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

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.

The Secret Report
of the Night
of the Last Knight

 

He was once

a young man,

dressed nice,

in a blue shirt,

red tie, driving

a green Jag straight

down white lines,

but the T-shirt underneath

wore a pirate skull

which he only threw

into a laundry bag

maybe once, twice

a month, and his pockets

were only full of change.

He was the last knight last night.

He was swept away in a summer sandstorm.

He was a seven-tweet non-talker.

He was definitely not the lady stalker.

He was more of a pre-planned thing.

He who came to get one key,

was found to be missing,

like dinosaur chasing

a lightning bolt gone crazy

in a Twenty-first century

schizoid void.

And we were all watching the war.

And we tied ourselves down and faced the wind.

And we were all watching what water does.

And we were all claiming the key was gone.

And we were all eating the Tin Man's heart.

And we all threw the bones to Toto, too.

The sea was dumped into a pail

and then wifi came, he began to sail ...

and then whiff, whiff, whiff,

the water sank ... and whiff,

whiff, whiff ... wifi sank

into cracks in the earth,

and mud gathered in the corners

of the earth, and the high school peak

of alchemical man all fell down the hill.

A detective was hired by a private firm.

A detective was hired to learn all he could learn.

A detective returned with ashes in an urn.

A detective said sorrow was a golden tax return,

that the guardian was gone, had run away,

and it definitely was not a pre-planned thing.

So we rebuilt the modern world.

So we went up and down, burning it all down.

So we fell in love with the dragon girl.

So we stole the thunder and lived in rusted ruins.

So we made the waves to make steel shudder.

So we served the sheep dog meals of bones.

So we drank the waterfall down to fountains

of dust, stunned to sleep before the golden dawn.

It was O so definitely a pre-planned thing

Thunderbolt

Shyla is Blue Love Now

for Shyla the Sheriff, 1998-2011

You will find her

beneath the stairs

staring at your feet,

but seeing your head,

all white-masked and wolfie

Ordering in, ordering out:

You'll find her naked,

running mildly about,

rocking chair and bouncy

When the pizza man

Arrives at our doors

You'll find her lighter,

mightier, than the most devout,

far better than fighters and dividers

in Las Vegan, New Mexico,

Keeping me company

When you, my love,

Have gone insane and winds,

Solar in nature, terminating

The phones with crackle

And invisible light,

Make it impossible to speak

They find her in Las Vegas,

at two a.m. times two,

turning toward the TV,

With ears for radar absorbing

The stirring sounds of the Earth

And growing sicker, each day,

For debates about the deadbeat,

For laughter on the sell-out shows,

Her old lady fur coming out in tufts,

Ready for the door to open,

Mouthing the words, “out, out, out.”

You find her brilliant, lit,

deviate with experimental DNA

and sane, still as death: listening

for the Jefferson Airplane

To land on ice,

for the sound of scraping,

for the blue-shift echo

of the first sounds of defeat,

for the skeletal sleds

Off-shore, behind

Snow-dabbed trees

in British Columbia

You'll find her in forty eight

states of being on forty eight

motel room keys, thumbing dumb,

The door monkey: O, if she can

Only solve that one riddle,

The door nob, then she

Won’t need you … we, us;

Because she only needs

The scent of roses,

The yellow pedals, in a slow,

Elegant walk, a well-timed

Roll in the grass,

The one thing you can depend

On, like the rising Sun, the spring,

The Malamute shepherd wolf-bred

version of the moonlit Angel of Mons.

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/

Penumbra

This is about the word, "Satan"

This is about "Jesus," chased by light

This is about the demarcation zone

     moving on the moon

This is about the sun

This is about the earth

This is about the material world

     shaking like a ghost in the machine

This is also about Elvis and JFK

and Herbet Hoover and Sheriff Joe Arpaio:

This is about all of the snakes in the grass

     hunted down by electronic kittens

This is also about, but not limited to,

the undefined demarcation zones

of the infinite, worlds within words,

     rescued by the rational real mathematics

This is about the question of which is better,

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

This is also about noticing more details

     by walking to your mailbox

This is about the frequency, Kenneth

This is about the code for those in the know,

and the great whole planet of supposedly

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

This is not about banks

This is not about tanks

This is also, but limited to

     the narcolepsy of football

This is not about the eye

     in the pyramid, nor the AOL

     of the mind's eye

This is about the eternal robust

engine of change and the need to conserve

the present in its proper place, lacking time

~

Douglas McDaniel

Mythville, America

http://mythville.blogspot.com/

Devolution of Arizona

Arizona, I don't recognize you anymore

Your creosote roots lie beneath

the perfect piles of McDonalds parking lots

Arizona, an unequal symmetry

of rubble piles collect

Ten thousand miles from here,

the angry sun awakes, a lion,

the wind pulls sacred smoke

around the window

and out the door

I scream into silence

Arizona, you are responsible ...

The middle-aged businessman

with expendable income

sweats for pleasure

and I feel

"pretty peppered"

by it all

Arizona, when can I stop swearing?

I swear in the heat like a pizza oven

Arizona, you are a car part store

but you got no glass to see through

and the beige collection

of air-conditioned caves

are conditioned to respond

in all the right meets wrong ways

The forests are in ashes

as the governor gapes

from a helicopter high

for the diversionary tactic

of the the unrael politic

and asks the spotlight

to "move on"

The spotlight will not

"move on," the world

is watching

Arizona, I can find no fluid,

no friend, nor car phone

to lean on

for company ...

