cursing my overdone disinfected dysfunction ...
but I'm awake now, pumping into function

At discourse with the junction of light and dark,
on my electronic ark, loading the animals now,
my music, your now now and my then then, to thine
angels we seek truth, cruel, my belly, your barrel
of hell, spelled out now in the sweetspilled spice
of good medicine, served in a box of Davey Jones,
containing my heart at the bottom of the Gulf,
and birds drop out of the sky
between me and you ...
crashing, singing,
"squeak, squeak."

~ Coralville, Iowa
By Douglas McDaniel
http://mythville.blogspot.com/
http://mythvilleondemand.blogspot.com/
http://mythville.twitter.com/
mythville@gmail.com


Eyes Wide Open

America, your Tombstone, Arizona,
stands out, in memorial balloons,
talking heads of post-gunfire analysis,
in anguished memories echoing
gunfire, in flowers left upon
the furnace of revolution,
in the mixed up mindspace
of mistreated man-monster
assassins, in creature comforts
shaken like broken tablets
given by Moses, by the mere
shattered jerking around
of horrifying images
to television commercials
where we are asked
to ask our doctors

We the people are capable
of so much more: Capable
of surgeons able to render
miracles far more healing
than moon missions,
predator strikes
from deep in the sky,
from quick stock fixes,
dialing up foxes,
connected by two-year
contracts on cell phones,
by unholy secret armies
unleashed upon the world
but now rendered
in one sick sad baldface
mad hatter joker fuck,
who decided to make
history by shedding
your blood, and your children's
children's blood, to make
that point, old pointy,
that no one else could give
a hearing to because,
old shriner shiner,
it pays too much
for the talking skull,
to answer the one question
it can't answer for itself: Why?

The map is fully dotted now,
with hands holding hands
and yet we can't all seem
to becalm the energies
flowing from the angry sun
because, dear masters,
the amplified drug lords
of commerce, offer more
ailments, sick sad treatments
that have nothing to do
with love, just money,
just time for bull markets
and disinformation

We can dream,
point to our heroes,
and tolerbrate
a forgivenness
of our sins,
sometimes
only as long
as the car ride
home

Clearly, nature
is doing its damndest
to show us our faces,
our spewing missed
places as fomenters
of foul foams
guzzling up
from the bottom
of our beer bottles
and polarized teas

Listen to the water,
America; listen
for gentle silenced
sounds, in cattle cars
racing by, in delivery
trucks chasing us around
with backwards beeping
to greet each morning,
to failures to answer
the myriad echoes
of grieving sisters
for suicide cults
set too hard
on logic chopping,
on passions, on reason,
to the revolutionary
flavors of the season,
to rocket ships made
for secret mission masters,
to lies sold as truth
in penciled in televised
image makers, harbingers
of false light, false words,
false perpetrators
of plans against you,
America, plans beyond
pure reason, just plans,
authority zones of controls
intended for our sponsors
of capital gains, tax dodges,
miniscule media channels
to jail up the Jonahs,
the Joans, arching , marching,
moving forward to nurture us,
to set love right, for Job,
so he can no longer suffer
in the error of St. Paul's
jealous rage and error

Fear, no mind reader,
can open our eyes
for the first time, America,
open them, now, read see feel
your own bodies, connected
to the whole earth,
not just your slicing borders
for the first rotten time

~ Douglas McDaniel
Iowa City, Iowa
http://mythville.blogspot.com/
http://mythvilleondemand.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/mythville
mythville@gmail.com

Sputnik Moment

Spoken like an angel of light
in the halls of Pandemonium,
purple ties, in harmonium,
Robespierre without peers,
silver tongued saint,
to the tainted, with silvery hair,
shadows taller than wind,
caught in corners,
making loud old sounds,
growing louder,
making the case, without debate,
as the illusive image flickers,
without debate,
mixing the media-phors
about nothing being funny,
about peace love understanding
holding hands across America
to all the sweet voices of nobodies,
silent majorities, loud-mouthed
minorities, frozen out, surrounding
blue-lit burn barrels, yearning
for the golden ghosts of yesteryear,
receiving instead, this Plutonic tonic,
with nothing but their imaginations,
all beer-soaked and dumbed down
to go with the drifts of currents,
mountains, prairies and stars

In the woods the mind
has much mistaken,
the currency of the re-awakened,
all mankind peering inside his apple,
his words written in two mirrors,
written down twice, eyes sympathetic
to the two faces of citified man,
Luddites locked out, being the divided
electronic icicles, turning red or blue,
waiting for the mail gone paperless,
to poets seeking heat from cornstalks
covered in snow, to laughing waters
flooding now, measured in GPS miles,
in cool and sleazy breezy smiles

And this perfect image,
with a different vision
for the Everyman, offers
an acre, a plot, a carnage
of a green and pleasant land,
where the clean air is unclean,
and the last waters, thundering mean,
with books to burn, words in earns,
facts gone to myth ... blown this kiss
with posts on the wall, unreadable
mega-bit tattooes and star bright
Twitter accounts, in aeons, gurus
keeping track of stock options,
riding in limousines, praying in their pines
of a dim-lit Sputnik rendered into far stars,
wishes in dreams gone to daylight footballs
in darkened Sunday afternoon bars
as light and time shines in two suns so bright,
not a dead star but a man made overflight,
searching for reasons, for something to say
they stuck around for ... a last tree,
a bit of grass, all caged behind bars
in this house of infinite mirrors,
the Saint has joined the sinners

~ Douglas McDaniel
Iowa City, Iowa



My Own Private Elbaho

Going down periscope
to chase away the snakes
I dream of an island
where the beautiful
muses wake
a sunny volcanic
spit where the blood
is washed from stones
and cloud-buffed skies
are imaginary tomes
for paupers, princes
kings and queens of old,
a place I'll now call
my private Elbaho

She dreams of green
magic mountains
where Solznenitzen
once roamed
and growled
about peanuts,
salt shakers,
peppers, pie and tea,
angry and set alone:
"She's a sweet muse
who seldom comes
to me, her hurt,
mere words,
mere soundless
bytes of sea,
mere thought,
faceless as
facelessness
can be ..."

