Lost Hero Blues

Laying down his bones

in the dispossed back alley,

the bone man shivers in the streetlight

Ambushing archers, waiting in the wood,

keep a keen eye far into the distance for the enemies of love

She picks up his bones breathes flesh from her stone,

but then walks away, stinging his flesh with a slap to awake him

Leaving his bones, again ...

Le Heusero died again, and he lingers here, beneath this tree,

as the corridor waits to hear the song of the beautiful man

whose legend is told from hill to hill,

mountain to mountain & sea to misty sea.

Information Disease

After seeing the morning light

through three motel room windows

the dog came out, delivered by a member

of the Select Committee to Keep Me

From Doing Anything But Writing Poetry

and in that morning blight, the red and yellow light

yellow as the angry sun, degenerated all of mankind

into a dumbed down cromagmun gun, that, lacking

any more access to information, imagined itself into a slick

And just as fast, although less permanent,

in the corner of my eye, the profound Eris of the deep

caught up with conversation with an heiress of the Grand Old Party

and the earth's unpleasant grip on the dominion of sin quaked, rattled, rolled

and water vapor seeped up, toward the earth's surface, from underground and flowers

bloomed louder and we all got younger and the wind softened and daylight sent love sighs

into the breeze

~

Douglas McDaniel,

Morning Sun, Iowa

Courtesy of Mythville On-Demand

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 how 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

~
Douglas McDaniel
Morning Sun, Iowa
September 11, 2010

The Rivalry

The sun came up cold, wolf-nosed,
with its business being your business,
and I knowing neither north nor south
and the divided elusive spheroid lands,
a football chopped into the Tao of two,
half cheese, half butter, all corn-fed,
rolling a gutter wash flood of drunk
monkeys into an Iowan university town ...

Saint Hayden Fry,
a cash-in-carrion
mixture of cow tippin',
tow truck drivin',
methane dispensin',
hawkwind huntin'
demythologian,
dark sunglass wearin',
Jim Jonesian hero cult
leader of the local FBI ...

Scoured and scorched
pump and dumpin' fear
into the rectangular fronted
armies of black-and-blue
burned bloody armies,
yellow hawkwind beaked,
technocratic beepee
station technocratic
fire and ice breakers
of split-levelled skyboxers
pointin' binoculars top-down
onto the grassy flats of evils
won and lost beneath
the split-level sky

A remote viewing post-toasty
hosting a contagion of baddass
battalions of flankers and big-necked
booboos, uneven into elevens,
spinning once snapped
into sun-punished twenty twos,
balancing their rises and falsies
just like the American Civil War ...

Except now the uniforms
are more graphically beautified
and the forward pass unpunted,
as opposed to the run and gas
is rewound into the awkward
remains of unconsecrated,
polyunsaturated ground ...

And there's always, outside the box
the African-American man,
remade as black boy,
who was once a believer,
shaking a broekn banana in town
since now he's unable to reach
anymore money-grubbing,
property owner theiving thieves
on the apartment rental emergency phone
in order to earn his martyred manger
for his hollowed out poverty mole mound ...

You, season ticket holder,
may have never known him
as more than a mere jersied number
but he came to school
with airy Jordan skills
glitters of jittering futurtastic
static plastic stars
in his decieved eyes

And I remember a hooded
bulldogger, drill sargeant,
screaming, "Are you a pussy?
Are you a pussy? You are just
a plain pussy, aren't you?"
I remember dirt seat and scarecrow
scared, gasping from behind my facemask ...
I remember being emasculated
for the terrifying linebacker's task
of using my helmeted Hopi head,
full of old Gaelic soul, wordy woes,
to fill a gawdamn imagined hole
so he could go home and howl
to his half-deaf bored overweight wifey
that being a wannabe Vince Lombardi,
now there, bitter cherry berry,
now, that's the life ...

Animal mind controlled
on fields of stolen gold
prairie son bloodied
all skylighted to maintain
Romanesque economies
of momentary plunder
between waves and waves
of beer and truck commercials,
church churned into jars of cash
and coins jingling into thunder ...

Yeah, Hayden Fry ...
Here's my greatest wish
to broadcast on my hopeless
limping satellite dish:
I hope that when they carry
you in that grand parade to your
tummy tucked tomb
that they bury you alive
with Iowa license plates
tattoed to your ethanol eyes ...

