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/
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