She of mad hills,
winter thrills,
billed to gravity,
She who hides like spring
a secret Persiphone ...

The flowers on her
her breasts fuel
perfect company
as mourning mad
mountains, sunless
SAD disease ...
Buried in silence
beneath baddass
endless snows
she lives now happy
in her private Elbaho

~ Douglas McDaniel
Iowa City, Iowa



Not Another Parking Lot for Words

Made sure the windows
were all wide open
for this brittle haus warning,
God forbid the warming, should we
ever break dead with reclaiming
witches reclaiming their food
for thought and kindness I offered,
them never tasting the bread ...
They insisted they could save me
and then, the saving being done,
called me the devil, the devil,
the devil, three times,
before they were One ...

And compassion is a virtue
sold out in short supply,
gathered in plenty

And there you were, with my backlit
ghost behind the suffused
dark arts behind the computer
screen’s white apple byte light,
the difference between innocence
and knowledge being sub-atomic,
it’s positively Platonic,
allegorical, hysterical ...
when you ask for a cigarette
since it’s my personal policy
to only give out one Spirit
per hour to the hopeless ...
(I mean homeless) ... and if they
claim to have hope I give them three:
That’s how homeless hopelessness can be.

So it’s back to my parking lot for words,
worlds within worlds,
but way far from the gypsy cafes
as Napoleon, fresh face-i-fied,
sleepwalks into Starbucks to be reborn
in its iconic cup of Gaian
corporate glee, which may be good news,
just maybe ... since I saw
a Thunderbird in my dreams,
then his shirt logo of the same
damn military echelon of wings,
eagle spread winking,
he, a soldier sure, retired, moneyed,
yes, a super serene Baby Bomber ...
A crier of you know what? ...
Can’t you hear their birdseye cries,
they are, bling-winged batbirds who cry,
repacking themselves, after landing,
in their imperial cruiser esuvees:
I saw a documentary
on their disappearing, once,
on mah MTVeeee! I guess I need
them more than they need me.

Then one more comes in,
a walking zombie cell phone call
after parking a black hawk
Land Rover, gee ...
she has camo flag pants in tune
to those photos on the big electronic

BBS .. SBB...Bss...BS...Bs...BS...

of Iranian missile launches
all doctored up to be seen
by this property, this land
for you and me ...

(Hey man what’s the plan
what was that you sai-i-i-d
sun tan, sun man, drinking head,
lying there in bed?
You who tried to socialize
but couldn’t seem to find
what just what, Jethro,
you were looking fer,
that sumpin’
on your mind)

But a big heron circles
over Starbucks, wide white
sailing, neither failing
nor flailing
with black-tipped wings
... and just as strangely
I almost missed, the ponytailed
programmer in a Prius
as a potential friend
to send this give up, this smoke,
this one-per-hour cigarette of hope
to a guy wearing a turqoise bracelet: Hey! Hey!

Hey ...

I just got a medal in my dream:
A Thunderbird re-e-e-e-ward,
and another laugh, a smile,
from a strong blueish blonde blondee
bird driving a white trash Ford.

-- Douglas McDaniel
Aurora, Colorado

Thunderbolt

The Reformed Presbyterian Church
was hit by a thunderbolt
and Morning Sun, Iowa
was rendered back to the year
Nineteen Fifty One

And brother Jesus
sat on his Cardinal corner
with the ghosts of three gauzy
British colonial columns
behind him, more than twice
the height of the man
commanding them,
who lives four or five
times more often in life
than in death,
but who's counting?

Meanwhile, the local fire captain,
Tom "Torch" Lawyer
sits as the Grand Poopba
in the unmarked Oddfellows Hall ...
He, a Big Brother, of the weather map
and he sings, "O Hey, Gaia, what did I do?"

"O yeah, there was that, and that and that ...
I'm so sorry angry sun, sorry for this,
sorry for that ... O Kracken King Igor,
heavy weather hanging from across the plains
to the mountains once made pleasant
from Denver, Colorado
to Bloomington, Indiana:
Where John Cougar Mellencamp
is still wearing his hard hat ...

"Please, O Kracken,
spare me your change
and please spare
me some of my favorite
old mason bricks,
and spare me
from my brats

"Leave me one
Rosetta stone
and at least three
favored stocks
for six hundred
and sixty six
Fortune 500 companies
and please sponsor
my one last storm rider
so he can broadcast,
like Paul Revere in silver
my long last broadcast
on the Weather Channel
on Ruppert Murdoch's
Blue Ray Disc-shaped
magic Thunderbird carpet,
so that music can still be
piped in like rock'n'roll
in a cowboy hat
at the local Wal Mart

"And spare me your golden
spike in natural gas,
your January jolt
in coffee prices,
and spare me your sanguine
advice on what to expect
and spare me your photo radar
lanes used by Fed Ex,
and spare me your
weaponized Pineapple Express
as it tingles a trio
of water spouts
across the forty eighth paralell

"But please remind me later
to use a higher quality
white ashy paint
so I can smile upward
with a stun gun kept
quite safe behind my back
as I move beneath overhanging
chemtrail inspired clouds
to keep my doormats dry
when you try to reclaim
your honestly inward saints

"And tell that bastard
Mr. Ringo, he's running
out of time, and though
he bought a Wal Mart sold
Chinese-made plastic compass
that we have him lined up
in our electronic eye sights
and he'll never get across
King Henry the Eight's
magical river line

"Because, you see,
Medicare doesn't cover
everything,
especially his supposedly
secure bright and sunny
horizons, or bullets
or my elitist religious conceits
because he can't use his cell phone
or even mark a fully mastered retreat
with the sunspots buzzing up auroras
against his great hope for liberties
because they will always cost him more
than his lonely Roosevelt socialist dime

