Just name the whole country 'Trump'

Like the rest of the media I'm suffering from writer's block because I can't think of anything else but Donald Trump. Not because I'm part of that baffling sect of lookiloos who attend his rallys, which look like mocking roasts of the disenfranchised, tuning up America's worst fears, with the punchlines being the most outrageous of solutions, a horrible spectacle, like in a "Godzilla" movie. Trump must emit some kind of invisible gravitational force, activated by my own and others' negativity on historic and cultural perspectives, causing one to think of old film stock of pre-World War II events in Germany, of a blustering Mussolini. Except in this case the reality TV set is a high-definition red, white and blue television oasis, a post-literate Twitterverse as the new mob subculture seeks to divide and conquer.

When politics as reality TV is the overwhelming entertainment option, you just can't look away. At first it seemed bizarre, comic about the Republican frontrunner's reality TV style campaign, offered free by the national media (writer's blocked) until he only just recently started to buy advertising. But the humor, if there was any, is gone now. The entire social demeanor has taken an awful turn.

How do we find our happy place? How about baseball? Think about baseball. Total Jedi mind trick, baseball.

For example, how happy were many Arizona Diamondbacks fans when the team backed up the truck and signed the pitcher Zack Grienke for just over $200 million? But, stumped by the Trump again, I'm imagining that, for that kind of money, the team could have just re-enginered the entire stadium by building a clear unbreakable plastic wall from left field to right. Turn the whole place into a handball arena, with outfielders geared to handle the ball once it is rejected by the mighty Trump-like fence? Who needs pitching in a no-homer dome?

Ah, but finally, I found that unsatisfying. Outrageous. Un-American, even.

But since two hundred million dollars won't do, seemingly, what it once did for being able to buy the presidency, which now requires a self-funded billionaire to turn the entire process around, it's really not worth saying the Diamondbacks could have found very much better to spend their money on.

Two hundred million dollars won't do what it once did. I checked. Oh, the freakonomics of it all. To me, the most awesome demonstration of per unit cost, globally, are modern warplanes. For example, you can get an aircraft carrier fighter/bomber for around $55 million, or, three fighters for the price of one front line big league free agent pitcher, with change left over for maintenance, ammunition, fuel, bribes to local officials, whatever you need. A decent second baseman is going for about $50 million, also. A F-22 fighter, advertised as the most lethal of such planes in the world, costs $200 million each, too, but how do you cover the outfield, or any other border, for that matter, with just one airplane?

Presidential candidate Jeb Bush has spent $50 million in the Republican race, but has thrown all of that money out the window against Trump, beneficiary of free publicity provided by the talking heads ... Ah, the anguish, back on Trump again. Jeb should buy a cheaper fighter, give it to his brother, and let them both land on some carrier deck somewhere, greeted by, I dunno, Paula Abdul. Maybe that would help improve his campaign, which lacks theatrics.

It's looking like there's no cure for the big Trump stump.

Time to close the eyes and vanish into a galaxy far away, where, diving into the great recycle bin of 20th century culture, which we never seem to be able to escape from, the latest Star Wars installment made more than $200 million on its first weekend: Or, four fighter bombers, or, one front-line starting pitcher.

You could think about Hillary Clinton, the likely democratic nominee, who staked an early position on the whole "Star Wars" theme. At the last Democratic debate in December, she ended her bit by saying, "Thank you, good night, and may the force be with you," instead of the usual God bless America. President Barrack Obama followed this up by wrapping up an hour-long end-of-the-year press conference by saying, “OK, everybody, I got to get to 'Star Wars.’ ” The movie's director, J.J. Abrams, has given $1 million (which buys you what? A tooth brush?) to the Clinton campaign cause, so clearly the force is breaking to the left so far.

To get back on top of this, the first Donald Trump television ad admonished the president for wanting to get to the "Star Wars" screening when he should have been out, I don't know, directing bombing raids against ISIS. But it's hard to know how far the Republicans want to play the anti-nerd card. That sounds like political suicide.

But needless to say, it's Trump again! With this kind of disruption in the force, it's a wonder how anybody can get a grip.

Porterville

Rain Station

The hurricane journal colonel

meets the wind at the Porterville

train station as birds fall

out of a fallen tree

Shoeshine wet steel along

a busted up railroad line,

heading to nowhere

in the eternal now

Isaac Smith took the first

bullet train away from the coast

and the pellet is  a richochet

from sea to sinning sea

Storm riders in white robes

lost the battle but won

the water war: The one-eyed leper

watches the stain running up

the wailing wall ...

Meanwhile, back at the submarine

boat show of snakes running

beneath the floorboards of Boston

to the Milldam corner of Concord,

discord cannot carry any cannons

across the creek as history repeats

each and every morning, twice,

and the ripples still by morning light.

A Brief Visit 

to Ballpark Earth

First thing I've got to say is this:

I'm pissed I never got to play

Major League Baseball

Second, and this is a big one

She looked so good

in her fishnet stockings

and we were in sixth grade still

and I still haven't

been able to keep my eye

on the ball

ever since

Third ... sure,

the psychologist

apologized

for getting

the whole thing

more than half wrong

and these are bad

percentages

and you paid

the bill to guard

the lunatic asylum

and it sure doesn't

bring all of the dead

dead doggies all back

Fourth, equally unimportant ...

Just who is keeping

score, Dear Lord ...

Who has all of the stats,

Stan the Man,

and who is keeping

the big statistical

law book of life?

I mean shit, shit, shit ...