How to dispatch a Jehovah’s Witness

For many years, for as long as I can remember, I have fallen into the trap of getting drawn into discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Not that a “trap” is such a bad thing. They are good for catching things, capturing things, altogether being good for the collection of just all kinds of things, including special information that just might get you through the day. That includes such highly specialized information as how to get to heaven, why you are going to hell, why you generally suck … and so on.
In fact, I’ve had furious but generally beneficial discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses in the past. In fact, just once, while I was a reporter covering religion for the Prescott Courier*, I decided it would be a fine idea to do a story about what it was like to be a door-to-door evangelista. So I talked two of these Jehovahcrats to allow me to follow along with them as they went through a neighborhood. Turned out to be a fine story. I wrote it in real time, like a day in the life kinda thing. And if I learned one thing, it’s this: It’s no fucking fun being a Jehovah’s Witness.
Ever since then I’ve remained compassionate for these people. I became even more curious about them. They seemed to have the thickest skin of any style of religious zealot ever, save for perhaps Jesus of Nazereth … you know, that original polydactal cat who, in being paranormal, or, perhaps quite insane, was made to be “normal,” by agreement of many so-called wise Jesus historians, clergyman and political thinkers, about seven centuries later in a nation I believe at the time was called Byzantium, in a city I think was called Constantinople, but is now called Turkey, about seven centuries after he was reportedly crucified. In other words: When his round peg was fit into a square hole (“whole?”, hell no!) thus leaving four odd joints all quite unaccounted for at each corner. Not a perfect fit, save you, but, at least, it made for a decent book, which today they still call the Bible. Now, to complete that thought, and I apologize for getting so far off the point, there remains many clear thinking folk who at least can agree on one thing; and that is, some key portions of the real story were left out.
Those points, in fact, were always pecadillos for myself, and they became keys to my ongoing conversations (OK, OK, arguments) with Jehovah Witnesses. I mean, I’m just a reporter, after all, and to report on an event seven hundred years after the fact is just plain no bueno.
The problem with these folk, as I see them, is you can’t get a word in edgewise once they get locked into explaining to you why you can’t get to heaven, why you are going to hell, why you suck … and so on. This is one reason why people don’t like them to come to their door. It’s not so much the invasion of privacy … though that irritation is no doubt included. Getting spammed by Bible beaters is, after all, about the worst thing anyone in America has to accept without question … due to the First Amendment … and so on … no, the real problem with Jehovah’s Witnesses is you can’t tell them a fucking thing without causing a hemmorage to break in the vessels of their brains, and then they start spewing about the blood of Jesus all over you, the unhappy consumer.
The wisest amongst us just tell them to go away. But that rarely works. They are trained to remain steady. To stay thick skinned. To hang in there. To become, well, victorious. Victory, being, I suppose, an elusive hope, since absolutely nobody really knows if you’ll make it to heaven, or, hell, or why you really suck … not one fucking living soul, anyhow, despite all of the different claims, once you are dead. And so, you can probably see why they can get under your collar … in case you don’t have a First Amendment clause in your city, state, nation or planetary system …
After many years, I have become something of an expert, though, in discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses because, well, I’m a compassionate guy who believes you can learn something from everyone, especially (and this is one of those completely quite remarkable things about life) complete fools.
But as time has gone by, I have learned to save time on these discussions, and here is my secret: Just fucking agree with them. Then, they will leave.
But don’t agree to anything else … boy, this is a fine point, the real “deal breaker,” because if they get a whiff of your dissent … they will launch into when, exactly, they can come over to launch into more disagreeable discussions, or, want to know when they can come over and take you to their church. I’ve, personally, never been in one. In fact, since the last time I was in a church, a Presbyterian haunt in St. Charles, Illinois, I completely messed up the whole sharing the sacrament ritual, since it was my first time at that place, and I was raised just straight Presbyterian, and but they didn’t do the breaking of the bread or the drinking the Kool aid thing the same way … then, later, and belive me, this never ever happened: the madman named Dr. Mengele, who brought me there, left me at the church and the pastor had to drive me home to this strange city I’d only been in for about 48 hours, without mountains, nor compass, nor stars to even remotely comprehend, much less the fucking weather, which nobody (this part being true, even understands anymore) … and it turned into a real mess, and now I’m seeking counseling for that particular unfortunate, quite traumatic event …
Anyhow, to conclude, to be a real Jehovah’s Witness de-neighborizor, you have got to scare them with something far scarier than hell, far more truthful and therefore less apparent than heaven, while at the same time, at the end, telling them you totally agree with everything they have to say.
This is how it worked for me in the morning sun the other day: I went outside my front door. I saw three of them coming toward me. I said, “Boy, you guys are really in trouble.” Then, I said, looking up at the incredibly suddenly stormy sky, “Look up there, we’ve got weaponized weather,” then making a broad circle with my other hand, creating a globe-like circumference, continued with “a hurricane headed toward the Gulf of Mexico named Earl,” and finishing it with, “and I totally believe in everything you say.”
And so, they left. Scattered, in fact, in three directions down the street. One guy went over to a house that looks like some kind of Adams Family recreation, perhaps even a Disney recreation for a very scary ride, and he got stuck trying to get his way through the bushes and deep, deep weeds. He looked back at me, and, to continue my de-neighborizing, I shouted over the increasing winds, “Don’t go there. Nobody home. Everyone who is actually home here mows their lawns.” So then he turned, after tripping through the brambles a bit more, to get away. The other two went scurrying down the street, looking for homes with fully mowed lawns, I suppose. I knew, of course, since this is basically a Presbyterian territory, that they were really headed for even worse trouble. I laughed to myself. Imagining the horrors that awaited them …About 15 minutes later, I saw them drive by in a white compact car. No doubt driving out of town as fast as they possibly could. I think I will never forget the deer-in-the headlights look of the youngest of them sitting in the back seat car. He gazed back at me in amazement as I smiled and waved. He looked as if he’d just seen a ghost. Oh God how I will miss him. He could have actually been a real friend ...