The wolf is watching

By GPS, without your bullets in fistfuls

you can find me in the living room,

darkly lit, with rayolight flashing

bible black blurbs

on non-violence

cursing your name

Arizona, not even Ginsberg

would gripe about your tripe,

so blurred with anonymity

hell hardly matters anymore

Arizona, my life's belongings

are melting in a storage facility

and there are more things that beep

here than I can count

my frozen assets

of the heart

Arizona, you haven't hassled me for a while,

though I'm a loose cannon at the mousy mouth

 ... The world is flooding, bleeding,

burning blinding in high winds from above

as you dry up and blow away

Arizona, heart patients are being denied,

a kid got crushed in your parking lot

and I went to one of your social service buildings

and was amazed about how many homeless lurks

were sleeping in the lobby,

dreaming of Mississippi burning

Arizona, I can't get assistance at the cash register

and the mountains are closed, cats run free,

the lizards have disappeared,

to plot secret revenge

to assuage denial

Arizona, you are sucking in souls,

eating them, spitting them out,

at very low wages ...

of sin ... I suppose ...

and six are dead now,

six!

How long? How many more?

Arizona, I think you should

battalion the borders with snow

and big bad bars of soap,

painting you headless

telegraph cross with wires,

tin cans of TNT

and a sacrificed fox

also known as "truth"

~ Douglas McDaniel,

Iowa City, Iowa

Beepee City Blues (Forgive But Don't Forget)

Awake in a captured American city,

wide awake, uncommon and conquered

by Beepee, of thee I sing: see the greenish

star sign, flag of my new queen, no king ...

And so this is the new valley, forged

by a poisoned sea. You see? I stared

into your dark and bubbling gurgle

of gore, too long, and now I have lost

my heart, owning my death, drowned

and alive, in little bubbles of grease ...

And yours, in these hours, drifting back

into sleep now, uncovering the brown loam

of anguished grief, in the Paris of the prairie,

dreaming of the fairies, who bleep my name,

cursing my overdone disinfected dysfunction ...

but I'm awake now, pumping into function

At discourse with the junction of light and dark,

on my electronic ark, loading the animals now,

my music, your now now and my then then, to thine

angels we seek truth, cruel, my belly, your barrel

of hell, spelled out now in the sweetspilled spice

of good medicine, served in a box of Davey Jones,

containing my heart at the bottom of the Gulf,

and birds drop out of the sky

between me and you ...

crashing, singing,

"squeak, squeak."

~ Coralville, Iowa

By Douglas McDaniel

http://mythville.blogspot.com/

http://mythvilleondemand.blogspot.com/

http://mythville.twitter.com/

mythville@gmail.com

Eyes Wide Open

America, your Tombstone, Arizona,

stands out, in memorial balloons,

talking heads of post-gunfire analysis,

in anguished memories echoing

gunfire, in flowers left upon

the furnace of revolution,

in the mixed up mindspace

of mistreated man-monster

assassins, in creature comforts

shaken like broken tablets

given by Moses, by the mere

shattered jerking around

of horrifying images

to television commercials

where we are asked

to ask our doctors

We the people are capable

of so much more: Capable

of surgeons able to render

miracles far more healing

than moon missions,

predator strikes

from deep in the sky,

from quick stock fixes,

dialing up foxes,

connected by two-year

contracts on cell phones,

by unholy secret armies

unleashed upon the world

but now rendered

in one sick sad baldface

mad hatter joker fuck,

who decided to make

history by shedding

your blood, and your children's

children's blood, to make

that point, old pointy,

that no one else could give

a hearing to because,

old shriner shiner,

it pays too much

for the talking skull,

to answer the one question

it can't answer for itself: Why?

The map is fully dotted now,

with hands holding hands

and yet we can't all seem

to becalm the energies

flowing from the angry sun

because, dear masters,

the amplified drug lords

of commerce, offer more

ailments, sick sad treatments

that have nothing to do

with love, just money,

just time for bull markets

and disinformation

We can dream,

point to our heroes,

and tolerbrate

a forgivenness

of our sins,

sometimes

only as long

as the car ride

home

Clearly, nature

is doing its damndest

to show us our faces,

our spewing missed

places as fomenters

of foul foams

guzzling up

from the bottom

of our beer bottles

and polarized teas

Listen to the water,

America; listen

for gentle silenced

sounds, in cattle cars

racing by, in delivery

trucks chasing us around

with backwards beeping

to greet each morning,

to failures to answer

the myriad echoes

of grieving sisters

for suicide cults

set too hard

on logic chopping,

on passions, on reason,

to the revolutionary

flavors of the season,

to rocket ships made

for secret mission masters,

to lies sold as truth

in penciled in televised

image makers, harbingers

of false light, false words,

false perpetrators

of plans against you,

America, plans beyond

pure reason, just plans,

authority zones of controls

intended for our sponsors

of capital gains, tax dodges,

miniscule media channels

to jail up the Jonahs,

the Joans, arching , marching,

moving forward to nurture us,

to set love right, for Job,

so he can no longer suffer

in the error of St. Paul's

jealous rage and error

Fear, no mind reader,

can open our eyes

for the first time, America,

open them, now, read see feel

your own bodies, connected

to the whole earth,

not just your slicing borders

for the first rotten time

~ Douglas McDaniel

Iowa City, Iowa

http://mythville.blogspot.com/

http://mythvilleondemand.blogspot.com/

http://twitter.com/mythville

mythville@gmail.com