All conflicts are resolved via coercion, implied or applied,
of the dominant party over the denied (Niebuhr).
Not news at the 2nd St. jail. But the Constitution
provides for moderation, persuasion and elections
as way stations, stopgaps, safe havens before the decision's taken
to go to war. Civil war, daily low intensity warfare is unavoidable
      when
chambers of commerce and large corporations wrestle naked
and who are the 1% controlling 25% of the wealth, name names,
hold a french revolution over it. This space I write from's
safe, comfortable but what about a Taco Bell cashier with 4 kids x 3
      men
who came and went when they found how human her bleeding and
      complaining was, how voluble, not faked.

This obtains when you consider Niebuhr: "That the limitations of the human imagination, the easy subservience of reason to prejudice and passion, and the consequent persistence of irrational egoism, particularly in group behavior, make social conflict an inevitability in human history, probably to its very end." (emphasis mine)

                         respiratory tract infection, hunger pains

Popper drops by: "Their story that democracy is not to last forever is as true, and as little to the point, as the assertion that human reason is not to last forever, since only democracy provides an institutional framework that permits reform without violence, and so the use of reason in political matters. It is clear that this attitude must lead to a rejection of the applicability of science or of reason to the problems of social life - and ultimately to a doctrine of power, of ******* and submission."

                                           split lip, fever blister

Cynical nihilist Niebuhr: "Educators who emphasize the pliability of human nature, social and psychological scientists who dream of 'socializing' man and religious idealists who strive to increase the sense of moral responsibility, can serve a very useful function in society in humanizing individuals within an established social system and in purging the relations of individuals of as much egoism as possible. In dealing with the problems and necessities of radical social change they are almost invariably confusing in their counsels because they are not conscious of the limitations in human nature which finally frustrate their efforts. So persistent are the moralistic illusions about politics in the middle-class world, that any emphasis upon the second point will probably impress the average reader as unduly cynical. In America our contemporary culture is still pretty firmly enmeshed in the illusions and sentimentalities of the Age of Reason."

                                            terror, runny nose

An apoplectic Popper: "And being a typical historicist, he accepts the judgment of history as a moral one; for [Heraclitus] holds that the outcome of war is always just: 'War is the father and king of all things. It proves some to be gods and others to be mere men, turning these into slaves and the former into masters . . . One must know that war is universal, and that justice -- the lawsuit -- is strife, and that all things develop through strife and by necessity.'"

                                 lonely physics, national purpose

Poppa Popper proceeds: "Sweeping historical prophecies are entirely beyond the scope of scientific method. The future depends on ourselves, and we do not depend on any historical necessity. This prophetic wisdom is harmful, the metaphysics of history impede the application of the piecemeal methods of science to the problems of social reform. We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets."

                                    fatal heart attack, fatty acids

Reinhold, while drinking orange juice: "Conflict is inevitable, and in this conflict power must be challenged by power. Since political conflict, at least in times when controversies have not reached the point of crisis, is carried on by the threat, rather than the actual use, of force, it is always easy for the casual or superficial observer to overestimate the moral and rational factors, and to remain oblivious to the covert types of coercion and force which are used in the conflict."

                                          alphabugs, antibiotics

Doc Wheeler runs the 2nd St. jail keeping the High School Dropout
      Prevention Program
breathing. The Sheriff's Dept. provides guards, a metal detector, one
      man with a gun (encased),
door buzzer (in out), sign in sheet, breakfast and lunch. None too
      clean, not too tidy.

Niebuhr goes nuts: "All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion. While no state can maintain its unity purely by coercion neither can it preserve itself without coercion. The inability of human beings to transcend their own interests sufficiently to envisage the interests of their fellow men as clearly as they do their own makes force an inevitable part of the process of social cohesion."

                                 3 hots and a cot, circle with a dot

Popper replies: "Instead of aiming and finding what a thing 'really' is, and defining its 'true nature,' science aims at describing how a thing behaves in various circumstances and especially whether there are any regularities in its behavior. It sees in our language, and especially in those of its rules which distinguish properly constructed sentences and inferences from a mere heap of words, the great instrument of scientific description, not as names of essences. To those philosophers who tell him that before having answered the 'what is' question he cannot hope to give an exact answer to any of the 'how' questions, the scientist will reply, if at all, by pointing out that he prefers that modest degree of exactness which he can achieve by his methods to the pretentious muddle which they have achieved by theirs."