Thy Father's Needs

(Forgive, But Don't Forget)



In the secret agent shades

along the dirty boulevard

the disquited boys try

to hunt down new divas

with energies circling,

tryin' not to rust



As the shadows get longer

no longer rough

is no longer enough

and the divine fems

keep in their corners

reportin' on their formers



Thy father's needs

Thy father's needs

Thy father's needs

cause the earth

to bleed



Who is left or right

of the center

keep untying hearts

and poisoned darts

together feelin'

funny about the weather



And the Overlord plays

his fiddle to bards split

right down the middle

letting the dust of fast

polarities just plain settle



Thy father's needs

Thy father's needs

Thy father's needs

just suck the rust

off the gristy griddle



There's a guy here

waitin' for the gals

to complete their

conversations

dreamin' of their

own truths to private

Cherokee nations,

Cherokee people

as wedding bells ring

and a divided nation

fails to swing or sing

on either wing



Thy father's needs

Thy father's needs

Thy father's needs

boilin' up corn seeds

to cut all those Joans

of Arc but deep



Don't you feel

O so incomplete

due to thy Father's needs

Thy father's needs

Thy Father's needs

dryin' corn seeds

O so incomplete

to his dirty deeds

his dirty deeds

crossed up

cotton seeds

Ozo incomplete

Ozo incomplete

Ozo incomplete



to thy father's needs

thy father's needs

cut down those weeds

let it all just bleed

for Thy father's needs

Thy Father's needs

Thy father's needs

the whole damn earth

plain gone to seed



~ Douglas McDaniel,

The Bards of Mythville,

While on military tour

in St. Charles, Illinois

Black Hawk Up

Eleven a.m
and the unarmed
dying of the dark
can't catch up
to pre-dawn me

Upon the Midwestern plains,
the planes boss, the planes ...
Their thunderbird songs sing
to thee ... tho many of those bros
have never flown
much further West
than the Miss Yi Yapee

Dark clouds move
across the red sky
from the Southwest
airlines, all guidelined
by pill pushing plumbers,
electrostatic electricians,
by zombie-eyed truckers
dumbing down magical,
no longer mysterious
or even once mythic roads

Full moon all day headlining
to disappointing misfortunes
of Dionysus, who died that night
well before the clouds move slow
and covered wagons move fast
to confuse the fine old sun's
meandering eyes, red satellite
rounded ...

Since we are at war now
against cosmic nations
in corporate disguise
and a single black hawk
emplores the baddass
updrafts to remain,
to be still
and wise ...

~ Persperide,
Colorado

El Cathedral

Light leaking through the trees
in a voice of sun music
as a Jesuit-taught cowboy
poking gruff holes through
the forest, a well-worn
horse-made trail ...

In the morning's blaze
Sunshine Peak smiles
through touristas
in hangover cobwebs
after a night's
culture shock therapy ...

She is kind, but wise and cautious
as the deer but fearing nothing
except for the coming bulldozers
and coyotes of commerce
preying on the young, the weak ...

(Ah, the weak,
now there's some
cheap meat ...)

And it wouldn't be here
in the future, which is today,
and yesterday is just
this poet's old ghosts ...
roamin' ...

The next day and for years
after that, Set would go on nibbling
on greens, for no one,
said Horus, the hawk,
could crunch on greens
better than Set ...

Among he are those times
is monies folks, old blokes,
who pushed women around
for centuries, like cattle,
due to God's half-written call

And they were good
intentioned men,
just like me ...
who went home,
all unsatisfied,
to beat on their wives,
to then sleep for another day
with their brokers, pork belly
stokers, livin' among chain
smokers, all bragging about
how they had this girl and that girl,
when, in fact, they had not ...

She is kind, and wise
and no longer
free to be
alone ...

~ Persperide,
Colorado
(originally written
in the summer of 1996,
now updated for you,
the consumer)

The Valley of the Single
Black Escaped Pig Fiasco

The engorged valley
was wide as the Grand Canyon,
but wider the Abdominal Void,
and shale-white stone,
a single one, most noticeable,
pointed toward the West,
toward a happy life, happier endings,
than the imaged hat-brimmed
man left in the dusty dust,
the aquarium rescue dream,
of turquise particles, dust,
and a ghost, perhaps, or a lover's
old friend, who left a single marble
from her head, to point the way

With great fear, fear alone, tore back
down the mountain ... which shook loose
again after a mere ten minutes
at the insatiable blue counters
of your local Walmart crack pipe dealer ...