"Say a big hello
to that second toughest
man in America,
that next-to-last Templar
because I can see, feel and read
the second coming of Joan of Arc
sleeping in her shrine ...
'Coswe all know there's nothing
more exhausting than inaction
and his sacred pen as shotgun
won't bring his dead doggies back

"So hey! Angry Solari,
let's just say it was all
a good old boy's
misunderstanding
and even if the annointed We
run the risk of getting heart arrested,
or if sanctified gloomy We
speed through our Freemason made
towns, rocket launched
at the speed
of thirteen million
miles per hour,
and even if Johnny Ringo
can teach himself
to silence the two stormy
coasts in the centered
silences of his mind,
we can cut off his touch
to Taiowa her in Iowa
in order to remain in Tombstone
to review the cannons loaded,
in the late afternoon aspenglow,
as they are pointed
at Cochise's last stronghold
so that we, alone, can enjoy
the bonny bones of Norteneo
from our weaponized
plastic transister radio,
nor can he enjoy sweet
Maggie Marlowe, sleeping
in nicotine terrified migraines
without a tweet in our jail-baited
basements humming up thunder
from our cold dark basements
down below, so we can
keep up our plans to sell off
glassified dead scorpions
to the last of the plutocratic
touristas at the high noon
military movie show."

~  Douglas McDaniel,
Morning Sun, Iowa
http://mythville.blogspot.com/

 Penumbra

This is about the word, "Satan"

This is about "Jesus," chased by light

This is about the demarcation zone

     moving on the moon

This is about the sun

This is about the earth

This is about the material world

     shaking like a ghost in the machine

This is also about Elvis and JFK

and Herbet Hoover and Sheriff Joe Arpaio:

This is about all of the snakes in the grass

     hunted down by electronic kittens

This is also about, but not limited to,

the undefined demarcation zones

of the infinite, worlds within words,

     rescued by the rational real mathematics

This is about the question of which is better,

Driving to make good "time," a joke, distance ...

This is also about noticing more details

     by walking to your mailbox

This is about the frequency, Kenneth

This is about the code for those in the know,

and the great whole planet of supposedly

     lesser souls, who don't get the signal, yet ...

This is not about banks

This is not about tanks

This is also, but limited to

     the narcolepsy of football

This is not about the eye

     in the pyramid, nor the AOL

     of the mind's eye

This is about the eternal robust

engine of change and the need to conserve

the present in its proper place, lacking time

~

Douglas McDaniel

Mythville, America

The Queens of Suckdom:  (Above) Ashley Greene, 
Kristen Stewart and Maggie Grace of the "Twilight" TV series.

Interview 

with a Vampire

Interview Interviewer

The Interviewer: And so, Mr. Douglas McDaniel, aka "Mythville," aka "Radio Free Arizona," as in secret agent RFA, artist formerly known as deejay Dougie Fresh, Mr. Run DMC, just why is it, exactly, that you think vampire culture in America sucks so bad.

Vampire Interviewer: Well, I've run across all sorts of folks in life, but I have never actually met a vampire. Therefore, I'm wondering why there seem to be so many of them portrayed in the media. It's as ubiquitous as fears of flag burners used to be in the Reagan era.

The Interviewer: Holy Ronald Reagan! That goes way back. But such television shows as "Twilight" are innocuous, aren't they?

Vampire Interviewer: No such thing. I just get a little sarcastic at the video store now when there are 50 of these DVDs on the shelves and one copy of Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" or, say, "Food, Inc." They are so much profound, but seem to be real-life depictions of real-life vampires. That is a word I have been using very commonly ever since the Depression hit during the era of Bush II. Lately, I've been trying to use it less, but I still see we have become a little obsessed with something that appears to be a mere archetype of something far more serious within.

The Interviewer: Like what?

Vampire Interviewer: Well, it may just be some kind of expression of sexual overindulgence. Perhaps a video graphic for the teen underclass of unrequited love. Perhaps in their overabundant need and pressure to express themselves as sexual predators, they are simply being fed by what they want by a bunch of cynical Master of the Universe types in media who have read all of their TMT reports.

The Interviewer: What is TMT?

Vampire Interviewer: Hell if I really know .. actually, it's something from an old Al Franken book I bought at the Salvation Army store ... but then, who knows anything anymore? Such as, what, exactly is "cloud computing"? Just another one of these sinister things outside the reach of the unwashed, all those watching the shadows on the wall, while the Masters of the Universe, the money boys are pulling the strings.

The Interviewer: What does this have to do with vampires?

Vampire Interviewer: I dunno, man. It's your interview. Shoot.

The Interviewer: Shoot! You heard gunfire?

Vampire Interviewer: Another one of those words I wished we used less, "shoot," "shot," "shooter" ... I hate guns ...

The Interviewer: But don't you believe in your constitutional right to bear arms?

Vampire Interviewer: Bear arms? In summer, sure ... but AK47s at the restaurant? Say, Isn't an Ak47 a Soviet-made weapon, anyway? Who, as a red-blooded American would argue to have those around the house, anyway?

The Interviewer: Auuugggggghhhhhhhhggghgggh!

Vampire Interviewer: Exactly. My words, exactly. Not exactly my words, really, but an emotion. Not so much an emotion, or should we say, emoticon, but most certainly a guideline.

The Interviewer: Are there any vampires you might endorse, such as those depicted in Anne Rice novels?

Vampire Interviewer: Well, she sure has done her research, and I like the way she writes, but boy, she sure does have to write a lot to make a living. Which leads me to think that the real vampires in our society are the instiutions of the arts, who, shall we say, drive their carts over the bones of the dead. How much suffering does it take, after all, to create such and such a work of art, only to have some publisher or book distributor come around and take a percentage? Why can't artists just get more for their trouble, rather than having these vampires who happen to own, say, bookshelves in retail spaces, get forty to fifty percent?

The Interviewer: Don't you think they work for a living? They go to a lot of work to keep the lights on.

Vampire Interviewer: I know, but ... At least the metaphor on oil companies is pretty obvious. I'm thankful I don't have to explain that to anyone today.