            "when making an axe handle, the pattern is not far off"

Niebuhr nods: "The problem which society faces is clearly one of reducing force by increasing the factors which make for a moral and rational adjustment of life to life; of bringing such force as is still necessary under responsibility of the whole of society; of destroying the kind of power which cannot be made socially responsible; and of bringing forces of moral self-restraint to bear upon types of power which can never be brought completely under social control."

       Popper and Niebuhr were married yesterday at the 2nd St. jail
                      under the federal Freedom of Marriage Act

Science can't save you, neither can religion,
at least Popper and Niebuhr, philosophers and poets,
are entertainers, which is why actors and athletes
are paid so much. Thanks for the summaries.
I was teaching Shakespeare's 92nd ridiculous sonnet
to my student who lays blacktop in the off season
Shakespeare bellyaching about dying without her love
a feeling foreign to a modern adolescent sensibility
although many teens are pretty far gone searching
for their mothers or fathers in their dazed lovers' eyes.
Which is why we call it "the wound that never heals."
Or the lesion that's always lengthening. And bleeding.

Muslim fundamentalists and their Christian counterparts
are a mystery to me. Pews and prayer rugs, the airless
indoor environment of religious worship, reading
scriptures, hypnotized by hymns and fainting from staring
at candles through stained glass windows, almost certain
the preacher is faking his certainty about the afterlife.
It's not my problem. A more immediate concern:
receding gums and tooth extractions, swollen joints,
poor lubrication and circulation, wave after wave
of viral infection, the occasional antibiotic-resistant
bacterial attack, usually urinary, and who knows
what internal organs are dividing and conquering
without mercy or cease, i.e. the wound that never heals.

It is wise not to overvalue your continued existence,
good not to be innumerate, unable to compare
a mere 80 years with say 6.0 x 109 or all of time
(to date) times the multiverse. Conversely,
it is interesting all of space and most of history is contained
in your mind (realizing of course it's just a map
of the cosmos not the cosmos itself, or is it?). I'm
unable to wrestle free, tongue in that cavity
and locked in my memories, so separate and disparate
from the biomass in the crosswalks, even my spouse.
Alone, so alone, even your doctor can only devote
limited thought to your situational mortality through
the redress of poetry - also a wound that never heals.

Snow for eternity, that's what this February's been.
All to the good, for someone it's the final February
so enjoy it to the extent you can. By that I mean joy.
Joy at birth. Joy at death. All joy. All times. Anyway,
that was Shakespeare's message: even tragedies are comedies.
May, a Buddhist, chants each morning.
Her husband, Marc, who's Jewish, plays league tennis.
Their son, Aaron, will soon make Eagle scout.
How does that relate to your wound that never heals?
Luck runs out. For D.H. Lawrence in New Mexico
or Ulysses S. Grant in Ohio or Yasujiro Ozu in
Tokyo or Satyajit Ray in Bombay or Rabindranath
Tagore in Bangalore or at the Battle of the Atlantic in the Azores.

The night is a poultice, winter or summer solstice.
My anonymity will not affect the anomie ghettoside
seeing for myself how season by season
vacations and accomplishments accumulate, late in life
and early on, sunrise over mountains or moonrise over Bronx.
Masturbator, prisoner of war. Hospice of the Holy Roman Empire.
Numerous blue notes: the 3 flat, 7 flat, 5 flat,
the 6 flat and the 2 flat too. I don't get
what Wallace Stevens means by imagination.
When groundhog shows up as a totem, there is opportunity
to explore the mystery of death without dying.
This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of eating less)!
Now what about that wound that never heals.