After dinner, her hair turned blue
and she got the shingles from shaking
too many demons out of the newborn
skulls of other ... and she wept in the morn' ...
and the sound of a single-family home,
another of many more undone for the day
burned a new red hole in me ... and I could
barely smoke, or speak, or feel, or touch
my own nose from looking so hard to see ...

But somewhere out there in middle America
a single black pig is running free in the streets
while a shadow's brilliant pink red Father Sun
has also come undone from the blazing glories
of incomprehensible amounts of feminine hunters
charging in the last great light brigands
inspired by trampled patriarichal old souls ...

~ Persperide,
Colorado

The Eleventh
of Twelve Elves
of Mars ...

Gorgeous sun,
mother of sun
uneasy to appease,
easier to please
but bitter in death
untaking the taste test
after dinner thinker
but not much
of a drinker

This insane chain
around you was sympathy
Overpowered by your pedal
mad but no longer snoring
dreaming of diamonds, Goddess!

She law languid but stolid,
a cool, brilliant underwater
apparatus, but hell ...
no damn Illuminatress ...

... at least not quite yet,
she barely got wet

Bathed by a winged white
Macaw, disorder and the law,
unloved in luscious whispers
beneath the yellow gown
of a new moon, a taste both fast
and sweet, in glory, in flesh
and in heat ...

~ Sir Freudo,
Telluride, Colorado

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


Zen Presby Rebellion Begins at Home
as Sir Freduo Lands Upon the Plains
of Pop Goes Paranoid ...

At Medicine Helmet he noticed he himself had become a kind of Hobbit oil leak, gazing into space, not realizing the nozzle had gone wrong. This new self-unregulated issue of finding himself unable to attend to that kind of connectivity the dino-to-car-to-forward movement kind ... well it must have been a new, in fact, the first side effect of not wearing the Ring of Doom (copyright completely ignored).
Yes, Sir Freudo kept arising with the odd call of the muses at 3 a.m., and the stars were all quite bright at the same grand country roads ending along the way. Finally, he found himself at the far end of some annonoplace outside of Chicago ... and alas, there were no more guards around. He saw a UFO in the sky, a chemtrail across the otherwise heavenly evening sky, but he was unimpressed with the sauturnine presence of these things. It was like, "Dudes, I really don't need that right now."
Things are strange and weird enough in a America at Not Quite Declared War as it was already.
He went back inside the still unfamiliar castle afforded him by his queen friend later on, having refound the ring from his various travel boxes, feeling better, empowered even ... considering the wide open possibilities for his future: Imagining
friends, family, loved ones, left behind. Then, he wept ...
Lacking an internet, he sent messages of love back to his family and friends and fans by mental telepathy alone ... another nice new supposed "evil" of the Ring ...
After taking a breath, Sir Freudo began to investigate the castle's vast library, located in one special center room deep in the castle, used as a gathering point of all kinds of phantasmagorical imagery, where two frames of the lore of the early history of the first Presbyterians of Scotland was related. One of these frames contained a dark old painting that was hard to view due tot he darkened glare of much reflected sunlight from the outside. However, it appaeared to be an image of wild rogue Scot peasants conducting some kind of emotional intolerabration. Everyone was in the square braying, and wailing and gnashing their teeth; Freudo surmised that he could impose himself closer to get a better view, he might be able to begin to fathom the relationships between the nighly individuated, downright imoortalized figures in play. But, actually, he was far more curious about he other frame, which seemed to include alternative lyrics to ELP's version of William Blake's "Jerusalem":

In Scotland's green and hilly lands,
walking oer' the oil-dimmed tides,
there's nothing sacred t0 be read
that doesn't smell like gasoline ...
Tho most Sinclairs are gone to red
there be hope amongst us still
that where we dwell
will be a land
that's safe for us
with water to drink

And tho we weep
with a great sense of loss
of choking family, friends and fans
We'll do our best
to carry on
the best we can
to help every man ...

Because 'ol Dino Sinclair
was a grand 'ol fellow
we all walk upon
Scotland Yard's
yellowy yellowbricked
Roady roads, Ahmen ...

~ Somewhere's in the Midwest,
August, 2010 ... late in the day,
but out of the black rain

Freudo Unbound:
Things to Undo
in Demver
When You're Dad

The last time Sir Freudo was in Demver, he had been thrown out of the Gimpy Hippie Coffee House by the Gimpy Hippie Coffee House Nice Nazi Lady ... for being a little too Hobbit-colored for his own good.

Apparently, they didn't serve Hobbits at the Gimpy.