The Interviewer: Finally, one last question.

Vampire Interviewer: Okay, shoot.

The Interviewer: Aughhguaghhggghhghgghuuagghhgggghgh!

Vampire Interviewer: That's not a question. That's a statement of fact, an emoticon actually, addressing a deeper anxiety and social sick ... ness .. O no, a vampire bat! Shit!


To be discontinued ... Read less here

World Leader Deep End:
More Pay, Better Security 
to Be Found in Being
a Dictator, Writer Finds

Dear opinion page editors of America,

     Due to the decline of positions currently being made to the editorial opinion page boards of your newspapers, I have decided to decline all lack of appeals for me to run for president of these United States. Quite frankly, I'm overqualified. Instead, due to the fact the position seems to offer more security, I am going to apply for the position of dictator.

     While I would like to be the dictator of your opinion page board(s), quite frankly (and there's nothing really wrong with being French), the pay back is better if I chose a nation, large or small, abroad. Indeed, I will be outsourcing my dictator skills.

     With so many larger nations supporting such positions, but many of them currently due for a change, it appears to be an area of significant growth. Opportunities will no doubt abound. Even if all hell breaks loose, such as the case in Egypt, dictators are needed. Whole cities can rage. Castles will burn. But, as is clearly apparent, you can't rebuild a burning house until the flames have been doused. So, even when bad stuff happens due to all of the bad citizens surrounding them, dictators are still needed, just to keep the lights on.

     I could refer to many of my skills mentioned in my refusal to run for president of the United States, due to my complete lack of experience and political standing in society, a situation leading to complete disfavor among my complete lack of voters who will vote for me, as sufficient proof that I am, in fact, the only man willing to do this dirty job. Let's face it. People can't handle the truth. No elections are needed. I'll just take over and stay, for many many years if need be, to direct events, or at least try to, as I see fit.

     Of course, I do have some background in dictating. Most people who know me would say, for example, that I am a complete bastard. Especially my X-wives. And they all have plenty of shoes, so they are quite perfectly capable of filling in should I ever suddenly die or seek asylum in France (nothing wrong with being this frank, is there?).

     Also, I'm really good at playing the Milton-Bradley board game, Risk. All versions, although I prefer the original. Which makes me a conservative. A downright fundamentalist ... when it comes to Risk. For example, I shall always believe, as the kings and popes have long believed, that as cheaply as it pays, in terms of developing its own armies, that Egypt is the place to own: The Middle East? Not so much. Seems to be some kind of highway for trouble. Much better to hang on to Egypt. Goes back to the Crusades, I think.

     Although I'm quite willing to outsource my dictating skills to just about anywhere, it appears there will soon be an opening for a dictator in Egypt. However, I will accept a position in Libya, should that country soon fall to the winds of democratic change. Not sure about North Korea, if only because I don't speak much Chinese.

      If you decide that my language skills, since I really speak only a little English, with sprinklings of Spanish, French, Italian, Gaelic, Yiddish, German, Apache and Hopi and in Tongues, often at the same time, limit my ability to jump in to a new position with my boot stamp hitting the ground hard on the first day, punishing those who, quite frankly (nothing wrong with being French, really, really, believe me, since I may need to go to France eventually for vacations in exile, waiting for my eventual return ... once all of the appropriate bribes are paid), I will consider running for governor or senator or congressman in states, large or small, which do not limit their terms.

     Sincerely,
     (Digital Signature Goes Here)
     Douglas McDaniel

      P.S. I tried to come up with a funny line regarding Jacques DeMolay, the last grandmaster of the Knights Templar, being burned at the stake in 1309, in that paragraph regarding the reasons why the problem with Risk has something to do with the Crusades, but I just didn't think enough people would get the joke.

     P.P.S. Artwork by Pink Floyd's artist for anything to do with "The Wall."

     CC: Come, See Jerusalem

Sputnik Moment

Spoken like an angel of light

in the halls of Pandemonium,

purple ties, in harmonium,

Robispierre without peers,

silver tongued saint,

to the tainted, with silvery hair,

shadows taller than wind,

caught in corners,

making loud old sounds,

growing louder,

making the case, without debate,

as the illusive image flickers,

without debate,

mixing the media-phors

about nothing being funny,

about peace love understanding

holding hands across America

to all the sweet voices of nobodies,

silent majorities, loud-mouthed

minorities, frozen out, surrounding

blue-lit burn barrels, yearning

for the golden ghosts of yesteryear,

receiving instead, this Plutonic tonic,

with nothing but their imaginations,

all beer-soaked and dumbed down

to go with the drifts of currents,

mountains, prairies and stars

In the woods the mind

has much mistaken,

the currency of the re-awakened,

all mankind peering inside his apple,

his words written in two mirrors,

written down twice, eyes sympathetic

to the two faces of citified man,

Luddites locked out, being the divided

electronic icicles, turning red or blue,

waiting for the mail gone paperless,

to poets seeking heat from cornstalks

covered in snow, to laughing waters

flooding now, measured in GPS miles,

in cool and sleazy breezy smiles

And this perfect image,

with a different vision

for the Everyman, offers

an acre, a plot, a carnage

of a green and pleasant land,

where the clean air is unclean,

and the last waters, thundering mean,

with books to burn, words in earns,

facts gone to myth ... blown this kiss

with posts on the wall, unreadable

mega-bit tattooes and star bright

Twitter accounts, in aeons, gurus

keeping track of stock options,

riding in limousines, praying in their pines

of a dim-lit Sputnik rendered into far stars,

wishes in dreams gone to daylight footballs

in darkened Sunday afternoon bars

as light and time shines in two suns so bright,

not a dead star but a man made overflight,

searching for reasons, for something to say

they stuck around for ... a last tree,

a bit of grass, all caged behind bars

in this house of infinite mirrors,

the Saint has joined the sinners

Gothic January

Two lovers shared

a broken tree

to burn a fire

to stay warm from thee

while the knight

took the queen out

for a dance

beneath the sun

the military marched

to the frozen One

and success, and strife

rode a chariot

to a star

to make happiness

a drink

at the oxygen bar

and I told you,

"I can't boil oil now ...