The Skeptical Observer column in Scientific American
was somewhat alarming when he accepted a paranormal
explanation for how his wife's grandfather's inoperable
transistor radio played music from its hiding spot
in his sock drawer on, and only on, their wedding day.
Now I'll have to believe my father (or mother!) is watching me
perform private ****** acts with (or without) partners
or that they could even know my thoughts. Or aliens
are attending our committee meetings and making
perfectly reasonable decisions given the available information
and the world is rotating just fine without humans.
These possibilities - angels, ghosts, aliens - are better
than holocaust and genocide. In this way,
and only in this way, does doom become endurable.
The wound that never heals in the end is all you'll feel.

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.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

1

Sunrise, late winter
skunk smell
turkey flock
playful otter, too.

The white heron
a great blue,
white phase,
in the abandoned ****** pond.

Purple clematis
its long-awned achenes
in globose heads
spidery, fiery, extravagant fruit!

To identify or classify
birds by
the complexity or beauty
of their songs.

And so
what is over that
ridge or hill
a sink-hole, a sand dune, a steep bluff.

2

What must I do. Organize
the heretofore unorganized. The rabble
of unemployed child abusers.
Molesters of their intimates.

Are there dysfunctional bird families?
Simply put, they do not survive.
We have hope
that everyone alive is essential,

consequential. We classify
and specify.
The commonplace and everyday
is sanctified.

What happens everyday?
Morning is quiet, everyone at work.
Home writing, watching birds.
Afternoon, kids come back from school.

Evening, watch tv.
Scotch and Star Trek.
Captain Picard's problems eclipse
ours who stayed behind.

3

Pray to Allah
and maybe he will spare you
when he sets the world
on fire.

Where or with who
will I be on that day?
And how many people and adventures
will I find in the wind storm and rubble?

I may live, but will it matter
whether or not I help anyone else to live?
This is no Last Judgement.
Those who have learned or who still know how to live

will survive.
Nobody will go to hell, they will just die.
There is no limbo either.
Anyone who didn't find a way to be immortal is just dead.

So, what am I trying to do.
Organize the unemployed, the welfare mothers
and alcoholics
into a flying chevron of purposeful explorers?

4

The doctor's conscious, organized,
naive attempt to do good,
his legacy, versus the randomness
of the road and the war zone.

There his legacy is his rectitude and natural
rough compassion for the damaged people
he encounters. The difference
between planning a legacy

as if you knew enough to control events
and letting the legacy arise
from events themselves, controlling,
insofar as you are able, only

your own actions and reactions.
The doctor's leadership role such as it was
grew out of not his material possessions
like the car

but his mission, his personal quest
to find the young doctors he had naively trained
and sent into the war zone
where all died.

5

July-a cold city
not as great or as gritty
as I thought, summer theater left
the shoe shine bereft of customers

eyes cold as a bureaucrat's
except for our soles
and their leather. Sweat-soaked
girls, the beautiful ones left town.

Emotionless as a bus.
Sparrows, no chickadees.
All that's important happens indoors.
Exercise to philosophies.

You get what you see.
The panhandlers ask
just once, won't risk
friendship, justice.

No sale today
in the finite city
where, for the shoe shine,
pedestrians are infinite, times two shoes.

6

Faith = wait + trust.
But don't anticipate.
Popper prohibits prediction.
Niebuhr expects destruction.

I believe in God
doesn't mean there's a sketch
of a man in my head. It must mean
all will be well in the end.

Satisfied with snow
or summer. And now
with dying old or younger.
Gold or paper clips. Gulps or sips.

In the final resting place
in the city of the dead
are there all night card games
and sometimes open swims?

Each inch, square, or cube of Earth
brim with grasses and sedges, dragonflies and spiders, sparrows and
      eagles.
The tiger lily and the water lily and the lily of the valley, the calla lily.
When a ******* a bicycle smiles, that is a smile.

Black lives matter. Me too.
Not my president. Give peace a chance.
Luck runs out. I like immigrants.
Power must be challenged by power.

Equal and opposite reactions.
God is the answer. Love is the answer.
Walk on the sunny side of the street. Meat feet.
Learn to drive. Wait for the train in the rain.