Certainly, not his type, anyway. All he'd said was that he wasn't there for the Uncreate '68 meeting at all, and was most certainly no spy. He was merely there for a hangout to meet with the counter insuccient rock band he was then smoking with on the patio, and then, later, to meet "a bunch of witches who were with his girlfriend at the church down the street" ... too which he was immediately thrown out of the place for being too Hobbit-colored.

But Freudo was way too far gone now to worry too much about over the counter liberal arts cruelties served during an election year filled with so much uninvented sorrow, anyhow. But the event at the Gimpy still hurt, somehow, as all hurts will ... when hurting is most self-oriented.

Perhaps it was true, yes, he had some inhibited soft Hobbit guilt inside ... some deep need to fix it all since his people had fucked it all up so bad. But was there any just reason, other than being talkative and eccentric, to be thrown out of the Gimpy Hippie on a bright Sunday morning?

Seemed a tad unfair. Very Gimpy, yes ... but Hippie ... decidedly, not so much ...

If only because even in the halycon days before the Bushites pulled the plug on the center of the earth, attempting to leave, quite successfully ... most might say ... the entire planet in unbrokered flames and ruin ... he tried to help in any way he could to depublicize to its proper light the notorious Uncreate '68 brough ha ha ... and still remain quite liquid when it came to both fast cash, coins and Gimpy Hippie eloquence ...

But everywhere Sir Freudo went ... he seemed to be learning and re-learning all along the way ... when he wore The Ring (copyright notice goes here) ... people treated him like they were in danger of receiving the blight of too much sun ... and so, the off-putting counter insucciency ...

If the anything, the Nice Coffee Nazi Lady at the Gimpy Hippie in Demver ... where poor Freudo doesn't have a friend at all anymore, it appears ... was yet more proof that on the road to Mythville ... ding dang Demver is just plain too Otherstuffsville at this point to consider as a proper option ...

At least until, that is, the Nice Coffee Nazi Lady at the Gimpy Hippie in Demver is willing to accept his apology for being too soft Hobbit colored and all ...

Just Before Crossing the Swamp
Where the Battle Once Was ...
Beware: The Dadlands!

As reported by KGB-TVHO, Harlingen, Texas ... Sir the Artist Formerly Known as Frodo Now Known as Freudo has been reportedly ... um, transported ... to deep South Texas, at the mouth of the Rio Grande River, and he was mumbling something, sounded like he was jabbering, actually, to himself, in Japanese or Navajo or something, as if he'd gone completely insane over the so-called magical Ring of Doom (copyright notice goes here) ...

Before that he reportedly said, "All of the king's soldiers are slaves, same as the whores, but I'd won't sleep with either and I sure as hell won't fight without any reason," said Sir Freudo. "There is nothing left to prove, nothing left to discuss, nothing left to do, but love."

At the sound of these words, several reporters ... um, reportedly, left the room screaming with their ears on fire and their mighty pens melted. An occurrence to which those who remained at the impromptu press conference held on the beach at South Padre Island, just off the jettie allowing now, floating dead birds and dead fish and dead dreams to fog on in to the inlet leading to Port Isabel, once a quite seaside town, now a quite Wormwoodianly enclosed seaside ghost town, all of the king's reporters and all of the BP men in hazard gear ... the whole greasy crew, stood there, agape. Awed. Amazed, even, at the visit of such a person as dear Freudo.

"Diffusing lies, one day at a time," he laughed at the rest, scoffing. "You guys wouldn't know Hitler if he walked right up to you and handed you a letter to the editor, hah! ... as if that's a doctor's visit to anyone anymore."

###

Frodo, the Missing Years, Day ... Whatever ... Summer, I think ...

Frodo sat on a rock, made of plastic, overlooking Black Cibola, the famed city of glorified Mammon, and took another look at the Ring, which he decided to keep, then give away, then send out a rescue team to get it again, because they said, "What a shame." He looked at the so-called "Ring of Power" and said to himself, "Wow, what a piece of shit."

Sure, he was eating better. Feeling better about himself, empowered and all with his mission, as well as the book deal. His effort to throw it into Mount Eyechart in Iceland was a bust, and that was the wrong damn volcano, anyway. Then, returning to the Shire and moving down south fast by personally Fed Exxing himself to the Port of New Orleans, there was the by this time well-publicized mission to throw Ring into the Oilcano. But the pressure was too much. The Ring, tiny as it was, seemed to slip off everything down there, no reasonable planned fittings at all ... clearly it wasn't mean't for that. Not at those depths. Not at those freezing temperatures.

And so Frodo ... or Freudo ... as he was more gladly apt to call himself, had earned something of a public name by, first, like we said, deciding to go George Costanza on the whole thing, keeping the ring ... and before that, trying to be a hero, that failing ... either earning scores of favorites from different quarters, most of them somewhat mixed in their own motives about the Ring, or then, at the polar extreme edges, earning the scorn of those who claimed he was not only a quitter, but a greedy one at that.

"The road to hell is paved with ... ," he thought, just as he heard a bustle in the hedgerow behind him.

