Here we go, about 10 years worth of blogs that preceded the MySpace.com blog, My Parking Lot for Words. They were the Genesis for more than 10 books, all either available at iuniverse.com or Lulu.com, by author Douglas McDaniel
Note: Here's a couple from ANGEL OF THE AVENUES, By Doug McDaniel
MILTON MORNING SONG
Celestial heavenly lights blinking
At dawn over Camelback Mountain.
The rose is left in view, rosy
And true. The sky is a blue frame
For madness or his nameless name.
Milton wrote, he choked and smoked:
The mind is its own place,
and in itself,
Can make heaven a hell,
A hell of heaven.
But if this the Void,
it..s a Void of truth.
The stirs of green cirrus streaks
In the cloud, the chair-back
Alignment of Venus and Mars,
The waning dusty moon;
All simple proof there..s no real
Distance between me
And unknowable you.
Silhouette of a Praying Monk,
I smolder and move
to get a better view,
lay my shitty pocket things
into a fire pit and sit
on a merry temporary throne.
Light up. Listen to
a raven..s haunting call,
The trickling of cool waters running
Beneath the surface of the desert:
O Milton, poor bastard, you only
Had it half right. Man, his heart;
The only Void in view.
I climb this tree, O Bard,
And sing a sad song for thee:
Thy sun,
thy surface,
thy furnace.
THE SECOND ECLIPSE
I wept about what I feared,
Feared what she wept,
Wrote up a list of timid sorrows
And faults, fell dead, laying awake,
Trying it out in wordless whispers
Into a mirror: Pride, hypocrisy, manic
Moods and shame; finally fell asleep,
A fuel-stained moment of empty bliss.
She pegged her donkey to a target
And sealed it with a kiss. Told me
I had to wait till the second eclipse.
I turned a half-moon, mooned white my ass,
Unbuttoning my Levi mask of blue ash,
Went back to my puny dry barrio abode,
Listened to the sweet Popsicle truck bells
And faced a loaded lighter. Couldn’t keep still.
Her delicate rebirth. My cold season.
My prayer, a whisper of self-made ritual,
My salty Hohokam tongue licking
Small circles around
The anatomy of love.
You crave my body, I crave you,
When moonlight passes cool.
I live in terror and wonder
Of a woman’s churning bones.
Listening to music
So loud it’s not true.
I could go deaf
Trying not to
telephone you.
THINGS I DIDN'T Do THIS YEAR
Drove down the highway in spring
in a wannabe Corvette.
Thinking of you: As always. As in always.
You know, in Cataract Canyon these days
the runoff will put hair on your ass,
ice cold waters running fast,
hooked on the phone, talking to you.
I had a bill for seventeen million dollars
that I outright refused to pay.
Earlier, the archons of paradise
flew me in for free. I asked again,
and they said, "no." Not this year,
not even the next.
So I ran to kill this thing inside,
crushed nicotine cigarettes
beneath my feet. I burned one
and I thought of Atlanta, burning.
I won't be running like Sherman
through the South.
I won't even be near there,
I promise you, no doubt.
Got a memo from Nantucket.
Knew a woman there who liked to ...
Then the mail pile fell
and the words scattered in the wind,
convenience man came in,
said it was the air-conditioning.
Still couldn't fix that thing
and tomorrow it's goin' to roar.
Had an image of a pretty girl
and I waited by the door.
Put the Blasters on the stereo,
buck'n'bronco rock'n'roll.
Felt your touch in the rhythm,
sweet pie, blue blue eyes.
There's a beach house near Portsmouth.
Won't be there. Made plans for
a Christmas party on a mountaintop,
another bottle of dreams in black light.
BARRIO FIRE KISS
Don't have much time to smoke,
damn, I line up the little critters
in a row upon the ashtray, unfinished
bizness. And unfinished is as business
does and does not. Fear of failure
and whatnot.
What I do know, well, the teen Latinos
line up in the stairwells here,
kissing up a firestorm.
Time enough to swell in the emotions
stirring in your sudden disappearance:
O gawd, how many cassette recordings
you must inspire. O gawd, that hope
you might listen to this song or that,
so you feel what we all end up feeling.
Longing along, leaving it alone.
A kiss under a streetlight, a wave
goodbye. I guess where there's fire,
there's hope. I don't have time to smoke.