I can't even spit here

and I have not looked

at a box score

since last spring,

when I still had hope

for the Diamond King

and sure, forty thousand

princes and queens are seated

in the stands now

text messaging, waving

to their kids back at home,

but they aren't watching anyway,

since fishnets are back in style

and so are their fuck me

I'm a ho tattoosies

on the telly and the Jumbotron,

which caught them kissing

doesn't even record,

just flashes,

then flies on by

~ Douglas McDaniel,

Sedona, Arizona

Down the Road

from Crawfordsville

Somewhere at the end of the road

Down where the railroad used to go

In her trailer she slept with a frown

Trying to stare her demons down

The statue of libertines came around

The wolf had already walked the town

I wrote poetry without much sound

Except for a laugh

from all of the dumbing down

Down the road from Crawfordsville

the broken motor man turned to stone

like Apache copters a'rotoring on

and wagons circling from raging clowns

they argued the point

till the town burned down

Though they paid the rent

for ten dollars a week

the world was shred

by wolves among sheep

as smokes he borrowed

he burned to keep from weeping

and anhydrous ammonia

came up from the deep

and she worshiped her stars

when lacking sleep

while pine needles fell

in symmetries at her feet

before the dogs all howled

in the morning light

down the road from Crawfordsville

They all got a book out

about self-proclaiming,

about water-board wording

and daylight savings,

burning bushes, barns,

the hay needle's laughter

about the unicorn dying

while the Republican Party's

secret headquarters

has gone to rust

down the road

in Crawfordsville

Yeah, down the road

from that tiny Ta'Iowa town

a pig farmer named Lester

is happier than hell

He's driving by

with a sleeping hawkeye

his parallax view

can tell no more lies

and the good book sold now

to the controverted

stands in the way

of truth's memory

of the local sounds

in Crawfordsville

Cardinal square in sharp-cut corners

the coroner croons with each hard winter

turning summer waters cancer cluster bitter

Down the road from Crawfordsville

"climate is dead" for the motorhead,

fertilizer falls from the fire-up sky,

we need not ask for the season of why

Down the road from Crawfordsville

the maharishi's prayer is for a limo

in need of more corn-fed gasoline

and up the road: the Wal Mart roadkill

is churned up dust from that shuttered

restaurant full of crap for the ghostly haunt

Down the road from Crawfordsville

that old shack is burning still

with bushels full of Monsanto seed corn

breaking your teeth on porky porn

as the Synergy trucker waves goodbye

but even with buckets full of energy

we want heroes, well here are three

with eleven cups of free coffee, cigs,

some sanity for satiety, a kind kinda

Fire Safety Week society

for squeaking toys and dogs

to run free

Down the road from Crawfordsville

there's good folks out there, out there still,

while the eye in the sky is scorching 'em dry

they don't even ask the reason why

since loose lips sink ships, Holy Reagan cow!

The washing machine's roll is terror, Wow!

But the tenderloin's pound is a tender drum

of country folk who ain't ho hum

Can you hear them tommy tum tums

of the super farmer's food taught, like magic,

by a hand-held Fibonacci sequence tool

Down the road from Crawfordsville

the Big Box trucker armies

broke 'em up bad,

so forget those things

you learned in school

about how Frodo kept the ring

and the Golden Rule,

about how mega Hertz

made German tanks,

cause techno Teotihucuan

gives good thanks

at the dinner table, to the cops,

to your loan at your banks

Just let it roll by, let it fire its blanks,

'cause down the road from Crawfordsville

you can still greet the sun in sacrificial light

and the morning moon will come a day too soon,

so swim with the shore you supper fools ...

Down the road from Crawfordsville

worms from the air get carved up, cool,

the super farmer's just awe right

'cause disinformation is far outta sight

and William Shatner just plain lied

to those poor folks in Riverside

and east to west the buffalo returns

to beat the dust from the Bible belt's urn

Down the road from Crawfordsville

a bard's lament is the ever-giving quest,

despite the wormwood, yer guns, yer tongue,

you'll give great thanks when mourning is done,

when her sacrificial second sight is Mary singing

about storms to come, about enough blood to drown

the terrorists of shock, awe, the dumbing down,

just can't avoid the daily bank scam man

who hits the train station burned to the ground

and the bump in the road will kill you if found

Meanwhile the ranch gets saved up the road

from Crawfordsville, where sileage choppers

look like haircut machines by day, E.T. by night,

like giant Sandworms harvesting spice,

and the golf course tanned Dan

is a thousand miles away, tinkering

with puppets to sway, like bobcats

shot and killed and made into hats,

the collection plate is eternal

as the frightly nightly news

the heroes go on despite these views

when asked how she feels she sighs and says,

"Peaceful," she says, "and peaceful is nice."

~ Ames, Iowa

Note: The first private meeting of what would become the Republican Party came when Whig Partydefectors met privately in Crawfordsville in February, 1854. The meeting was to lay the groundwork for the creation of a new political party. The first public meeting was held in Ripon, Wisconsin one month later.

  

A Conspiracy of Ducks

The entanglements of the Spider Woman

led me here to tell you of too many things,

but hear me now and keep all a secret:

Only half of what Soutenang spoke

of yesterday is Wormwood true:

Tomorrow it will all be a lie.

The company we keep must shift

from year to year, day to day, hour by hour ...

Shush, my sweet, silence! Everything and nothing

we say can ever be heard or listened to, or, known.

This is the shady place, dark and in smoke

where the paranoids go pop to meet on the street

of the most disowned, dark and unfavored muses.

Networked societies throughout history and herstory,

powered in the puppeteer's mechanized iron arms

are frightening to the uninitiated anxiety angels

of change ... Trust me. And trust me alone!

I like it on top that way ...

Damn you! We've been discovered!

Who talked! Who!

If not for my dragon visage they would not run.

I did not kill the three headless women they speak

of in the shadows of the dying afternoons ...

Now I need a new cave to breathe my fire from!

Fore they will chase me down and kill the truth ...

I weep for them. They do not know what they do.

II

These crystalline stones in the center of the Earth

contain values within values leading to absolute nowhere.

These mountains will tell you nothing, my final secret,

without the keys forged in the four corners of my mind

and if I squint my leaden cold eyes tight enough,

the Sarcosuchus of my dreams held in the sarcophagus

will once again share a dream with the Eddie Allen Poe

ravens tweeking in the deep dark wounds of our dreams ...