~

Frodo, the Missing Years, Day One ...

Frodo then returned to the Shire, feeling dejected about his botched first attempt at being a glorified worldwide hero by taking this supposedly all-mighty, all-powerful magic Ring and plugging up the Oilcano with it … because, quite obviously, it lacked the proper design and research and development necessary to do that. Pretty overrated ... No, really, really overrated, as far as it’s solutions for saving humanity went. “So,” he thought to himself, “Wassup with this damned Ring?”
His grandfather had left it for him in a green metal box filled with other a bunch of Boy Scout-like badges and so on from some ancient war only he could give any details on, and he’s gone and dead now. He pulled it out to view since it was held close by a blue and yellow intertwined string, another remnant of history, his own, from some other Boy Scout year long gone. It had strange, and yet, not completely unfamiliar symbols. But strange enough for him to get distracted, if just for a moment, to dream on his truly unstated hope. And that hope?
All he really wanted to do was sit at home and write early in the mornings while listening to supremely optimistic days of his rebellious youth. So he could mock the flocks of sheep gathered upon some green field around him and listen to Pink Floyd. Or, better yet, to realize that Grand Funk wasn’t all that bad, damn the critics. Same for Three Dog Night.
Then he returned to thoughts of his grandfather, Charles Stewart Parnell, not the historical one of Irish political lore, but the one was quite clearly the worst racist he’d ever met. Elves were some of best friends now. Same for the Dwarves. He even met a bunch of Orcs and, once you got to know them, they had good qualities, too. Sure were handy when shit was going down.
“Why should I consider this proper attire, this stupid Ring?” he said to himself, nobody else was listening or watching or caring (as far as he knew, since he wasn’t online, mentally, anyway). Somehow, the symbols etched upon its gold surface were appealing, but unthreatening. It had a couple of intersecting compasses with the letter “G.” It had what appeared to be a symbol for a masculine sex act on one side, a feminine sex act on the other. Lot of sex implied here. Pretty fertile sentiments, overall. Really weird old thing, considering it was a prized possession well before the advent of online porno.
He put it back under his black shirt and sighed. Now supposedly safe at home in the Shire, Frodo understood full well why it was his view of his childhood home would never be the same again. He’d seen too much, he knew. To Frodo, the magic and innocence his youth had been replaced by a sense of ongoing dread.
He began to hatch a new plan. Always trying to be self-less, he knew if he hung onto the Ring he would become increasingly intolerable. He would become a loose cannon, mouthy, expressive, about how clearly stooped sheep were. What was he supposed to do all day long now, go around like some bitter goat butting heads with Flat Earth folk who couldn’t be convinced there was such a thing as being smart? No, the wise Hobbit could clearly see it was a different tree he was looking at, much more sophisticated and smart and needed, then the ones they all let their dogs just pee on.
He decided to take a sabbatical. To keep the Ring, but to get away from all of the sheep so that they wouldn’t be eaten due to this growing outrage his was feeling about not even being able to breathe Shire air safely anymore. No longer able to even abide, like the Dude advised (and where was He these days?).
So he packed up his bag, filled it with a flute and a pen and a notebook and a Swiss Army knife, placed a little day-old pizza in a NASA inspired aluminum foil packet, and headed out the back door and into the woods, thinking of Salinger …

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

From, "Ginsberg Rolls Over,"
the latest book of poetry
by Douglas McDaniel

Arizona Burning

Being Red, Day One? My first day as a red went okay, I guess ... we poisoned the apple of knowledge at the school teacher's desk and I shouted her down when she told us about the census. I tossed a rock at her on the way home from school ... Then, at football practice, we were given a rousing speech to hold our ground. Coach Boehner, too had been especially incensed about the new social contract being passed around Funny, he'd been so quiet for nearly a decade ... Shit, we are going to hafta, like, take care of each other now. Later, we went home and watched bully pulpit teevee and it lit up the oven in our eyes. They were high sock days, white cleats, hard rock days, daze of football glories when I could sail over their eyes, duck around their walls since getting tackled was well ... inconvenient, hurt like a sucker, yes, so I learned to run in fear ... At homecoming assembly, Coach Boehner cheered us on, Lombardized and lobotomized since winning was everything ... Yeah, the kid's mind went squish in that game at the U.S. Capitol Sugar Coated Sugar Candy Pill Complex, and yes, we do teach our kids to tackle like torpedoes. It's just a wink you know. O, certaintly yes it's unAmerican to aim to kill. He just stood there, the tragic suited one, at the kickoff, he did, and there was violence and a collateral cry across the field and the kid stumbled toward us, in a daze: Fortunately, Coach told us later, his dad was a brain surgeon. But now my broken knee has been plowed into ploughshares, my swords, cow-pastured, thirty years from that yesteryear believing in that gridiron dream imagined into a pre-existing condition of crunching bone and graal ... Now we cry "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. Yeah, check their records. 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." Marshal Law: He Big Man! Him law provides cover to the car part store of the mind. Him Law, Marshal Law, martial law ... is broadcast behind pulled-in blinds, spitting out Bible black blurbs ... just ask your doctor, Marshal law is so grisly in Meachamite-glories, the Constitution hardly matters anymore. Martial law is punishment society. And as anyone who laments for Marshal "Martial" Good, that good old gawd abidn' Lone Ranger of Justice, (Dang!) ... as big him he 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 Big Him Marshal Law will battalion the border with snow ...