I'm kinda in the mystic

just a little bit;

in circles, in pinwheels,

in cyberstazi

and the FBI,

in the lamb

who walked

beneath January's

darkened agnostic sky ..."

as the lovers dreamed

and the gargoyles stood

in summer corn stalks,

in frozen wood,

within a circular steam

within a steam

and you screamed love,

come back to me

~ Iowa City, Iowa

  
'The Social Network' 
Hot type, cold blood and greed
on the singed, if golden globe
      
     In reviewing the new DVD of the brilliant, fast-paced film, "The Social Network," one can dispense with the actual activities in the movie, other than to say, yeah, it's fine, it's a great film, but more importantly, it's a fine effort in the art of inter- (and outer-) contextuality. Also, you could simply write a review of Facebook life, since it's about that, too. Also, you could simply just say that Facebook is America, the weird and sick and sad and saintly and generally freewheeling and just plain helpful face of it, and also be right on about all, as if there were any difference. But at first, I'd have to critique Facebook itself as the only internet worth being on, has been for a long time, because it's about life and death and all of our masks, and the world's, too, in all of the social media out there: and also this, it's a virtual see-and-say toy.
     Anyway, before my idea of the neighborhood called Facebook is forever changed by the reviewing of this movie, I thought I'd make a point or two about important, really really serious things I need to say Facebook and, therefore, modern problems, as well as the challenge to exist in networked life, in general. Such as, boy, you really get an idea of what Marshall McLuhan, the famed media critic, was intending when he wrote, in many, many different ways, that we can't understand our world until we understand our media better ... on how, as an extension of ourselves, we all need to get better educated on the whole electronic trip, or we will be swallowed whole by the same.
     Facebook, like all social media functions, are our masks, unveiled, unleashed, driving crazy mad or way too slow, on the information superhighway of both innocence and experience. So then, when we use it, we are completely naked to everyone, or, with a little more effort, insanely hidden from view. We need to get wise, maybe even get licenses, training even, before we go out and use it. Because it's like fire, a Promethean thing, and we better understand it better, or else. We may be victimized by sticking our necks out to give a glimpse of our lives, and most certainly give everyone our personal information, when we should have known better, or, doing just that better. Not sure yet.
     When I get that figured out, I'll let you know.
     Also, sorry if anybody was hurt in the making of my social media empire, my little fleet of the damned, all of you former high school buddies, lost loves, poets, artists, bleeding hearts, all of those who say they "like" or "dislike" me, who posted on my wall ... as I posted on theirs ... and so on. After that, the mind tends to wander. The mind is your father's Buick on Fox News. The mind is your child getting into trouble, or, simply learning how to type and co-exist in the global village. On Facebook, the mind becomes and extension, into cyberspace, of the promised land where no guns explode, and there's nothing to get hung about. No, that still happens in real spacey spacey, folks. Love is shared, as it exists, in the land of touching things, in the land of flesh, as opposed to dreams (see Facebook), after you have shed all of your post-traumatic stress disorder anxieties on whatever you believe socially, politically or spiritually, artfully or clumsily, in feminine or masculine in hiding of, or screaming out, about all or the above, in that sharp difference between what you do online, and what you do in the real world.
     Are you weeping yet? I'm not. See: That's Facebook. And the film did not make me cry. It made me cringe. Because the story about the people who came up with the idea, a bunch of horny males in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is pretty much America, too. If viewed in its upper strata, that is. Nope. It's not. And that's America, too. It's the gun-toting militia and it's the lady in Dubuque who thinks women should be able to preach more often in churches than they have previously been allowed. It's a rant, I want my bottle, toy. But it will never actually pour out milk. It's a way to say, please play with my kitty so I can get bonus points, it's a way to push your rock band through a total stranger's ears. It's a way to give you a glimpse of some cool cat's photos of Nepal, or, your best shot at showing everyone how living way too well is the best revenge of all. So they can fully resent you. Hate you. Then, flame you, in four words or less. Maybe one or two, even.
     Are we weeping yet? I'm not. That's because, well, after thinking about all of the millions of dollars I might have been crawling to if I had learned of this history of Facebook, subjective and somewhat tainted as it is, in the eye of the filmmaker, I didn't get to see it in the theater, instead. Therefore, I am behind a very fast wave, indeed. I missed the boat. The real-time cycle has washed over me. The guys who came up with the idea. Incredibly brilliant, originally fun-loving blokes, spoiled as they already were, have either eaten each other alive, or, cashed out, to the tune of about $25 billion. All because, hey, you didn't study hard enough in school because, hey, while they were slinging all of this code, you were on Facebook, or, whatever it was called back then, or, you were out in the weather, or, out watching football in your shorts, while these geeks were slinging such said code.
     And now, dear reader, the wave is passing over and under you. And while you, dear reader, may or not believe in the importance of social media in your lives, believe me, the moon's rotation around the earth doesn't need to be believed-in, either, to have a mega serious impact on our little lives.
     Are you weeping, yet? I'm not. So let me digress. Maybe even rest. Let me tell you the story of the brain damaged girl from high school who contacted me and said, hey, I remember you. We "talked" on chat. We chatted, for a while. And we came to an understanding. She understood me. I understood her. And then we went on with our lives with a better understanding: She of me; I of her, and the whole earth turned a little bit more, hmmm, what is the operative term this week, "Kumbya," with a better grasp of how it actually spins.
     I'm weeping, perhaps, just a little. Punch that in as "like," in the parlance of social media. What we often don't like is found in the ranting of little Marcie Marble of Miami Beach, Florida (if that's where she really lives), who tells us to join in her crisis call to keep Facebook from dissuading she, her (quote) "friends" from posting pornographic photos of herself and her dog; asking her fans (readers, if they can read more than a line or two), to join in her cause against the machine run by the guys, for better or worse, featured in the film, "The Social Network."
     The film, "The Social Network," is as hip and cool, as hot and visionary, as the subject matter. It turns on a dime. It's difficult to follow. It's horrifying. It's amazing. It's everyone else wondering this: It could have been me making that thing go viral. Or, wow, I sure am glad I decided to stay outside and train horses, instead, for a living.
     But if horses could type, their communications would no doubt be a kind of psychic Facebook. Also due to such tools, the world spins faster, or seems to, people talk faster, or seem to. And if we all stare at each other in shock and shame, in this place called the global village, this little spinning web where we can dial up a friend or two in Paris or Nigeria or London or Dubuque, then so be it. A better understanding of each other arcs us all toward liberty and better understanding. No bombs go off there, and in the land of the suffering and the forgotten and the typically daily lonely, it's one fine place to be.
     And if the puppeters on this electronic highway of greed can be thanked, by a slick and snarkey film such as "The Social Network" seems to indicate, the mind, once a midget turned inside a cave wondering about all of those horrible sounds out in the world indicating large and vicious creatures trying to eat them alive, well, folks, with such tools, in the hands of the right people, with the right kind of healthy ideas in mind: Well, those folks, yeah, right on, thanks for your suffering, your madness; and thank you for your greed; you have given us some brilliant space, a city of light and dark, where we can all safely comprehend our mutual loneliness, our goodness, or desperate need to be heard, our own vision of ourselves, so that we can be more apparently captured, better hearded and heard. The next big thing? Who knows? Ask yourself. When you travel, where does your mind go?