These ravens speak just as we do, just as all of the birds

of the world understand in accordance to our mutual

misunderstanding, just as I keep my watch stuck on eleven

to remind me how real the hour is, the day is, near or far:

Your heartbeat will tell me the rest and the black helicopter

is just a fairy tale, a whiff of helicopter blade, echoing

in your circuitous canyons and endless energy fields

of mere rumors repeated, for sales purposes, only to be

maximized in the marketplaces for my profit,

and my profit alone.

III

I saw three ghosts

through the window

and they were posing

as three nude females

as if it were part

of the same damn plan.

I saw them again

in the fanatic swirl

of teenage faces,

happy and light

and forbidden.

Finally, they appeared

as blue topped, short-cropped,

senior citizens who could give

a damn about your generation,

who were around long enough

to catch the last sweet scent

of the wild white roses, caught,

tight in the controlled gardens,

imprisoned, elect, in enlightenment

and mutual decay.

IV

Despite fundamental needs of fear

and the aquamarine teardrop

of your sad eyes,

when my MIB sunglasses

fell into my tortilla soup

my personal cosmic rodeo clown

was kicked out of the bucket

by the Bull, and the cartoon cowboy,

listening to Jefferson Airplane,

fell down the hill with laughter,

because, see, the movies

don't show you their eyes

behind cool black shades

to keep you believing

in the narcolepsy of suspense

about inhuman Blackhawk riders

who quite literally actually really

need to feed and fight and feel and pee

like children, too.

And that Spider? It shudders

to our mutual Sarcosuchus,

running to underground homes

to atomize quick harvests of love,

just as the secret government agent,

quietly, soulfully, somewhere in some

movie theater near you is weeping,

sentimental, quite literally sorry

as he or she watches the slow motion

action of the sequence about the birth

of baby ducks in the spring.

Gibraltar ... Gibraltar,

England versus Spain, once again,

the ages of empire returning, unlearning,

as the ancient superpowers retest

the waters of sanctioned, official

violence for fishing rights

Jesus, get me re-write

Jesus, get me a fish, fast,

faster ... Even the quickening

seasons slow now so get me

some low now, making the pie,

higher as the news adds

fuel to this fire:

Angry motors, tossing the boaters

who sink or swim or just run

round and round and round

the public squares, the cracking roads,

the sudden floods, the little ships

no longer safe in their harbors ...

The ghosts of conquistadors

choke through the thin veil breaking down

about the walk up the Peralta Trail,

the Dutchman, no longer lost,

and Geronimo up ahead,

noting the troops heading up

to his hidden cave

and dinosaurs ride on

the backs of Fred Flinstone

and Barney Rubble reads

Bam Bam the news

and the Washington Posts

go sour as they wait, just

one moment on superior

electronic machines

about how they, themselves

are in shock about being sold off

like slaves ...

A Navajo man gives me the big spooky

believing I owed him a dollar because

some spider woman runs on and rants

into marketplace America screaming

about yuppies without rubbers

and how Babe Ruth took the pill

and then took the Fifth, passing

the fifth plate on the diamond,

failing to excuse him for his disorders,

his sanctimonious shield, his lawyers,

his dogmas, Dharma, Shakespearean dramas,

coating the world in oil and trash

and pictures of food on boxes of cereal,

little boxes of store-bought lasagna

to be baked in the Bush, giving me

the evil eye, with just a hint

of personal superstition ...

My eyes grieve in the salts

cut from the Grand Canyon,

the sandstone all blown around

in the irradiated winds,

the acquifers getting sucked dry

by Big Blob Phoenix

as trains skip, accidentally

into the red rock canyons

of the east as I go "Toro!"

to the madness of the world,

weeping for what I wish

I couldn't feel, soapy clean,

 greasy and real ...

Foundation Fire, Unworldly Waters

Little birds, fear not;

smoke is overrated.

Now fire, like, wow!

Hope and jump

and follow your instincts:

sure, sure, sure

Even the volcano,

in the grand scheme

of things is a mere

Dimple upon the Earth:

Just as life is just paper

exposed to black ink

Civilization keeps

the fire lion in storage

for the burnishing of your white walls

This image, this mirror,

is the alternate universe,

so each side is of no matter

This sleeping fat cat,

finding no bluesy suitors

is just like nature denied its day

Such is the way

for men and women:

Constant are both frost and fire

And the vanquished,

concrete moon

pulls light off the world

The blackened well, beneath the surface,

is all man or animals will need

for one-thousand years 

The Portico of Complaints

Hear yea, hear yea,

the polemic pandemonium

dedicated to Salvador Dali

because the watch

is freezing back into summer

as smoke signals fade,

as fences fall in high winds

destined for the tornado alleys

of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas,

dusty bowls rising with temperatures,

dropping into the cold turkeys selling

at high dough in the commodity aisles

of Wall Street, whose surrogate,

the U.S. government, the price being right,

crush the crazed population into noodle factories

for blond spokeswomen on political talk shows,

from brunette blues historians on radio shows,

for beats and bleats in morning light, dusky damsels

of disaster restoration industries soaking in cash,

paranormal as X-class solar flares pumping up the volume

for tomes, old as Dante, cooking up the mortal coils of desire,

for layers of cakes, sold on saucers in the medieval

meteors thrown down at earth by the nightly news gods

who sell fear, beer, batteries and basketballs,

shock-worn baseballs obvious and mournful

as a black cat's quarter-moon shaped cry

from Siam to the Himalayan Rockies, from Hawaii to Mars,

to heal the ever present aches of what we use to bake

when the in-and-out burglar light beats us

back to sanity when the new word

for "bad" is Syria

and the rotting core

of democracy

is a "Here's to looking

at you kid" call

to "winning the future"

and our miserable new habit

for showing disdain

for each other

walks on, waxes off ...