Meanwhile, 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 ...

~ Douglas McDaniel,

Meteor Crater,

(Just to the left

of the Contention Mine),

Arizona

Why the cable news media failed us this week

Terrorism, in terms of market share, proved to be the only winner for this ... one terribly turbulatin' week of news.

Maybe the media declared a "system worked" tag on this week's Times Square terrorism spectacle, but it was an "all systems failed" day for the media itself. Anytime a poorly fabricated fireworks display pushes back time for a story on a global oil catastrope ... as well as the sudden sinking of a great American city like Nashville ... something is really off.

Within minutes of this posting you would have found the same thing happening.

A bag of books and a bottle of water were found on Times Square. For yet another day, every major cable news media eye in America is focused on one block in NYC ... capturing the view of dazed onlookers. One of the on-screen monitor readers gasped about how "it takes a village" to catch the terrorists, in terms of cops and citizens pointing out the potentiall explosive devices. But in that same gasp, we can see how the very sense of the "Global Village" of media is being broken down. We can see how the media can only care as far as the viewer lens of local concerns. We can see how a decade of degrading, ever centralizing media is just dumbing every damn mind in America down ...

Meanwhile, the Gulf of Mexico is being transmuted into black tea worthy of biblical tales of Wormwood, in places literally burning, and not too much time is spent broadcasting shots of the tragedy in Nashville, re-awakened volcanoes in Iceland closing down airports in Ireland, soul-sucking stupidity on Wall Street ... and so on.

Last night, Anderson Cooper on his 360 show finally made it to Nashville, Tennessee four days after the storm that claimed at least 30 lives in the region. He agreed that the national media failed in its duties as an emergency responder. Indeed, all of the usual media front-runners to the catastrophic storms were missing. So were the usual rescue angels. As of last night on 360, well into a show that included a spastic attempt at a music telethon for victims of the catastrophe, the ground total had yet to reach a half a million bucks.

"We should have been here sooner," said Cooper, whose show featured Tim McGraw and Faith Hill as recognizeable guides to the disaster. "I didn't cover this as much as I should have this week."

In terms of values ... the point makes sense. As a life or death issues, in Tennessee, 30 people have died in the flooding, and many, many people need immediate help ... Haiti-style assistance. But where is the attention of the media eye focused? At Times-Square, the only thing that died was civility and sanity.

Yeah, it was a New York-centric story, which explains the passion and interest focused on the local threat. But hey folks, as the news media proved this week, that part of the system isn't working. If anything was a success this week, as opposed to a disaster, it was for the terrorists themselves ... both for the apparently lone suspect (oh yeah, that word "alleged" doesn't seem to exist anymore in terrorist plot vcoverage), who scared the life out of any journo with walking range of New York's Times Square ... and for of course whose who make a living on selling fear.

How did the media machine ever become such a tool?

Fear certainly is a mind killer, Yoda might say. Hardly a source for education, enlightenment, understanding ... or good civic-minded decisions.

For example, who are these crazy sheeple running the machines all dialed into the New York Stock Exchange, jittery heartless folks capable of sending the index down 1,000 points in say, 15 minutes? Willing to sell out the whole planet's economy over a riot in a European city? Jeez, good thing we didn't have a machine mind like that in 1776. Riots in European cities during those days were common, but even more, to have a device such as the daily Dow Jones average, a kind of mad media indicator for the general health of, what, a way of Capitalist life, is another simple metaphor for what is wrong in the media, in general, on all topics related to panic and fear.

The media itself needs to do a more conscious look in the mirror about how it handles terrorism. When real violence appears on the fields of sport, for example, I think the NFL does a much better job than hockey, in taking the viewers eye away from the melee, rather than profiting from it. Acknowledge it, warn us yes, but don't go on all day using your contact lists of the same old talking heads to spend the day mooning on what might be in the minds of these nutbags, on how amateur their bomb-making seems to be, and why Oh wny Oh why didn't we learn something this time.

Because, face it, news guys in New York. Though ye may be blocks away, these highly effective if crude weapons are intended for you.

Arizona Burning


Among the political actors involved in the Tea Party movement, the media darlings leading the spectacle, such as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others channeling Reagan and McCarthy at Fox News, few performers can put on a show like Sarah Palin did last month in Searchlight, Nevada.