A girl gets sick of a rose. Mock orange.
Mediocre presidents, unnecessary wars.
Triumph and humiliation. Meditation.
Sometimes I’m tired of being me. Therefore.

Subaru. Suduko. Haiku. Hulu.
Stop on red, go on green. Orderly neighborhood.
Too tired to be angry. Too tired to do homework.
Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus.

College campus. Saguaro, cactus.
Million dollar movie. Aliens in the bleachers.
Full length feature. TED talk, lecture.
Breathe in experience. Bring sentience into an expressible state.

Events pile up with or without an identity willing to organize them.
Events in their mere chronology make no sense.
Inability to transcend own interests. Inability to find one’s way.
Vacations and accomplishments accumulate late in life and early on.

Late in life I struggle against my insignificance.
The straight way lost. Concentrate on this: Thy will be done.
The straight way misplaced. Get over it. Someone tell a joke.
Love. Vote. Join a committee or a party.

MLK made the jump from race to class, dreamed of a brotherly nation.
Is this feeling nostalgia for the past or occipital neuralgia?
Knee surgery, plywood factory. Lost lover, lost city.
Old friends who are dead to me but still here.

Somewhere there are flowers among railroad ties.
True love between ****** partners. Dusty villages and vast cities.
Popper v. Niebuhr, impeachment inquiry.
Hassid and Muslim dress codes. French fashions.

Watch for war, **** and shower. Do the limbo.
Pay bills. The very thought of the rosy dawn makes Jack ill.
Big comfy couch, a nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day.
A long day’s journey into night. Truckin’.

Death comes for the archbishop. Private Ryan and Big Red One.
Absence of knowledge and intelligent beings who make things happen.
Life’s brevity and the time taken to carve the canyon.
Decibel level and ambient noise. Captain Carpenter and Mr. Flood.

Nothing but ocean, self-aware organisms and the longing they provoke.
Unit, corps, God, country. Zip code. The clocks and the docks gone and       no smoke.
Achilles and Hector. Wills and losses.
Continued existence and most of history.

A holy condition. A warrior’s position.
Walk with a limp. Don’t complain about pain.
Truth may be ascertained by considering your uncertainty.
If everyone votes and every vote’s counted, time is the mercy of eternity.

It's intricating, to trace back the evolution of my faith.
It was a journey with undefined beginning and unknown roots.
How wonderful, to speculate over metamorphosis of your soul,
to observe paths you've taken and places you've abandoned.
First, i was quite amateur, thought faith was a sign of weakness.
Some portrayed a believer in God as fearful person, running for cover.
Next, i was indifferent, chose not to care.
Faith was a ****** territory for me, that i've never dared to explore.
Then, suddenly,  it stroke me like a lighting in a sunny day.
I've become passionate and devoted.
Subscribed ardently to every sign of divine and life became vexingly complicated.
Every event, every word was a source of confusion.
So i indulged myself in science,
became suspicious of religion and rituals.
Was confident that truth can be reached by senses.
I thought about omniscience of progress,
but lately have come to know, that however i try, logic is an infinite loop that will keep me curious but never satisfied.
I've realised, that Faith is an unconditional belief. One, that Bill Graham had when walking into the bush and contemplating about Bible.
He thought, man can't decide on authencity of scripture, he should just believe in it.
So i did.
I said, whatever comes i'll be humble, whenever uncertain i'll follow the rules.
You know what Niebuhr said about love, that if you value the result you'll never get to truth. You'll be free when you foresake desire, when disinterestedness becomes your realm. When you loose your face, forget grace, detach from everything, that you used to praise.