Surely, there must be

better breezes

after all of this ...

Surely, there is hope

in the fact

not all winds

bring down our tents

as the spooks,

in the shadows

reveal butterflies

on fire

Last Water

The last drop

of water in Meteor City,

a parched hole in the desert

with a few mobile homes, maybe,

echoes of steel pedal romantics

in action, still seeking factions

to fight off Black Mesa coal companies,

joining other drops of water, rising,

to make or break into clouds,

cloud computing sympathies

and waving into grains:

Behold, the national sacrifice areas,

the place once known as First Water,

a ten-thousand-year walk by the third drop,

pushed through sandstone beneath concrete

sidewalks in the city, good to the last cop,

wearing a belt secretly glowing of uranium,

coal and waters pressurized through slurry pipes

by chicken hawks, or, black parking lot crows

big-breasted, looking slightly tasty,

as we walk home, desolate and lonely

back into the wilderness, two Pahannas

who pretended to understand for a decade

the pain of sacred springs drying up,

the kachinas dancing down to mathematic,

automated figures at your cash registers,

ya, you, you know who, how do you do,

say halleluja, as you carve into up into space masks

inserting pictures of the glassy knolls, hogan holes,

Merlin's magic wands to the center of the crystalline earth

The fourth drop of water, a drip down the throat,

issued through a rubber tube, hardly enough

to rush down the rocks of the red desert stream,

the drying heat of seventy-mile-per-hour winds

jack ripping, ripping jack

over the navel of the fourth world

powered by the Navajo generational station,

the dynamite that broke the highway,

the lions of commerce, roaring and erect,

bread bears, steel-eyed salmons from far away

dreaming up plumes of steams, making cloud,

making raining, falling onto the earth again,

the fifth drop of water, most likely your last,

video punked across the nation, one last drop

of coffee on the tongue for salvation,

one last drop for the animals of immigration,

a red dirt crust of crunchy sourdough

for order on the border, an entire stitch

of moleculed waters for a set of signals

for the matrix, a crowd, a crisis swamping

into a last great flood, for one last river boat,

one last drop of ink on a single sheet of paper,

rippling now into a red stratos curtain

like a flug hung upside down across

the Little Colorado River Valley

as the national canyon anthem sounds off:

O say can you tame the raw dead Sainty Clause,

O disbelievers, O, pain relievers of our kitchen sink,

the green tinge of tornadoes, predicted by the hour,

moving north almost fast as the brown soldiers

on the Hopi mesas holding back the end of the world,

wearing the many coasts of winter, still, in the mourning chill,

cast off in spring around the small hogan rooms

in a confusion about the new currents,

closing the roads in the Dust Bowl daze

of explosive gusts, that last water

summed up by sweet sugar fairies

draining into hot choco-lates

in the nasty Nestles

of your no longer say so,

into Perrier bottles

for celebrities,

public relations

people fibbing up

Fijis tipped

for industry,

petting down,

your last puddle,

your last well,

your last water

stolen and sold

in the grocery

store

aisle,

and kept in

in the phaoroh's urn

of our mutual

no more

say

so

Survival in the Spring

The fool moon

is an unjust cliche

passing directly overhead

and I've ached out of exhaustion

so many times the tired millions

of meteoric terrors, media-mad errors,

the pa-rum-pum-pum of Christmas,

now long behind us, is only the echo

of a car crash we never witnessed,

only heard in the siren song

beneath the loud roar of daily trains

passing along the highway,

and our soft whispers

muted in each minute of distance

remains as a glassy tranquility

in the lunar space, the ice nine

of the night sky, as the dust swirls

into a sound so lonely,

a solace at the end of March,

we thank the great sky

for no more murder

The white stripe of the local skunk,

confused as the buds on trees,

in unending misunderstanding

of the new weather patterns,

limbs freezing then thawing,

chilling over again, forgotten

as the breeze, teasing towels

of numerous cold showers

for all seasons in a single day,

twenty-four-hour revelations

of the mountain lion warning us

with a growl in the Gaian solace

at midnight into the back-stepping

mystery of the morning, cars running

late, buses running late, trucks,

running furious late to avoid garbage beasts,

cement mixers awake, alive as thirsty ants,

churning up into government, then corporations,

into bellicose budgies happy to pave the world

Gone are those long lost minutes

where you unleashed your moorings,

when your screamed out your sorrows

and locked your mechanical door

without a master as the snow storm's

marshal lawyer, a colonel clinking

his dry cup for a salute of sunless,

derisive, jarring melodies unheard,

the fire of the gut-rotten belly,

rip-ribbed fat, toothless and mean

in his oily flannel cotton shirt:

O, who is chuckling now, you cheating

Chubby Checker! We are free of you.

Free! And winter is a dead and past

as we feel well enough

to start worrying again

about what is normal,

as our eyes, moist in emotion,

push out the main street iron

ions of ancient dirt, seeking

to join the information flow

of geese, buzzards and eagles

flying north into the blindness

of the king, the queen, the jesters

jeering in the crowd, the black crows,

re-entering the Earth's atmosphere

to regain unearthly sanity

The Sniper

He lived fierce

but not long enough

to clear out

the elegance

hidden beneath

his cloud, red

as the liver,
silent as a sniper
in Laos

He used all of his hearing

on Deep Purple,

the Allman Brothers

and trains rolling

both ways along

Route 66

moving nightly, daily,

always east and west

for the resupply ...

Semper Fi! Semper Fi!

That was his religion

after the Catholic

do and die ...

His duty was his

faith and he loved

defended even his wife

in death

He lived his life,

left nothing to spare

didn't waste a thing

for the resupply

II

We made this place up. You were used,

brought here to recite Faulkner,

to champion great beasts from the sea,

thwarting the diamond-hearted vistas

of America, sold, bought, traded ...

No, another scene: Closer, a yard

of broken concrete, cowards,

laughing, chasing some old lady,

down the road ... No, closer, closer!