DA VINCI BLUES
Consider the totality of stress
on the renaissance man.
Hustlin' to & fro',
talkin' wings off birds,
puttin' eyeballs on kites,
makin' list of daemons.
Start one thing no sooner
you're burning the next green branch,
jugglin' chaos and oozing blood
to congeal the form,
breakin' time's inscrutable pane a' glass
& gettin' no fuckin' sleep in the process.
There are days when ideas
rise in the sequence
of smoke holes to the ceiling,
and you gasp for air,
allowing the muse to take form.
There is no sex life, nada,
no time for introspection,
only invention and monk's tea,
as if mere air were a seven-course meal
before you turn to bed to weep.
TRANSMUTATION
Turn the bad into good.
Glass into sand.
The agent is the pulverizer.
Beat up the plastic.
Improve the soul.
Trauma separator.
Matter turning to smoke.
Three moon shots separatin'
nine stages to nirvana,
seven steps to satan or Sarah.
Think of performance art
and persecution
as one. Fear nothing
and nothingness will run.
Embrace everything,
everything will come.
Leave this place clean
as when you came.
Reflective sand,
driveways paved
with Cibola gold,
mustang mosaic,
round Indian shield...
creativity expands,
censor's cage contracts,
the tao of two is whole.
High performance standards
increase the odds of survival.
O protected one, carry us,
to a higher plane.
While it may not be apparent,
everything is in order.
Mobius strip, everything eternal,
ebbs out, then in, then out again,
the feedback loops gain force
or devour, depending upon
the potency--or, poison,
of the form. Interfere,
as little as possible.
Live in the present.
Study the past.
Know the future,
nature, soul fire,
is a never ending cycle.
Real time is irrelevant.
Strip mine Mobius:
Reduce, solve, practice
what is preached.
Wear often,
a plastic pop bottle hat,
corrugated cardboard shirt,
shoes and old rubber tires,
for a head like an alien.
Who says Augustus
would never amount
to anything?
Douglas McDaniel is publisher of Mythville.com. In past lives, he has served as editor for such national magazines as the Robb Report, Access Internet Magazine and The Diamond, an official publication for Major League Baseball. His literary efforts includes several books of poetry, including “The Road to Mythville,” which is available at iUniverse.com, “Ipswich at War,” and the “The Kachina’s Son.” His poetry has been published in a number of baseball literary journals, including “Spitball,” as well as such Web sites as Troikamagazine.com. Several poems can also be found in an anthology, “Baseball and the Literary Life,” put out by Birch Brook Press, New York. “Human Search Engine,” part of the series that began at Disinfo.com and G21.net as the Mythville Project, is the third book in a series that also begins with “The Bog In the Hole Where the Animals Fell,” leads to "Godz, Cars & Cannon," then, "Human Search Engine" and "William Blake in Cyberspace," and ends with the most recently released, “Glasnost Lost.” The first three works of what Mr. McDaniel calls “speculative non-fiction” are also compiled in a single book: "23 Roads to Mythville." In 2006, he released two new books, "One Quarter Now, One-Click Wars to Come," which is a collection his most recent essays on contemporary culture, and a new book of poetry loosely based on his experience with pedestrian lifestyle in automobile-mad Phoenix, Arizona, "Angel of the Avenues." McDaniel is currently lives in Telluride, Colorado, as a self-publshed, and, of course, radical bookseller.
