Sympathy for the Church Lady

Little Napoleon Antoinette

Stump in stature, gravity cursed,

the cross of Jesus hung

to the solar plexis of his chest,

holding him clutch to the hearth,

amplifying his Fundamentalist rage

toward the fly shit that surrounds him,

Politicking for a patron saintly state

of spotless oblivion in a "Freedom" T-shirt,

a tyrant rueful and fussy, grasping, invading,

leaning in to your every movement,

on the hunt for some dark relic for accusation,

throwing a wheel-chair-wounded Santa

out into the palm-lined heat island street,

loathing all he oppresses, the diamond necklace

affairs of the abode humming with OCD tension,

looking for the comfort zone in Christian skies,

hammered as a child for being left-handed,

& there's a secret silence in the mausoleum

now gone Bauhaus with printed paper squares

loaded with nanny state reminders,

authoritarian messaging issuing plain threats

as the ghosts of fear flow beneath shallow ice

since you can't compete with the Church Lady,

made of such over-sweet hysterical charity,

munching on wafers in the salted land,

loaded with dinero, never losing a penny,

bringing in an old grey, two of three strikes

already, a new cash cow for the pews,

complaining to his Lord & anyone else

who isn't listening. The falcon, the falconer

in a mismatch of abstract repressionism:

Nobody likes me here and I don't give a fuck,

calling everyone "assholes" as he ascends into the air,

& then, returning from the sin he failed to forgive

a giant mad mouse too small to roar

killed a broken man to clean a floor.

So they wave hosannas & roses & coins

& the perfect cure for donkey dung

satisfying the need to be in his lonely dream,

but he turns around and eats you, bone clean.

~ Douglas McDaniel,

Tolleson, Arizona

Mythville Bookstore

Burn Night

On the night amassed media

burned in pure blue-orange light,

the full moon was out and crisp

& Ayn Rand ruled the Eighties

& in the swing to the right

the devil's dark vinyl delight,

a bonfire organized by the local

zealot church on the Arizona sage,

mom & dads & kiddos with matches,

lighter fluid & stacks, boxes and boxes

full of records, pictures and books,

the glow of the fire in their faces.

In goes Santa, in goes Garfunkel

while Simon's mug is stamped out ash,

Tony Bennett percolating crispy plastic,

molten-lava disks sizzle and bubble

and you can see Salem in the shadows

as Chuck Berry bursts into flames,

cracklin' Lennon & barbecued Barbarella,

the smoke rising in the star-struck sky.

"But I liked that record," says one small boy.

"No, they are from Satan," says the tall mom.

Twenty Earth orbits later, that youngster tried

writing on his back, painting on his head,

his imagination an empty wound wondering

whatever happened to the coming of locusts,

whatever happened to the day of the arrival,

but all that he heard was the death beat

& he tried to ride his bike across the desert

but he could see no further than the skyscraper

towering over his mouth, vivisecting his voice,

& he can only bark, bark, bark one stupid song.

~ Douglas McDaniel

Mythville Bookstore

Talking Head Injury

Laser-eye-lined game faces flood the electric air of the box

as limousines, slender and black, come down the block,

moving into position like tanks at the Western Front.

Surrogates for each campaign sauntering up to the bar.

Summoning the witch winds. Discussing the Latino

vote in battleground states: Are we at war?

Impersonating Nancy Pelosi,

the pink jacket and liberal jewels,

head bobbing like a pumpkin

at a Grateful Dead concert

Let us be healthier, stronger, all get along,

back to being productive, a real opportunity

to get back on our feet. Father Gawd!

Amazing what greed does to people.

Amazing what drugs do to people.

Amazing what amazement

does to people.

Do you mind if I 

rest for a few hours

beneath the sand

until I can stop the bleeding?

~ Douglas McDaniel

Mythville Bookstore

Dickheads in the House

Please allow the congresswoman lady of Las Vegas to speak:

Hand me my writeup. Thank you. We have issues, fix the needs,

in need of fixes, the autumnal enterprise angle has been diffused

& the trolls are rolling across the dais, the Hamilton Papers stolen,

the electoral ballots spirited from the room as General Lee comes to his mark,

begging for funds for his district to test the coldness of ice cream,

saying he'll bet a twenty-dollar-bill that his consumers, um, voters,

all well-bred on sugar, carbohydrates and Fox News fear

will keep the machine calibrated in a Discordian fall of hot, tired,

predator killers in the kitchen of Democracy as the Church Lady sings,

"Burn, them all, burn them all, burn them all to the ground. Hearye. Hearsay,"

as the Capitol lawns smolder into embers like the Library of Alexandria,

and the mingling of billionaire hillbillies in the backrooms of Congress,

votes there/not votes there, leaving the money to do all of the talking,

the Dickheads in the room undaunted but caged elephants all the same,

with a new plan allowing for paid exorcisms, Koch addicts on the ebb,

spastic angels of denial stuck in the methadone drive, the buffalo-headed guy

scratching his fingernails on the chalkboard and no ambulance is in on the way.

~ Douglas McDaniel

Mythville Bookstore

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Forty Days of Fire, Forty Days of Rain (lulu.com)

Particle

Problem,

Spooky

Green-eye sincere as corn flakes

giving you no chance for the "Ya, but,"

because they are calm and superior

with facemasks from God,

red blushes in blue faces

rushing fast to meet your denial,

silencing and disabling the doubter,

the electro-manic daemonic energy

flowing, throwing their skulls and bones alight,

each believer trying to out-believe

the other believers,

thus defining how religions are born

when at least two psychotics or schizophrenics

come to a Lake Placid agreement.

~

Many Christians over gauzy years,

battles and the bandages,

hounding and pounding,

wives and mother-in-lows,

bleach-blonde with pushed-out faces,

squealing pigs in the soft blanket

of their supposed salvation,

a hideous dream and source

of mass mental illness,

just ask the Cathars and Salem's wild-eyed children,

donkeys braying into the darkness,

hideous dreaming of the old man,

in a burned-black trench-coat,

invisible face, nameless but named,

who finds their interior lighting

out of order, for they are squalid,

weak, in need of permission,

blind in the dark con games of man,

yearning for an eternal life 

they never needed to ask for

since the day they were born.

... Only fools would argue with such people.

In the Yugoslavian war

they artfully assassinated the autocrat

with satire not playing fair,

with street-poster-protest comic laughter

clearing the fear in air of the square.

~

Recent revelations

in quantum metaphysics,

hard science, starry physics:

A sub-atomic particle splits,

the new pair continues to rotate in unison,

no matter how far the distance

indicating a cosmos

of constant union,

breaking the holy bank,

 the notions of false gods,

illusions of separation,

leaving no divide, eternally

in a universe of one,

happening in bloody Bethlehem,

Gaza and Rome,

happening on the turbulent sun,

and the never-turning moon.

- Douglas McDaniel,

Meteor Crater, Arizona

https://americanmythville.blogspot.com/2024/08/particle-problem-spooky-green-eye.html

Mythville