You called the police car. You!

Now my nerves are jangled

and the ambulance is gone

and the TV news crew

never arrived like it does

in the movies and the

music is the reason

why I cannot live

without you.

Closer? Can't be. Just can't.

I mean, it's too close, too soon.

The curtains, full of holes,

like a planetarium at mid-day

of endless siestas: My god,

you stayed here with me?

You endured this tormented

corner of trains going in both

directions and audible

rattlesnakes ripping

through the night

and automobile drivers

who just don't get it

and never will?

Don't you see who I am?

I am a man who cannot

even think about leaving

because if I do, it will be

the end of music for me

and I will have to walk down

the straight without your

sweet warm palm

inside my hand and man,

that's just to close, woman

You got no right, just no right

to shed such salty tears

on my brow as we hide,

trembling, behind walls

stained by forgotten

details, jagged angry

mad loafers who once

made these roadside

spaces home

III

In the stillness

only gamblers

light their fires

In the forests

of time, money

where no choppers go

and Captain Napalm

can't command,

the likes of me

always in demand

One-eyed fire bird arts

at the secret command

you'll feel no detection

when your dark heaven

is my cross-hair selection

Semper Fi! Semper Fi!

Nixon called

and I denied

never knew a camera crew

I fought, you died,

that's all we knew

IV

Covert, overt, bread crumbs for crows,
with vows on the dangers of falling in love
over roses and medical records,
building enemies golden bridges to escape from,
burning down the lines of supplies leading into Vietnam,
sucking in the agent orange, dirty in black and green face paint:
All of these things he did for you, or so he thought ... well, anyway,
did what he was taught, which was the honor onto itself

When rising blood bruises arose along the arm, he kept covert,
secret in the protections of you, again!
And when I took out the trash and got in the scuffle
with another of your walking wounded,
he urged on the fight like Johnny Rebel
and later we all apologized and hugged and tried to move on,
but we never did, never do, because of the ripples
now running in tsunamis across the seas

When he came home he was told to stand down
when the Hari Krishna spat on him at LAX:
Must have been like, relax, soldier, stand down, man,
just stand down, keep it quiet, to yourselves,
because it never ends ...
Never will

Plowshares

Eat, breathe, sleep, dream,


so when we wake


we can face the cold wind


burning of death,


brave and bold;


Let those who find


the merchants of fear


behind their backs turn


to face the paranoid fringe


down to fire off memos


for one-thousand-year laws


to assuage disbelief


in the disinformation


that we are separate, not One:


Let the dawn rise


for the information farmers,


the witch doctors, the divine women,


the primal poets, the horsemen


melting their brands into plow shares,


the cosmic truckers and spinning ballerinas;


Lead these bright sons and daughters


to contentment beneath


the new Sun of Creation


and then, let them eat, breathe,


sleep and dream again beneath


the Old Moons of the imagination

Resolution Revolution

Nobody is going to rob me of my joy,

not even here in this deepest and coldest

of winters, this dark place of toothless

tormentors, of mouthpieces spitting teeth

of fights you lost, howling mad, decades ago,

not your droning, green or black helicopter

sad, money grabbing, cash registers of pain,

clinking in metallic perfect motormouth

mullahs of intense, sugar-free MSG,

sputtering a doormat out for me,

as if spirit were a mere rumor

created by the machine-heart

doctors on the twin days

of my Capricorn birth,

somnambulatin' an echo

of my perfect ear

for the loving

beat of your heart,

true art, not the furies

of hell-bent masters

of enclosures

cast in the bitter

pounding of hammers

intended to wound

me, not the ever-growing

radars of fear, nor

the trenchant statistic,

nor the static

clinging to your

clanking chains

of the dissenting

voice that believes

it can keep me

from speaking

love's name ...

Nope.

Keystone Strokes

Oh, so that's what it was all about ...

One of the interesting facets of neo-conservative behavior since the election is how they are far louder, and unified, in supporting the mandates of the oil, gas and coal industry than they were before the election.

In fact, Sen. Mitch McConnell could barely restrain himself for a day after the election before he started chatting up the "energy revolution," which was, in fact, an energy counter-revolution paid for by such members of the oligarchy as the Koch brothers. Such conservative media outlets as FOXnews, the Christian Science Monitor and, big surprise, the Houston Chronicle, also gushed about the so-called mandate as if they were members of a group called Gasohaulics Anonymous.

A conspiracy? Not exactly, but an orchestrated confession? Yes, quite.

While the politics of fear -- ISIS, ebola and immigration -- stoked the reptilian hind brain of the republic -- a few hundred million campaign dollars to get Keystone passed was merely the price of doing business for some of the worst polluters on earth. These polluters are trying to disguise what has been described as a billionaire carbon bomb.

As Salon.com reported this past spring, "The Keystone XL pipeline isn’t just about oil and gas companies. It’s also about the Koch brothers and their vast influence over the Republican party. That influence extends as well to Canada’s oil sands."

The Washington Post reports: a subsidiary of Koch Industries, owned by bros Charles and David, is among the land’s largest lease holders.

Here's who would benefit from Keystone XL:

●Cenovus Energy (Canada) 1.57 million (includes rights to an air weapons range)

●Athabasca Oil Corp. (Canada) 1.56 million

●Koch (U.S.) 1.12 million to 1.47 million

●Canadian Natural Resources (Canada) 1 million

●Suncor (Canada) 986,000

"According to the Washington Post, "The link between Koch and Keystone XL is, however, indirect at best. Koch’s oil production in northern Alberta is “negligible,” according to industry sources and quarterly publications of the provincial government. Moreover, Koch has not reserved any space in the Keystone XL pipeline, a process that usually takes place before a pipeline is built. The pipeline also does not run anywhere near Koch’s refining facilities. And TransCanada, owner of the Keystone routes, says Koch is not expected to be one of the pipeline’s customers.