Eyes Wide Open

America, your Tombstone, Arizona,
stands out, in memorial balloons,
talking heads of post-gunfire analysis,
in anguished memories echoing
gunfire, in flowers left upon
the furnace of revolution,
in the mixed up mindspace
of mistreated man-monster
assassins, in creature comforts
shaken like broken tablets
given by Moses, by the mere
shattered jerking around
of horrifying images
to television commercials
where we are asked
to ask our doctors

We the people are capable
of so much more: Capable
of surgeons able to render
miracles far more healing
than moon missions,
predator strikes
from deep in the sky,
from quick stock fixes,
dialing up foxes,
connected by two-year
contracts on cell phones,
by unholy secret armies
unleashed upon the world
but now rendered
in one sick sad baldface
mad hatter joker fuck,
who decided to make
history by shedding
your blood, and your children's
children's blood, to make
that point, old pointy,
that no one else could give
a hearing to because,
old shriner shiner,
it pays too much
for the talking skull,
to answer the one question
it can't answer for itself: Why?

The map is fully dotted now,
with hands holding hands
and yet we can't all seem
to becalm the energies
flowing from the angry sun
because, dear masters,
the amplified drug lords
of commerce, offer more
ailments, sick sad treatments
that have nothing to do
with love, just money,
just time for bull markets
and disinformation

We can dream,
point to our heroes,
and tolerbrate
a forgivenness
of our sins,
sometimes
only as long
as the car ride
home

Clearly, nature
is doing its damndest
to show us our faces,
our spewing missed
places as fomenters
of foul foams
guzzling up
from the bottom
of our beer bottles
and polarized teas

Listen to the water,
America; listen
for gentle silenced
sounds, in cattle cars
racing by, in delivery
trucks chasing us around
with backwards beeping
to greet each morning,
to failures to answer
the myriad echoes
of grieving sisters
for suicide cults
set too hard
on logic chopping,
on passions, on reason,
to the revolutionary
flavors of the season,
to rocket ships made
for secret mission masters,
to lies sold as truth
in penciled in televised
image makers, harbingers
of false light, false words,
false perpetrators
of plans against you,
America, plans beyond
pure reason, just plans,
authority zones of controls
intended for our sponsors
of capital gains, tax dodges,
miniscule media channels
to jail up the Jonahs,
the Joans, arching , marching,
moving forward to nurture us,
to set love right, for Job,
so he can no longer suffer
in the error of St. Paul's
jealous rage and error

Fear, no mind reader,
can open our eyes
for the first time, America,
open them, now, read see feel
your own bodies, connected
to the whole earth,
not just your slicing borders
for the first time

Devolution of Arizona

Arizona, I don't recognize you anymore
Your creosote roots lie beneath
the perfect piles of McDonalds parking lots

Arizona, an unequal symmetry
of rubble piles collect
Ten thousand miles from here,
the angry sun awakes, a lion,
the wind pulls sacred smoke
around the window
and out the door

I scream into silence

Arizona, you are responsible ...
The middle-aged businessman
with expendable income
sweats for pleasure
and I feel
"pretty peppered"
by it all

Arizona, when can I stop swearing?

I swear in the heat like a pizza oven
Arizona, you are a car part store
but you got no glass to see through
and the beige collection
of air-conditioned caves
are conditioned to respond
in all the right meets wrong ways

The forests are in ashes
as the governor gapes
from a helicopter high
for the diversionary tactic
of the the unrael politic
and asks the spotlight
to "move on"

The spotlight will not
"move on," the world
is watching

Arizona, I can find no fluid,
no friend, nor car phone
to lean on
for company ...

The wolf is watching

By GPS, without your bullets in fistfuls
you can find me in the living room,
darkly lit, with rayolight flashing
bible black blurbs
on non-violence
cursing your name

Arizona, not even Ginsberg
would gripe about your tripe,
so blurred with anonymity
hell hardly matters anymore

Arizona, my life's belongings
are melting in a storage facility
and there are more things that beep
here than I can count
my frozen assets
of the heart

Arizona, you haven't hassled me for a while,
though I'm a loose cannon at the mousy mouth
 ... The world is flooding, bleeding,
burning blinding in high winds from above
as you dry up and blow away

Arizona, heart patients are being denied,
a kid got crushed in your parking lot
and I went to one of your social service buildings
and was amazed about how many homeless lurks
were sleeping in the lobby,
dreaming of Mississippi burning

Arizona, I can't get assistance at the cash register
and the mountains are closed, cats run free,
the lizards have disappeared,
to plot secret revenge
to assuage denial

Arizona, you are sucking in souls,
eating them, spitting them out,
at very low wages ...
of sin ... I suppose ...
and six are dead now,
six!