Born five score minus seven years ago
minus attaining age of centenarian
father of civil rights movement,
the revered Martin Luther King Junior
honored as benevolent demigod figure
to the oppressed African American population

without whose bold risks
and subsequent brutal assassination April fourth
ninety sixty eight at the hands
of a crazed gunman (James Earl Ray),
whereby all the King's men
and all the King's horses...,

still aghast at tragic event
while reverberations felt forty two years later,
where embedded white privilege
begets continued racial strife
analogous to uncorked raging tempest
saddling people of color to human *******

(no matter ponying up excellent equestrians),
nevertheless wrought empowerment
advancing cherished dreams
of slaves recent descendents
allowing, enabling and providing
once attainable aspirations
only bestowed upon

the self anointed masters and early settlers of
the virginal North American contiguous land mass
yet…generations prior
to this prestigious public personality
Abolitionists pitted themselves
against the institution of slavery

incrementally raising awareness
regarding the abomination
forced servitude incurred on those shackled
thus setting the stage
for this grandson of A.D. Williams
a rural parsonage,

who ministered spiritual support
for the small congregation
(initially only thirteen members)
comprising attendants at
Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta Georgia
setting precedent for freedom

(at risk of life and limb) against scourge of
racial prejudice courtesy
of sharecropper grandparents
whose objection to racial segregation
based on an affront to the will of God,
whereby the young whip smart precocious lad,

(whose impact we now memorialize)
showed his true colorful promise
when a young student at
Liberal Crozer Theological Seminary
in Chester, Pennsylvania
where the yet uncrowned

eminent king came under the influence
of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr,
a classmate of his father's
at Morehouse College
who became a mentor by exposing
his protégée to liberal views of theology

planting the seeds of ardent activism
that gave rise to
The Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC),
an initial platform
allowing, enabling and providing acclaim

hoisted up by petard
invariably only heightened
(his) posthumous status
as thee most articulate orator
spelling binding the listeners
with his metaphors about his emphatic march

to a promised land where all
men/women could be brothers/sisters
and no person will be judged
by the color of his/her skin
raising morale of many dirt poor
ebony masses to feel a glimmer of hope.

Five score minus eight years ago
January eighteenth two thousand twenty one
father of civil rights movement
the revered Martin Luther King Junior honored
as benevolent demigod figure
to the oppressed African American population

without whose bold risks
and subsequent brutal assassination April fourth
ninety sixty eight at the hands
of a crazed gunman (James Earl Ray),
whereby all the King's men
and all the King's horses...,

still aghast at tragic event
while reverberations felt forty two years later,
where embedded white privilege
begets continued racial strife
analogous to uncorked raging tempest
saddling people of color to human *******

(no matter ponying up excellent equestrians),
nevertheless wrought empowerment
advancing cherished dreams
of slaves recent descendents
allowing, enabling and providing
once attainable aspirations
only bestowed upon

the self anointed masters and early settlers of
the virginal North American contiguous land mass
yet…generations prior
to this prestigious public personality
Abolitionists pitted themselves
against the institution of slavery

incrementally raising awareness
regarding the abomination
forced servitude incurred on those shackled
thus setting the stage
for this grandson of A.D. Williams
a rural parsonage,

who ministered spiritual support
for the small congregation
(initially only thirteen members)
comprising attendants at
Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta Georgia
setting precedent for freedom

(at risk of life and limb) against scourge of
racial prejudice courtesy
of sharecropper grandparents
whose objection to racial segregation
based on an affront to the will of God,
whereby the young whip smart precocious lad,

(whose impact we now memorialize)
showed his true colorful promise
when a young student at
Liberal Crozer Theological Seminary
in Chester, Pennsylvania
where the yet uncrowned

eminent king came under the influence
of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr,
a classmate of his father's
at Morehouse College
who became a mentor by exposing
his protégée to liberal views of theology

planting the seeds of ardent activism
that gave rise to
The Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC),
an initial platform
allowing, enabling and providing acclaim

hoisted up by petard
invariably only heightened
(his) posthumous status
as thee most articulate orator
spelling binding the listeners
with his metaphors about his emphatic march

to a promised land where all
men/women could be brothers/sisters
and no person will be judged
by the color of his/her skin
raising morale of many dirt poor
ebony masses to feel a glimmer of hope.

H. Richard Niebuhr
Not Reinhold
The teacher of my teacher

I'm Chicago, not Yale
I reach out to reach her

A truly responsible self
Responding, feeelin' motion
The Gettysburg Address
Last full measure of devotion

Sallie Mcfague
The World as God's Body
Sally Jane Brown
In Dublin one hot toddy

                 1837

According to Reinhold Niebuhr