Should we invite the neighbors over for dinner?
Their politics so different from ours.
All the more reason. Combat anomie!
He's worried the town's losing population
but opposes immigration. I like immigrants
but hate passing people on my morning walk.

The whole mountainous western region of the state
is losing population at a rate of 1% per annum.
The young move out, the old stay put but
young artists priced out of big cities move in
looking for affordable studio space. How low
can the population go as long as rents stay low?

We did agree about the fire department expansion
being premature (him) or unnecessary (me).
He argued we should renovate the high school first
the roof is caving in and walls crumbling.
But you can teach under a spreading chestnut tree
or baobab and science needs the world for a laboratory.

I teach at the old 2nd St. jail in Pittsfield
a town that doesn't know if it's coming up or going down.
A few shootings last month, no deaths.
They're holding their breath but also trying to attract life
science businesses to the industrial park. The local bank's
expanding, buying smaller banks in neighboring civilizations.

Eventually our fire department got the vote they wanted,
just called another meeting and packed the auditorium.
The final winning argument was we can do the school,
the fire house and the police station all at once.
Don't accept defeat, limitations. Defeat anomie!
Anomie means lawlessness and purposeless in Greek

so that's not exactly what we're trying to defeat.
It's the mismatch between our aspirations and resources,
no, the dissonance between our tribe and nation,
the individual as ****** animal and intellectual,
the farmer and the banker, the loved one and the litter,
whatever happens to you after you die and belief in reincarnation.

For me, it always boils down to mortality
every conversation, which is why no one comes to dinner.
Whether the fire department buys an exorbitant parcel
at the expense of a future school renovation
in a town slightly losing population but still viable
with a college, bank, artists and a few working farms

is everything and nothing, as Borges says.
Deutsch says death ought to be curable.
The new high school or fire station, conditions like anomie
v. democracy, new life forms, self-conscious species
from the laboratory or the biome. How de body?
Today ok. Tomorrow I don't know. Potential

energy, lover, killer, anomie. Karl Popper
had such faith in the rational whereas Niebuhr
acknowledged man's ego is uncontrollable except
by force. Conflict is inevitable. But at dinner
we agree it doesn't always have to be violent or terminal.
We can do the fire department, police station, the school and anomie.

Barely Walks.
And does not sleep

day squinting
night in trance;

Moonblinked


& Anomie doesn’t speak 
What she thinks
Until she drink
Apart; life projector spreads in sheets




Anomie not loveable
so off she goes
with dogs in sheets
that bark and bones

& in the padded womb
zaps milky-Light
synthetic-filtered-bright
A spotlight for the bees
Getting Drunk between her Knees

Confusion explodes confetti
disorientation takes the plow
*** the only how
An ******; or a fake hopeless meow
She lives in mental corners
watching window borders
They push in; she falls out

Brand new day
Teeth on pillows crack
Anomie's mind
has to react
She's fast to split-
Spit out a rebuttal
method witty-tactix kit

No one tells her time to go
But when Bee's belly full
She-goes - Self-loathes
Morning Glories still shriveled in their pods
They own the glory of her story and her song

Hiding in sarcastic retreat for clean feet
under ***** water bathes
wipes off the meat

Not your friend
She's trouble to love
The dirtiest dove

Anomie is naked and she's hated
Take away the curtain glove
eye slit under sunlit
She recovers

Don't judge
it's all her love
but you ****** Anomie anyways
just because
The Thrill