How long? How many more?

Arizona, I think you should
battalion the borders with snow
and big bad bars of soap,
painting you headless
telegraph cross with wires,
tin cans of TNT
and a sacrificed fox

~ Iowa City, Iowa

With slight adjustments
from, "Ginsberg Rolls Over,"
the latest book of poetry
by Douglas McDaniel

Mythappropriation

Bones of the dead
on the walls
of the art gallery

Forged from
a single act
of procreation
desecrated for
a deconstructed
nation, from a few
stolen moments,
stolen from
the living

Dragging an auto
with an iron horse
carried by train
to an airport,
then flown away

Across a field
of dead birds,
sucked out
of the sea
into the suicide
center of grief
from a painting
by Grant Wood

Now confessed,
I feel better now

~ Iowa City, Iowa

Serotonin

How different
might history be
if Hitler is able
to take a three-hour
nap on a certain
New Year's Day
of America's choice?
If he had been able
to feel the cool alert
behind his eyes
that his view
had been a bit
cross and yes,
maybe a bit more
blue oil paint
would do and yes, yes,
that Leonard Bernstein
cat is groovy
and yes, Custer,
that guy, had turned around
to let the sea
of the dispossessed
catch up on their own cruelty
and consider to let just
a few of those bastards
live to tell a real story
of mercy to the newspapers
back home, that to win
a war of genocide
was no mercy
and the cornflakes
in my own head
were nothing but alcohol
stains upon daylight
clouds of peace?

Bombing Run

Say what you want
about the low lifers,
tyranny begins
at a very high
altitude
because,
gosh darn it
beating my guts
in Oppositeland
is very high praise,
because what you call
a Tea Party is really
not even dinner,
because ancient drums,
the many tom tom toms
are just the steady
pound on a tenderloin
of the mind
turned into a tender drum
sweet and kind and pure
and even if Walmart
broke the place up bad,
one more purchase
at the near-dead
country store
just might
make just enough
difference

Where Sir Freudo
Lost the Ring

The morning began
and never ended
quite unlike many others
as I stood like
one of those granddad old
palace sentries
who guarded monarchs
at their pearly gates,
expressionless, zombiefied
in next to last Templar mode,
poised and posed, metalurgy
realized to be hurtful treasure
for TNT people, useless as they
come and go, now rendered,
once again, quite pointlessfully,
as a word picture with a blue sharpie,
purchased in San Francisco
by Saint Francis of Assissi ...
upward, turned back toward Zeus,
his challenger ... Him who once
maintain in Spain great
bloody mountains of gold
taken from small brown men
who knew of nothing more
to see Sheriff Joe Arapaio
as nothing less than
an avenging Lord of Death ...
He from across the sea
failed to learn more beautiful
things than bad code scrolled
by a false fundamentalist God,
false single immutable sword,
a word that can't be weighed,
edited, reconsidered,
in a Bible black brick
by burn barrel people
who, iron cast, in their rejoicing,
instead deciding to send
the Ring of Doom
back to his maker
at the foot of Father Washington
in a statue beneath the snow

~
Washington, Iowa

Beepee City Blues

Awake in a captured American city,
wide awake, uncommon and conquered
by Beepee, of thee I sing: see the greenish
star sign, flag of my new queen, no king ...

And so this is the new valley, forged
by a poisoned sea. You see? I stared
into your dark and bubbling gurgle
of gore, too long, and now I have lost
my heart, owning my death, drowned
and alive, in little bubbles of grease ...

And yours, in these hours, drifting back
into sleep now, uncovering the brown loam
of anguished grief, in the Paris of the prairie,
dreaming of the fairies, who bleep my name,
cursing my overdone disinfected dysfunction ...

At discourse with the junction of light and dark,
on my electronic ark, loading the animals now,
my music, your now now and mine, to thine
angels we seek truth, cruel, my belly, your barrel
of hell, spelled out now in the sweet spice
of good medicine, served in a box of Davey Jones,
containing my heart at the bottom of the gulf
between me and you ...

Bank of American Blues

The pedestrian road rager
sat down and listened to the deaf man,
can to string to broken cracked can man,
confessing he worked with Steven Spielberg's dad
in 1957, when they were drumming up plans
for a main frame computer program
to undo the earth, the heart, our American home,
from Huns to Hunstra, who came to a Southwestern
desert, house-built by the mob, dreamed up in Vegas,
to the compromised creosote landscape
of hornytoads and rattle snakes nabbed
in trash cans, tumbleweeds built up
along fences, a witch hunt for the wilds;
He who came to town for General Electric,
He who died on a Sunday afternoon
in a small plane crash in New Mexico,
flying back from the East, when Gee Hee,
very shortly thereafter, gave up on taikos
and the remaining Promethean games
games to come, working for golf putter
designers, golf coursey hunters of the bank
of American dreams as I now enter
the sleek confines, the cat box catcher
of red and white walls and fixed furniture,
with not much blue anywhere, not much else
but blue type spelling "Bank of America,"
lots of beeping noises, alerting the authorities
of the dangerous Danton armed to rob you,
with his big assed damn scary pen, strange
and haunted, shell-shocked eyes,
home loads of red, charged off years ago,
in overdraft fees that should be given back
to the people you croaked, the dead peasants
you croaked with check systems given out
like blankets to nineteenth century Apaches
to gather accounts made up of less than zeroes,
for third-party collection companies,
as the wind cries Mary ...

A Corporation
Recipe to Serve Man

Specialize
Create niches
Differentiate
Provide top quality, as perceived
by customer, to provide superior
service, in tangibles
to achieve extraordinary
responsiveness,
prescriptions for a world
made upside down
to launch an over-the-counter
revolution for diseased adults
so they can make for better
sales and service to blind victims,
who now listen, obsessively,
to your practiced swipes
of international card counters,
who have no concept in mind
of who the counter revolutionary
revolutionaries might lurk,
the encouraged poets of everything,
worked to death, worked to everything
but dreaming, worked to death until dropping
to support fastened failures of Chinese
plastic toys over the Christmas holidays,
O Christs of change, pocket follies,
for improved taxation purposes,
if for nothing else ...