Still, the activist group that is publicizing the figures about Koch holdings in the oil sands – the International Forum on Globalization – is arguing that Koch will benefit indirectly. The IFG contends that the Keystone XL pipeline will create competition among rail and other pipelines and lower transportation costs for all oil sands producers, bolstering profit margins and making additional reserves economically viable."

This isn't happening in a vacuum, but there you are scratching your heads. Maybe some search terms might help: Cholla Power Plant, Navajo Generating Station, Peabody Energy, Koch Industries, Keystone Pipeline, cheaper gas, coal industry in trouble. It's all about a flood of dark money percolated to the surface in the form of what these politicians are now saying. It's a Citizens United flood that doesn't discriminate, a saturation strategy to buy any politician across the gerrymandered nation who will serve the oil and gas industry. They are out in force now championing the desires of their masters.

And they could care less if the pipeline crosses every major tributary, and every major aquifer, west of the Mississippi River.

Arizona's 'rugged individualism,' demythologized, reveals a Southwestern civilization on life support

     Exposing a myth is easy enough to do. Just takes a little research. But to eradicate it from the state of Arizona's group-think, liberating the masses into a real-world view, well, that's really pissing in the wind. This comes to me after creeping all over the web for research on Arizona's bad ol' political argument between members of the GOP who want to be governor. It's a nasty fight. The weapons are idiotic campaign commercials, usually aired around the "news" hour, that period of the day when television viewers are dipped into the shallow waters of the local newsreaders, and then, fully prepped, sent into the slick furies of the national network news.
     In between, as if the actual reports aren't propaganda enough, viewers have been inundated all summer with pretty much the same campaign commercials, over and over, with little variation ... let's face it, neo-cons aren't real well known for having a lot of imagination, variety not being the spice of conservative life ... and even the GOP party boss in the state has had enough, asking the candidates to cut it out, the negatives are too amplified. Guess he was afraid the voters might be hard to deprogram after months and months of this, and the presumptive Democrat, Fred DuVal might win.
     The point is, one Republican candidate, Doug Ducey, is accused of getting a government bailout due to the failure rates and financing, in general, for his Cold Stone ice cream franchises. Another candidate, Christine Jones, is on the commercial repeat mode over sending "Obama the bill" for border enforcement. And how either political advertisements jibe with the truth hardly matters in this, the age of repeat something often enough and it becomes true. This Orwellian reinvention of the past, over time, can get a little maddening. For myself it got so bad, it didn't even take a political commercial to put me over the edge (that is, to inspire an extended commentary). Nope, it was an ice cream commercial that boasted Arizonans are "fiercely independent."
     That's a load of crap. A common mistake about the West, in general. The American Southwest owes its very civilization to the federal government. And Arizona is completely on life support in myriad ways. For example, without water from the Central Arizona Project, a federal project carrying water from the Colorado River to Phoenix and Tucson, such cities would have never grown to blob status. Before that was built, before Arizona was even a state, the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 set up the possibility of raising federal funds for irrigation projects across the West. Because the Southwest is a drought-dry desert, and anyone who lives there is essentially receiving only slightly less life support than what's needed on the moon.

     But you really have to worry when the Washington Times, founded by a strange South Korean cult leader, and  is therefore as cranky and dilute, intellectually, as an inflatable pig, starts to pay attention to western politics. Such was the case when the online opinion editor Monica Crowley wrote on July 16, 2014, that the American West is "a region that remained most faithful to the nation's founding principles of personal freedom, rugged individualism and economic freedom." Clearly, as she raised the ghosts of Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and their rejections of "Big Government," the opinion editor for has seen too many John Wayne movies. Arizona born, but raised in New Jersey, her vision of the West is nothing short of infantile. In addition to being legally blonde for the right-wing newspaper in Washington D.C., Crowley also is a "foreign affairs analyst" for FOX News. Analysis, off these shores, no doubt inspired by Rambo fantasies. Because the truth is, regardless of the Orwellian pipeline of the right, leans more toward the reality that politicians will pretty much kill for their piece of the federal pie.
     For example, in 2011 Cronkitenewsonline.com reported "Federal funds flowing to Arizona have doubled in the past 10 years." Citing the U.S. Census Bureau, the report states "Arizona residents, governments and businesses received $64 billion in federal money in fiscal 2010, more than double what the state received in 2001 ." (This year it was reported that Arizona ranked 10th in the nation for federal funds.)
      That amounts to $10,080 per person in Arizona. The national average is $10,460.
      "The biggest increase in federal funds to Arizona over the past decade was not in salaries or welfare payments, but in federal grants to the state and to local jurisdictions, which grew from $5.4 billion in 2001 to $14.4 billion (in 2010)," the report states, a 164 percent increase that occurred while the state's population grew 20 percent, from 5.3 million people to 6.4 million. The very notion that Arizona is "fiercely independent" doesn't score very high when, according to Ballotpedia.org, the state is No. 8 in the nation in terms of federal aid to state budgets, more than Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. The very notion that these staunch tax resisters live out in the boonies, far from the corporate city enclaves of Phoenix and Tucson must be dispelled when seven of 14 Arizona counties are above the national average in terms of receiving federal funds. The largest is Cochise County in southern Arizona, which receives $23,531.74 per capita.
      How this could be is the root of the myth of the West as somehow being some kind of island of do-it-yourself virtues, and also helps to explain why Arizona continues to breed such weird political animals. All kinds of ironies persist. State residents, consisting mainly of conservatives and so-called "independents" are unhinged from the truth by politicians playing either a pretty cynical game, or, are so dyslexic over the state's real history they have merely swallowed the Kool-Aid. The truth is out there, somewhere far in the southwestern deserts of the state, waiting to explode like some kind of unexploded ordnance on the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, 1.9 million acres of bomb targeted rock and dust roughly the size of Connecticut (so be forewarned Yankees). Yes, Arizona's elected are pretty strong on defense, the largest portion of the federal budget, and, a huge part of Arizona's economy.
     When asked about why Cochise County receives $23,531.74 per capita, the finance director for the county, according to the Cronkitenewsonline.com report, "attributed the disproportionately high federal purchases and salary payments in the county to the Fort Huachuca Army Base there." In addition to that southernmost point surveillance and communications post, the cities of Phoenix and Tucson are also on the life support systems offered by the military industrial complex, And it has come to the point that it's more than just doing what's right for national defense. For example, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) did gymnastics to land the $1 trillion F-35 aircraft training site at Luke Air Force Base, despite once calling the program's price tag "one of the great national scandals."
     McCain was in no mood for mythmaking when he told AZ Capitol Times that "potential defense spending cuts could cost thousands of jobs and $3 billion to the state's economy." Yes, it takes a little manure to make the grass green, and rainmaker McCain did all that he could to plow the field. He inserted $14.3 million in a 2003 defense bill so Sun Cor Development could get its way to buy 122 acres around Luke Air Force Base. At the time, McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers explained the senator "wanted to prevent the Pentagon from closing Luke." (That worked out okay, but Sun Cor went belly up in 2012.)
     Indeed, pork knows best. According to Forbes, as a percentage of GDP, Arizona is among the top 10 states (ranked No.8), receiving nearly three percent of all defense spending, $2,321 per resident. Tucson is among the top 10 for military spending or contracts, receiving $4.9 billion per year. The entire state accounts for 96,000 jobs, $9.1 billion in annual economic output and $401 million in state and local taxes. It's no wonder that politicians (even democrats) defend this militaristic welfare system even when, for example, the brass is saying it doesn't need the aging A-10 Warthog attack planes anymore, they will lobby and legislate to keep the funds coming in for another year.
    Yes, the myth is easy to dispel but hard to eradicate. As Phoenix Business Journal political reporter Mike Sunnucks wrote, "Despite its conservative politics, Arizona has always been a huge beneficiary of federal spending."
     Show us a candidate who believes success in business entitles them to an elected post and I'll show you a politician who has found ways to make government work for themselves. And show us an opponent opposed to Big Government, and I'll show you a politician afraid to speak out against the defense budget. Yes, when the mists of myth clear, the storm still rolls on.

