The Sheriff Joe Playbook

 With bull-head Taurus directedness

into the point of a historic cone,

getting a fix to break us with spurs,

shattering to checkmate in parking lot light,

they said he had a gun as he slept in his car,

and so they blew him away, away, away,

blood-flashing his face into molecules,

the white cop firing nineteen times,

several others, for backup, still more enough,

Dead enough. As a law-enforcement officer,

and, a politician, Joe made a comedy of contempt

& now the old ghosts are sifting, 

lifting, mouths forming, 

documented plans for the next fear state.

Fear of Mexicans. In favor of more baloney.

Fear of transsexuals. In favor of beef.

The mad-red-hatted king in perfect position

for another checkmate, no more angles

will the dude abide, no better angels.

More favor for bootlicking and the raiding

of apartment complexes full of Hispanics,

beaming ray-o-light cleaning power,

Summoning the trains. Fear of ourselves.

Fear of the Others. More favor for camps

and complexes for mass mania transport,

more favor for babies in cages, ignoring

the whisps of smoke signaling apocalypse

in California. Less favor for the human stain.

More favor for a glitter that lasts, shines & shines.

Making America grope again. And now I go

off like the first malcontent at the mutiny,

fortified for any riot, waiting for them

to boil us all in the greasy milk

of their sacrificial goat.

- Douglas McDaniel,

Tolleson, Arizona

Pirates of Jerusalem

Looked into God's eye, a skull and crossbones
appeared in the coronal port, lit-dark, a protest
perhaps, a sudden-link message, a flash,

the fleet of the damned, ghosts
of Templar Scots from Malta
secreting deep cargo at night,
descending castle towers with ropes,
dropping loot to men in panic:
The Catholics are coming!

Red & white armies are coming!
All is unwell at the well
where the barking birds
whistle and five dollars
may as well be five hundred
Drums whisper, the gentle
lilting flute falls on deaf ears;
the Catholic Blues Band
is just too damn loud.
Listeners can only hear
the deep down out and clink
of patio chairs as the damn
breaks at the wanderlust dusk
seven years after we exchanged
a white shirt for black,
the barkers are back.
We scream into the night:
All is quite well at the well ...
all is well, well, well
and the contrasts
in the gloaming,
so stark, form rainbows
gleaming from bed bug eyes,
young bucks, fresh faces
as the last boat is loaded
and pointed toward
an imagined meridian line:
Thank sweet Jesus we didn't
cross the continent
in a Mussolini time.

Stand up bass, white shirt, cowboy hat,
sunlight, a bit bright, sunglasses, ebony dark,
as the drum circles behind me
at the first water well drilled in Flagstaff
percolates into the overculture
of red rocks rock-a-billy Jerusalem stuff,
celebrating the gasohaulic furies
of people who cannot let go:
O, to whatever
hearing I have left,
praise thee Baphomet!
Look here, in the cold air,
off-peak hours, the cinder
is soft, a softened crown
to the daemons all drowned
as the stratus clouds
of shielded sun
offers solace & a place,

a below-zero, red shifting,
purposeful center to be,
pumping the heartbeat pulse
of Captain Bob Marley

sailing across the waves.

~ Douglas McDaniel
Mythville, America

Mythville Shrugged

A dark red star glows in Vologda,

camouflage tanks tumbling 

with baskets on their heads,

rolling like loaded dice 

covered in napalm,

moving at a Sirius pace 

toward the intersects

of civilization, spawning big hordes

in the over-population boom,

funded through the benefits

of centralized banks, centralized control.

Reports dance across the map,

daily eliminations bolstered

by mere economics,

picking off the meek

McNamara style,

blueberry bombers & vanilla fighters

& tangy submarines, Leviathan beasts

from crimson kingdoms, flying dragons

& air-raid sirens & amber flames

nightbirds buzzing, hawks hunting man.

The apocalyptic rock

goes tick, tock. Tick. Tock.

Eleven-o-clock-a-rocking.

Neo-psychedelia connecting to the Christos.

Meanwhile, money laundering fiends

with bucket-list totalitarian dreams,

avaricious as black & yellow bees, 

selling condos at Wounded Knee,

pirate-planking the deep waters

of the History Channel, clipping,

chipping away, like rabid green 

conservative turtles 

from some aquamarine Disney scene

as the lights go out in Flatland, Texas.

Red-neck denizens drum up the dumb,

expressing abstract repressionism,

Bible black & chunky in church-lit light,

junked up on party polemics,

teething down brown babies

& collecting all of the silver keys.

Atlas sluggers, apple pluggers,

 terrible beauties born into deep state plumbers

wearing purple passion rubbers, 

tempted & red-hatted, zombified,

gathering in Periander, Segeum & Cleophon,

farting up clouds of calamitous pandemonium,

drifting masked Krakens 

of disinformation floating

across the lands, teamed up

with stoned pilots high on speed

& the Almighty,

bashing the rubble to ashes

right down to the basements,

scything the ethereal peoples

for their personal redemption,

because when the President 

reads the Good Book

somebody is unbound to die.

Oh yes, in this dimension

the Nazis won the war

and live in luxury,

making rockets in Huntsville, Bama Jamma,

invading the moon, buying all of the cheese,

all of the crackers, the corn farms & refineries,

black-boot-stomping madly

for the petroleum bump,

as you try to manage

a Predator drone video screen,

hovering in the moonless 

Russian night deep in Vologda

but the lights go off & the music stops

in your bunker on Midway Island,

leaving the grid to display a snowy

heart-beat-pattern shaped by the green sea,

grainy unicorns running

in a hive pattern of Fibonacci edges,

Admiral but ordinary as the lights go out

in Berlin, Paris & Rome, Mars and Mar-a-Lago

tiny toy aircraft dropping broken arrows

on charcoal landscapes,

leaving grey matter & blood splatter

 as an empty crate explodes

in the Port of Baltimore, 

the lights going out, Poe's ravens

dropping death from the sky, 

cancelling all of the football

& the daily reports

on the genocide in Gaza

as rats rule the roosts

in the encampments of Ukraine,

where the lights are also going out, 

wild in the field as flies

as Foucault's Pendulum swings

& the DNA of Qumran is daggered

by new age Hassan-I-Sabbah

and the lights go out

in the convenience store sugar shack

& there's a call for a cleanup on aisle three,

clean up on aisle three,

a kid with a handgun.

 Cleanup, Clean Up.

 Aisle three. Aisle ... three.

~ Douglas McDaniel,

Meteor Crater, Arizona

Mythville Books

 

So proudly we stare 

that our weird flag

is still there-ere

And he has a real phone

And he's always alone

In the din of the day

he is sleeping away

O say does that rich bitch

riiiiiiiilleee

know how to play-aaaa

In the land of hidden bank fees

and the home of the lie!