Create corporate
capacity for more innovation
while reducing everyone elses
capacity to do anything
but train and re-train
for false employment guarantees
of securities of exchange
for status slaves ...
reduce ...
reduce ...
reduce ...
And then serve ...

~ Phoenix, Arizona

Dog Star Blues

Tough to run, but not too tough
Tough to walk on the morning tufts
of grass in your fields of earth

Your fields of earth are enough
They are enough

Stragglers will be left behind
in the alleys of deceit
and wild animal violence
driven like the tides

Getting a feel for the sun
in the dog park

Life in the dog park
alive in the dog park,
life making me a doggie
dinner, a life made of bad girls
running with me, jumping
into pools of water

But I don't recall seeing you
and I don't recall being seen
and I don't recall when I was me

You never knew me,
the me you never knew,
but knew you well enough
to say, trust me me, say
just go ... I'll say, I told you so

Mt. Pleasant, Iowa

Deconstruction of Arizona

Arizona, I don't recognize you anymore
Your creosote roots lie beneath
the perfect piles of McDonalds parking lots

Arizona, an unequal symmetry
of rubble piles collect
Ten thousand miles from here

Arizona, you are responsible ...
The middle-aged businessman
with expendable income
sweats for pleasure

Arizona, when can I stop sweating?

I swear in the heat like a pizza oven
Arizona, you are a car part store
but you got no glass to see through
and the beige collection
of air-conditioned caves
are conditioned to respond
in all the right meets wrong ways

The forests are in ashes
as the governor gapes
from a helicopter high
for the diversionary tactic
of the the unrael politic


Arizona, I can find no fluid,
no friend, nor car phone
to lean on
for company

By GPS,
you can find me in the living room,
darkly lit, with rayolight flashing
bible black blurbs

Arizona, not even Ginsberg
would gripe about your tripe,
so blurred with anonymity
hell hardly matters anymore

Arizona, my life's belonging
sare melting in a storage facility
and there are more things that beep
here than I can count

Arizona, you haven't hassled me for a while,
though I'm a loose cannon at the mousy mouth
roaring at the corporate big box store

The world is flooding, bleeding, burning
and all of the above
as you dry up and blow away

Arizona,
a kid almost got crushed in your parking lot
and I went to one of your social service buildings
and was amazed about how many homeless lurks
were sleeping in the lobby,
dreaming of Mississipi burning

Arizona, I can't get assistance at the cash register
and the mountains are closed, cats run free
and all the lizards are gone
Arizona, you are sucking in souls,
eating them, spitting them out,
at very low wages ...
of sin ... I suppose ...

Arizona,
I think you should battalion
the borders with snow
and big bad bars of soap

~ Paradise Valley,
Arizona

Mingo, Kansas, Exit Twenty Two

We all fell
like thieves
through the day,
the sudden cloud,
shadows of sentiment
and fully sentient
unbeings, unfeeling, unquieted
watch like angels over our shoulder,
shouting up new storms, loudly ...
~ Mingo, Kansas, exit. 22

Marshall, Marshal, Martial ...

As anyone who watched
Wallace and Ladmo knows,
Marshal "Martial" Good
died jumping through the window
of the Twin Towers
holding the last known
photocopy
of the Fourth Amendment

Which is why now
in the Verde Valley
the toothless methheads
just wave their rights
before the dogs arrive

Superman search
has rendered
search and seizure
asunder

Which is why Dick Cheney
can bring his shotgun
into the Pink Pony
and steroids are the drug
of choice before Sarge says,
"Let's be careful out there."

Marshall law provides cover
to the car part store
of the mind

Marshall law is broadcast
behind pulled-in blinds,
spitting out Bible black blurbs
... just ask your doctor

Marshall law is so grisly
in Meachamite-glories,
the Constitution hardly
matters anymore

Marshall law is punishment
society

And as anyone who laments
for Marshal "Martial" Good
might remember,
we adore our enforcement
with a tinge of tragi-comedy
Which is why the photo radar
captures images
of Sheriff Joe
out breathalyzing tonight
so breathless and bluesy...

Which is why soon
Marshall law will battalion
the border with snow ...

~ Tonto

Searchlight Serenade

Momma def poppa
returned from their
red, white and black
road racer rally car
trip to Nevada
dehydrated
from drinking
too much tea

On the way back
they discussed
checking the brakes
at the East India
Trade-In Company
then stopped off
at the Wal-Mart
to buy a Krate
of Klassic Koke,
an eighty-four percent share
in Monsanto korn seed,
Kool Aid for the kids,
got home (paid for), checked
the U.S. Mail, tested the Teev-Ho
for the latest on the NFL draft,
and any new instructions
from Poppa Bear
on how
to resist
socialism
and thought
control

Unlike the usual church sermon,
they still had visions of posterized
black-faced Obamas dancing
in their heads and their bull eyes
kept konjuring the kulars:
Black, white and red ...

They found the kids at home,
waiting, playing Monopoly ...
They were playing with their
children, and the children
of their children ...

Momma def Poppa
had just missed the debate
about the rule about the rule
about the rule of how and when ...
you simply toss the board
and start over again
when nobody
has any
money


Reshuffle the deck ...
Good game theory ....


Despite the appeal
to those eeking
it out on Baltic Avenue,
too many remained
unconvinced the gig
was up, and they klung
like bees at the bank window
to their paper money
hearts
of reds, black and white,
to their pixilated imaginations
of digitized seas of more time,
more money
waiting to appear
if they just pray and work
hard enough

Meanwhile, Pablo sat
out on his porch
listening to Norteno
way too loud
into the night
since it was a full moon
and he could still
dream of amnesty
and learning how
to read
Thomas Paine