The Day the Tornado 
Struck the Burbs 
in the Arizona Desert

Yesterday came suddenly, sang Paul McCartney all those years ago. I was 12 years old, no doubt watching "Wallace and Ladmo." Little beep, beep, beeps went up on the TV screen (if those weather system warnings on the bulletin bar on the bottom screen actually worked like that, back then). Hard to remember ...

I had just moved from Texas to the Country Estates subdivision at 58th Place and Shea Boulevard six days before. On the seventh day, the rain came.

Well, not so much rain. At least, not at first. The details of that day still linger. The visual impact the storm of 1972 created is still in my expressions better than any DVD could possibly replicate. More than 40 years ago now. Imagine. See it. Feel it. Almost smell it. The ozone in the days of Oz!

Back then a new plat in the Country Estates subdivision was like a cookie-cutter parcel of the moon. Sure, there was mesquite all over, but once the fences sliced-and-diced the place, all of the new back yards were, until the landscaper arrived, squared-off hotbeds of fine whitish, powdery dust. On that day or any other, the dust would get stirred up into swirls of volatile air, called "Dust Devils."

Arizona still gets "Dust Devils" now and then, but with the paradising effect that's gone on since these bad 'ol days, the name is being lost with all of the horny toads, rattlers and coyotes running for cover from civilization. Suddenly, it gets windy. Then, it's not. You'd hardly notice it. But on that day, June 22, 1972, the whole greater Paradise Valley area, basically the Indian Bend Wash basin, from Mummy Mountain to the McDowell Mountains, was a whirling set of such dervishes, a practical ballet performance, as weather patterns go.

Anyway, I tell this story to newcomers to Arizona a lot because it teaches something about the monsoons (which this wasn't) and the history of Scottsdale (a lost great body of knowledge that exists, if it exists at all, in the archives of the old Scottsdale Progress and the Scottsdale Historical Society).
The story doesn't actually begin with myself watching "Wallace and Ladmo," the old TV kids show, but with what I was doing when I came home as I was watching Wallace, and, of course, Ladmo.

He was mad about something, dad was. Not Ladmo and his Lincoln-esque top hat, where is Waldo shirt. He was upset, you see, because he just got back from talking to some insurance agent. The story begins when my dad said, right after coming through the door: "They wanted us to buy flood insurance. Those (bleeps!). Don't they know this is the desert?"

Country Estates is on the northern banks of the Indian Bend Wash. With the exception of a few golf courses, as it flowed to the Salt River, it was still a desert wash with mesquite and sage and rabbits and mice and prairie dogs. In the spring, lots and lots of butterflies. When it rained, even the slightest, downtown Scottsdale would be in need of Noah's Ark.

The next start of the story, after the beeping TV warning, after my dad's now famous last words, flows in this direction: Hail stones, the size of golf balls, plopping, puft, puft, puft, into super-heated, white hot dust. Then the wind came. Then came some more. Every dot of dust and debris not tied down flew by sideways by the windows, as if the Creator were converting the new suburban environment into something akin to a black day on Mars.

The roof began to wail. Fences picked up and were lifted off as wind sails in a scene from the black-and-white segment of "The Wizard of Oz."

Then, I look out the window, and saw a tower, a dirt vortex, well up into the sky, up and out of the frame, cascading off nearby Mummy Mountain.

Now, even before this, tornadoes have freaked me out. Sure, Dorothy's little house-spin into the air, up and back and down into Oz, always left a strong impression. But also this: Members of his grandfather's immediate family, including his mother and father, had been killed by a tornado in West Texas (and he had to raise his younger siblings by himself as a teen). So, fear of tornadoes is pretty much in the DNA.