Who knew there were so many history buffs who watched Fox News, now commonly acknowledged as the Fifth Column of divorced reality in media and politics these days.





Given the compassionate view, a media liberal such as myself might only watch what's going on and think of the film, "Network."





As many have done ... since the "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" vibe has really come unto acceptance of being completely, like, retro. Journos such as myself can only howl now with jealousy because not everybody gets to be Bill Maher these days, and his raunchy note to the Republican Party, every bit as divisive and politically incorrect as Beck, Limbaugh and Poppa Bear, was certainly one of the talking head highlights of the season.





But Beck came to Phoenix for his stadium tour, and we aren't talking about the cool singer/songwriter who analyzes the earth with such songs as "Sex Laws." This is the guy who has unburied all of the mythic ghosts of the Illuminati for a broad audience, rendered as a distracting voice, yes, for Fox News listeners who, for all we know, are now completely hypnotized by the very Ruppert Murdoch-esque forces Beck supposedly rails on about.





Oh yeah, Beck went beautiful mind before national audiences this year, conjuring the very ghosts of McCarthy and the Rothchilds and the Bilderbergers and the "None Dare Call It Conspiracy" crowd, somehow managing to swoop in the Green Party and progressives with a sweep of his piece of chalk on the blackboard as well, drawing it all up for us to prove only one thing: An overwhelmed mind is a relevance machine.





For any imagintor with a limited receiver, even one with a cable TV show with all the props and graphics he might need to illustrate his ranting, Beck is also, if nothing else, a canary in a coal mine.





However, to watch a canary get sick and die is hardly reason to put much faith in its last dying chirp.





Nonetheless, it all plays well in Arizona.





A state, which, let's face it, appears to be experiencing all of the symptons South Africa faced as it elected its first actual African as president. The film, "District 9," also comes to mind.





A state completely freaked out by its economic mess, its furies along the southern border, its long-standing tradition of Goldwater-style individualism run amok, featuring whole cities of voters in gated communities who dislike change in general, and that includes the weather.





Not just swinging to the right, but in many ways defining it nationally, Arizona is perched to be that place where the Mechamites (see Evan Mecham) are returing for one last dying breath.





Of course, Palin is trying to get on top of all of this ... but my guess is, as a pop star, she's appearing on the scene a little early, and as a performance artist goes, is likely to simply malaprop her way right out of contention ... given the odds of a mispeak over the long haul ...





I have her picked out for a nice Whore of Babylon outfit for 2012 ... the other two cats, Beck and Limbaugh ... Jesus, I just don't have the patience to scour around in the Book of Revelations to dig for the appropriate coda right now.





~ RFA






Remember the Mecham!

With so many history buffs in Arizona, it's hard to understand why the name Evan Mecham didn't come up more often during the debates, protests and spontaneous quiet riots that broke out in every heart and household of the region with the passage of the new immigration law.





Evan Mecham was the Arizona governor who brought great shame and embarrassment to the state when he cancelled the Martin Luther King holiday.





It created a blowback of economic catastrophes such as cancelled conventions.





The Super Bowl was taken away by the NFL.





The state become a comedic punching bag and Arizonans were commonly asked, when traveling, why their state was racist.





Then came the pop stars.





A cascade of them started playing concerts here, such as Stevie Wonder, to protest Mecham.





Next, every concert performer had to say something about Mecham, or the state's racist stance, for the cache of, well, actually "playing Sun City," but not liking the vibe so much.





In this next round, there will be key differences. In taking a stance in favor of an MLK holiday back then, the issue was idealistic, abstract ... and therefore manageable as propaganda.





Human rights, sure, yeah ... why not ... rock on!





Who couldn't back that? Other than those who put Mecham in office to begin with ... you know, that ever aging race of Goldwater Republicans ... yeah, sure, rock on Garth!





A paid state holiday for everyone!





In this case, while it's likely there will be a cascade of comedians and pundits making a lot of new material for the new immigration law, the toughest of its kind, it's hard to imagine how a Canadian like K.D. Lang or vagaband Celt like Bono could legitimately show up and make a big statement.





Such as this: Irish! Go home!





~ Radio Free Arizona





P.S. If Native American rock bands starting getting involved in this, most of us could all be in real trouble.



I think we need a big Aid for Arizona concert, just like AID for Africa in the 1980s.



I think the appropriate state policy would be to make sure all performers be required to wear the right color cowboy hats and, before playing, make sure they have their paperwork in order.



Also this, Woody Guthrie covers should be avoided, discouraged at all times ...



Also this: Most of the Arizonans who support the law have clearly forgotten the humanity of their own families and how they got to state to begin with ... and unless there is some kind of Mormon sanctity over the Gadsen Purchase now lost in the dustbin of history, it's no doubt as elusive as searching around for references to three shrunken heads in the Bible named Palin, Limbaugh and Beck ...



~ Douglas McDaniel

Meteor Crater, Arizona

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

~ The Daily Dash