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Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
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
"Conflict is inevitable and coercion's vital for resolving it".  --Reinhold Niebuhr

--Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932
--Popper, Karl, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Princeton University Press, 1962

www.ronnowpoetry.com
Lil Moon Moon Jan 2022
Somebody put me out of my misery,
I've been struck by a curious malady:
I can't seem to stop
writing sappy poetry!

Perhaps it's *** my muse is ineffable,
Can't help if that makes her indelible.

Now the evidence lies before your very eyes,
That she as cause and culprit should pay the price

For all of my absurd sentimentalities
Is a result of her bewitchful tendencies:

Bore a mighty wordsmith
out of a hopeless romantic.
Now this whole shebang
might drive me ballistic

As time passes
I can't seem to find a problem with that though

My muse, my lady malady:
Fine, I'll be the lunatic
Now wouldn't that be poetic??
brooke May 2017
if i am a dead language
then you are fluent, and
if mandarin is the hardest
form of discourse then you
learned me as a back-up--

I have always been a tangle
a mess of overreactions and
sentimentalities, too proud
to call for help or be pulled
from the rough convinced that
if it  must be done at all
it must be done by sheer
willpower and
iso
      l at ion

i am trying to unlearn that
i do not have to be alone
but it's in the company you choose
that some mistakes are too deep
and coiled to come back from

if i am dead language then
i am old norse, a handful of
runes and sounds falling off
the tongues of no one special
just scholars and politicians
struggling to make sense
but not all too
concerned
in the first
place.
(c) Brooke Otto 2017

just relax, it'll be okay.
it'll be okay.

the recording is here, sorry, i don't sound like usual:
https://soundcloud.com/brooke-otto-597708624/sounds-and-letters/s-F7xUg
The bastion of deep bellicosity begins, which would interview the strengths of benevolence in the ranks of Darius III. The Greek polis was reborn from Halleniká in the shady V, from the seventh necropolis of Messolonghi, with the equerry that was landed by thousands of ships that were from the date of Philip consolidating the Hetairoi that would be reborn again to fight this peremptory battle in the lower Macedonia, which brought the allied cavalry on titanic folds, which this time will be commanded by Vernarth with legionaries at their disposal, the very light weapons were made from the candid glow of the Katabasis universe, since the bags of the matron's guides went to the parapet in the unevenness of Skalá, very close to the Katabasis or vortex of the Diadochi, when they were abducted by Wonthelimar. The turkeys were already described and difficult to observe, and less to hear them, so the Matrona or Oikodéspoina would purify the little Messiah mentioned in the Apocalypse chapter twelve of Saint John the Apostle, to ascend to the Over Being and then receive the Trinitarian light as far away from the Hades or Katabasis that Wonthelimar would understand very well as a predecessor of the Ultramundis. Thus, the placenta of the Oikodéspoina would increase the free fall and the recovery of the crystallized space, in such a way that the maternal figure would give the first busilis of the outbreak of the Battle of Patmia, before she can rise to the surface with all the spilled blood. . Vernarth in the tent next to the panoply observed Lazarus permanently rising next to him, and all the burned doubts of winning or dying by the edge of destiny. Vernarth gathered the Phalanx formed into a soldiery ecosystem of men armed with the Faith of the Mashiach who had descended together in the rows of syntagmas, and of enough men who multiplied a hundredfold each time the Katabasis ascended to support others who made the Pivot in Hades. . The large-caliber metallic iron and bronze weapons with Xiphos, Dorus, Sarissas with hopes of winter who dressed in spring with Persephone who always carried them in the atrium of a Persephonic Hoplite. Assault turrets over forty Euclidean meters exceeded all the numerals of Pi, through the glasses towards the empire, where the shutters released huge oblations from the pulpit of the theater of tragedy that was rising from the stalls, inoffensive crossbows that would burn the missions of Zefian with the fourth Sagita, catapulting fences that in turn disintegrated into thick destructive ridges. In this instance, the Corinthian League became evanescent with more gangs with Thracian or Tribal troops, although they were foreigners, they joined the mercenaries. With the same figures of 42 thousand troops of Falangists, 5,500 of Cavalry, with some Hippies that Kanti and Alikantus arranged. The mercenaries and tribals fringed the 5,000 contingents in the ghostly spectrum, which made them almost impolitic, a Magento Calypso sea was joining the Thessalians that surpassed the armor of 1800. Vernarth while absorbed in the fabric of the stall saw a Lazarus as he walked barefoot, from where he still asked for help when he felt his feet begin to burn.

The colonnade escaped into the Argentinian waters of Selene that flowed outlined by the gloom of the draconian Persian hierarchy. They subdelegated a Satrap who would bind the components that would confront each other beyond the warning threshold of the Katabasis. The Persian countertops reigned in other adverse lands where Patmia was the law of the Trinitarian Decalogue, in the invocation of the On Being that departed from holy languages that were Christianized in holy oils that flowed through the fascinating musks of war won, and with weapons that would surpass physical forces, by resembling in Iranians that were ruled by the coppery ten thousand assets mediated by the Persian palfrey, and satrapies such as Bactriana and Sogdiana. Behold, those who were once thousands against thousands revived in the disquisitions of other reasons that were not obvious, before a mystery that becomes inapplicable but was noticed in the directive of the enmity of the nations, with their own human components making them of an Infant Mashiach, who really was in the wills that are perpetuated in the siege of continuing to be protected by his Oikodéspoina, which shielded him from all latent threats before an almighty who lavished on them in the fords of the mistakes of a past, and the glorification of eternal life. The spectral of sacrifice was outlined with the same base that emerges from a sensitive parchment, to be rewritten in Vernarth's Katabasis, applying sentimentalities corresponding to the fire wagon of the cremation of the nubile destinies, sacralizing the excessive intemperance of those who envision and they deteriorate in the middle of a ploy that has never been finite.