So, what did I do? Run? Scream? Duck and cover? No. I decided to go outside and get a better view. Went through the front door. Looked up. It was a big, brown, swirling behemoth. Or, that's what the eyes, as dust bits pelted hid face and sandblasted my hair and my mother screamed "Get back in here!" - that's what my eyes still feel, see and remember.

There was no time to do the classic, heartland-style, get-into-the-cellar maneuver. No time to even get into the hallway, away from the windows. But by God's grace (as well as the seeming lack of it) the tornado hit the house across the street, destroyed a roof, killed their dog, hopped then over the entire Country Estates neighborhood, and then landed again, turning Shea Boulevard and points northward into a Vietnam era-, Robert McNamara-style playground pathway of near total destruction. Hundreds of homes had varying degrees of damage. Uncounted numbers were rendered, national-TV-news style, into images of flattened rubble.

Then, the winds passed. A half-mile away, looking toward Shea, a boulevard named after a Union General at Gettysburg, you could see nothing but the wrecked frames of bombed-out homes and flashing red emergency lights.

Then, it began to rain. In fact, it rained for a day. In fact, it rained four inches in four hours. The Indian Bend Wash became the Indian Bend River. It must have been a mile-wide muddy river, too. But our family never knew. We couldn't even step out of the door for three days as the wash, our street, now a river, flowed on by with every bit of debris and clutter it could pick up. A wash. Indeed! A major Maytag this so-called "Paradise Valley" will always be, say, every hundred years or so.

Now, we could go on and on about not having electricity or water for a week. Or, about how some official landed in a helicopter behind their house, looked around, and then left. How I believe it was the governor come to bless them with his utter and useless amazement. I could thank the Lord for sparing them but punishing the neighborhood with a kind of creative whimsy, and yes, a cosmic sense of timing and selectivity.

It was, after all, right after the first official day of the summer. You could talk about solstices and the equinox and all ...You could ask, why them, but not us? It would be futile, of course, unless you have lived it, to try to fully explain the impact of this storm on me, my family, and yes, this burgeoning city called Scottsdale. The number of times I have told this story to people:

The day we faced the tornado: I saw it in the window. Dust was blowing all around, saw it there, bigger than the black and white version in the Wizard of Oz. Him ran outside. Him remembers pinpricks of dust hitting his face and his mother screaming to get into the house. Him, big heap tornado boy, leaned into the wind. It ran hot and cold. The tornado high in view, A roof off a house down the street, and went back inside, barricaded in the hallway, or tried to, but there wasn't enough time. God knows what was running through him big father's mind because his father's family had been killed by a tornado in West Texas. All that is known is after the winds died down, after the new saplings were pulled out of the ground, after it seemed liked the wind picked up their back yard and deposited it somewhere west of their neighborhood ... the change had begun.

Oak Creek Fire

Set the silver watch

to the price being right,

the Oak Creek Canyon fire

needs to die tonight

As the rain dancers gather

for a fly above the San Francisco Peaks,

in the valleys the clouds,

seeded by puffs of purple smoke

collect and circle

to the holy resolution

for a secret peace,

the gravity running to ground,

life as electricity for a brief lease

as minotaurs tower and Kachinas

yearn to speak to lost souls

drying like water in their graves

Five miles east

wind in my face

and the fire plume,

a violet volcano

Five miles east, but close enough,

the white wash coat of burned juniper

forcing the Saturn in the nostrils,

the mountain fizzling out

in a downpour, monsoon downdrafts

blowing ash into a many shouldered beast

We went home and made a list

of what we would need when

the call for evacuation came,

craving a disaster to bring

the memory awake, the dreaming down.

Great thin-legged clouds spiderwalk

their way across the red ridge,

red with weather; precious things

shake in their cupboards, forgotten.

Lightning pounds the mesas,

the wind pushing down in atomic bundles

of white orange flasks of violence,

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

a blowout of compressed desires

pressing the sky, re-animating us

Street Sweep

Exhume the dust for me

as you go by, a symmetric stormy monster,

a dinosaur adorned in flashing alien lights

yellowing out my bedroom window

as you sneak across the road in a roar

turning up the dirt, the street sweeper

O sure, everything is allowed at the service

of the oil age, automatic as the agonized sky,

a pusher man prone to the wheeled Brontosaurus,

clouding up the gassy metrics, a ton of dunes

ruining the atmosphere already

increasingly painful to breathe

Your weekend worship of the highways and byways,

the white salts and manicured molecules

spun up by tires and thrusts and egos

turning the corners hard, the insecurities

of motorized minds, tarnishing the trashy homes

with insiders hardly aware of the poisons

foisted upon the detritus of man,

blending with throat burns and sneezes,

the polychemical wheezes for a death dance

dialed up by the need for speed,

for time machines littering the pathways

running over the civic plan lands,

creating scars on kites, noxious fumes

for birds, sick on the way to the animal hospital,

the skies gone brown, gone to paste,

the karma kills of what comes around,

goes around

All typed up in Courier,

the ink is dry as the messenger

is hung from the brittle forest

of toilet paper and trees

The ax men came by this week

and cut the lone tree on the block down;

must have been more than an half-century old,

and this typewriter is my counterweight

Stiff in the wind, drying fast as central California,

the last water is water that won't last,

and the centrifuge of the rude work crew,

hooped and howled when they chopped it down

The undeclared war on nature, represented

in this microcosm of pointless foolishness

was at the service of the power company

and the shade is gone and my heart is numb

For war is peace for satiated kings and queens

selling us sweet drinks to suck down

or the big high five with unwashed hands,

the blood and guilt gone soft

as the lost daughters and sons

circle the dead branches, the stumps left over,

speechless and mute; the shade

lost and gone as the seizure winds

crossing the mountain ranges,

stirring up heat and dust ...

Soon, they'll be begging for the stuff

from shore to stormy shore

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