For more info see:
One Quarter Now, One-Click Wars to Come A collection of essays on the media arts during a time of war, the book looks at everything from cyberwar to video games, as well as technology and violence in the new century. Read more
Telluride Sang Rael Poems written within the vortex of Telluride, Colorado, an eagle's nest for all kinds of weird countercultural activity that's tucked away at 8,600 feet above sea level in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, in this case poetry and essays by Douglas McDaniel, author of "Ipswich at War" and "William Blake in Cyberspace." An experiential launch into the Coloradan ghost town vibe, starting with a poem about "Alta," site of the first use of cross-current electricity in North America; or "Explanation of Arizona," which looks at the southwest from the mythical heights of the Ralph Lauren Ranch. Read more
Experiential author Douglas McDaniel launches himself into a real-life search for the so-called Da Vinci code, driving into the networked thickets of American life, looking for signs of myth and romance in the age of automotive machines. Read more
The journey continues as the quest for myth in an age of information overload leads to online life as an editor for Access Internet Magazine. A story about all human search engines as they chase the ghost in the machine. Read more
Experiential author Douglas McDaniel takes on the visionary art and poetry of William Blake, comparing an otherworldly worldview to that revolutionary, romantic era to our own wild, wired, mythic world.Read more
University Of Arizona
Tucson,Arizona
Graduated: 1983
Student status: Alumni
Degree: Bachelor's Degree
Major: Journalism/Creative Writing
Minor: Social Sciences
1980 to 1983
Chaparral High School
Scottsdale,Arizona
Graduated: 1978
Student status: Alumni
Degree: High School Diploma
Clubs: http://mythville.blogspot.com
http://lulu.com/mythville
http://lulu.com/bardsofmythville
http://www.norazpoets.org
A few days after Sept. 11, 2001, poet and essayist Douglas McDaniel moved to Ipswich, on the North Shore of Massachusetts. A collection of poems from that period of fear and anxiety, as well as the polemic essay, "Media Arts and War."
Poems about the Four Corners area written while author Douglas McDaniel was living in Telluride, Colorado. Read more
23 Roads to Mythville The combined three books of "The Mythville Trilogy" in the one book, an apocalyptic journey across America and meditation on the imposition of order in space, both cyber and dirt real. By experiential author Douglas McDaniel, who explores the mysteries of American networked life ...Read more
Experiential author Douglas McDaniel takes on the visionary art and poetry of William Blake, comparing an otherworldly worldview to that revolutionary, romantic era to our own wild, wired, mythic world. Read more
Join the "Bards of Mythville" for spoken word events the first Wednesday of every month, from 6-8 p.m., at Between the Covers Bookstore in Telluride, Colorado.
Get the latest book by Douglas McDaniel
Many Moons to Mythville Poetry written during a 10-year span of criss-crossing America in a roving-eye view of the turn-of-the-century landscape of Mythville, or, as the author puts it: "It's all a bunch of Mythville." With work from four separate books by Arizona-based author and poet Douglas McDaniel, the bard-inspired voices of Milton, Blake and Yeats, as well as the saturnine streak of early beat poesy, ring through this collection of poems and essays. From the southwestern deserts to the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, "Many Moons to Mythville" is a foot-to-the-floor blast through the mythical roads of American life. Read more
“Cool, modern beat poetry/prose the likes of which would make Kerouac and Burroughs proud. Douglas McDaniel's images make me want hop in my car and take a road trip to some mythical psychedelic diner in a lonely Southwestern town. ‘West Coast Storm Warning’ and ‘What Would Water Do’ are particularly effective poems.”
--Phillip Hardy, author of “Kingdom of the Hollow: The Story of the Hatfields and McCoys”
The Road to Mythville A collection of poems on the new millennium in America, drawing from a decade of bouncing across the country as a journalist and Kerouac-style poet, from the Southwestern deserts to the shores of New England and back again. Read more
One Quarter Now, One-Click Wars to Come A collection of essays on the media arts during a time of war, the book looks at everything from cyberwar to video games, as well as technology and violence in the new century. Read more
Angel of the Avenues Includes the experiential essay, "Time Enough for Smoke," and new poems written during the long hot 2004 election season in the Southwestern United States by Douglas McDaniel..Read more
A few days after Sept. 11, 2001, poet and essayist Douglas McDaniel moved to Ipswich, on the North Shore of Massachusetts. A collection of poems from that period of fear and anxiety, as well as the polemic essay, "Media Arts and War." Read more
As an act of defiance after the botched election of 2000, experiential author launched himself into a journey into the underworld of American life, or, what he calls: The Science of Descent. Read more
"The Road to Mythville" is a collection of poems on the apocalyptic mythos of late-century America, drawing from McDaniel's decade-long sojourn across the nation as a journalist and Jack Kerouac-style poet, from the Southwestern deserts, to the Colorado Rockies, Northern California, New England and back again. A protege of the late Edward
Who I'd like to meet: Salman Rushdie, Jesus, Kurt Vonnegut (too late, damn), Jesus, George Bush II (if only because he talks to God and I have a few questions), Jesus, Jesus Christ. and, hmmm, former members of the Jesus & Mary Chain ... let me think .... hmmm ....
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