The Oikodéspoina took refuge in burdensome intraterrestrial lands, arguing that the lands would tremble and the crown of her head would fall to her feet with Selene, relieving herself of her troubles by humanity in the birth, which would be designed by the Kératas of Moshe similarly to seven more than they were replicated in the tertiary night of the red blood cells, who conferred with the Necromancers of Vernarth and Alexander the Great, that God self-climbed on his throne to watch the scene of the Katabasis on Patmos. The blades resounded with great and pristine sounds of angels that made them ring, for a quadruple duel of Hellenes and Persians, of God and Satan, adorning themselves with their appropriations and the authority of those who hold the staff of the Áullos Kósmos. The rams ran in terror through the mountains and the eagles mounted on the small golden hills, because the Messiah prayed to them night and day, because the hour of truth had descended from all heights in the quadruped rams, and the inhabitants of the earth would testify that there is no time to decide, for less time of what or who will survive among you, because as long as the ground plug exists, it will have to be done with open hands to the one who supports the sky after being born from a Gerakis, and of a river that makes of being a chamber with great sieges to awaken the inextricable king, who has to unite us and not divide us with his chalice loaded with Apoika wine, from where they are ****** on the hooves of Alikantus, when the men raised their hands to greet, and to confirm that they already had the Xiphos in their hands, to give birth in half the time of Kairós, who snatched the life of the snake in its ovule throughout the region of Dod Ecanese, being the faithful two-dimensional earthly sheet of the constellation of the Dragon with the twelve houses of the zodiac, trying to contravene the seals of divine light and the shed blood of the Savior.

The testimonies stated that Lazarus had already vanished from the Vernarth store after these visions of necromancy, after the Ekadashi confirmed the error of heavy material that would be taken for those who fly over the salvation of all the rest, and of all those who are dragged by the puffs that illuminate the uncertain empty spaces that remained to spread the Christian faith, for those who want to be swept away by their sleeplessness and survival of a Lazarus who has to grasp the staff of light, to scare away the red blood cells of the serpent that wounds with his spitting, and that he signs from his jaws imitating good intentions that are not infallible to exempt himself on the basement of Olympus, The dragon with the rune of a Basilisk trying to attack the vanguards of the Hoplites of Vernarth.
Katabasis
jeffrey robin Sep 2010
tell me now true words
show me now true form

be the poet write your life

in blood

on these ****** streets

tell me soft love bodies
ride the endless wave

can the silly maudlin
sentimentalities

we are dyin
dyin

on these ****** streets

tell me now true bodies
show me now images of

the poet who writes with love

write

your life in blood  

on these ****** streets

before we die

on these ****** streets
Bernice Helena Feb 2019
Forgive me
For my irrationalities,
My incapability
of suppressing these sentimentalities.

Even though we're forever apart at heart,
There were times I just wanted to collapse in your arms.
To be adrift in their warmth; an ever-blazing hearth,
As if they could hide me away from all worldly harm.

But every castle in the air will one day burn and crash.
Past these lashes, a smouldering hurst of ash.

How I wish I could stay and lay
On this bed of dead roses,
Where memories rise like paling petals
And sink back down in weighted metals.

You still haunt my reveries,
Awakening the ephemeral insanity.
But spring has arrived in a crimson hearse,
So I laid to rest with this ol' verse.
He was
Just a boy, a brother,
Lone sun in a misleading meadow.
Elicia Hurst Sep 2019
Today I leave nothing to the imagination
In a historically accurate setting.
I, your narrator to navigate through
Corridors of a physical mindscape
(no escape)
Decorated with impressions and caricatures.
Follow my voice,
I invite and incite all Memories:
A curation of characters and sentimentalities.
Taxidermy preserved to its last breath.
Exhibitionist curiosity.
I must be an architect
to reconstruct a desolated house.  
"Welcome home," to my
Recollection residence.
Archaeological labor too, to unearth
Buried civilities and forgotten feuds.

To stand in the ashes of
A prison of twelve winters
On summits is a struggle
To surmount shades and shadows.
Pouncing, pulse,
I suture each slash with sleep.
But here you are,
pilgrim of an echo,
breathing life,
you have struck a chord
—And a dissonance that
thrusts me into the future—
that rings through my forlorn past.
This time, in that foreign country,
a new page slowly, slowly turns.
20 Jan 2019
Holly Jan 2020
I lie awake at night
and list off all the ways I avoid feeling the ache in my chest.
All the little things I do
that become desperate behaviours
of my personality trying to fix itself.

Like collecting books and arranging them
in order across the shelf,
because the fantasy
of a world so different from mine
feels like a void I can fill my room with.

Like placing my physical sentimentalities
in a box at the bottom of my drawers,
so it feels like I have
a private place
to bury myself in and know
there is something good
still alive
somewhere.

Like sleeping with the curtains wide open,
because I like to
fall in love with the dark
from a safe distance,
and still imagine suffocating myself in it
at the same time.

I tell myself that
If I fill all the spaces
with enough distractions,
I can forget why I was sad in the first place.
I can convince myself
having the rest of the bottle of *****
will make me feel more alive
than I do sober.
I can convince myself
kissing a boy I don’t know
will make me feel like
I am worth being loved.
I can convince myself
my childhood no longer screams
in my ears
that my existence is nothing more
than a burden.

Until I’m lying in bed
listing off all the ways I avoid feeling the ache in my chest,
and I realise it’s not an ache
but a hole
that’s been bleeding forever.
And there’s not a patch
big enough to make it stop.

— The End —