From December 26 2011 to January 3 2012

From December 26 2011

Adjunct as a word makes me think of a decoupled train car,
orphaned on the B&M track. I think it means to be contingent upon,
And adjunct is no way to be, a parasitic connection to a campus,
Never among the college of priests, the flamen dialis, never among
The vestal virgins, never tending the eternal flame in the temple,
Never being made, always to schlep from one place to the next,
Condemned to an eternity of self-help seminars as they stretch
another century or decade, or the tailings of the new long one.
When I watch the sky when clear from this bluff, a light falls
And extinguishes itself above the line where the streetlamps
Illuminate the town in a frosty aura to the highway junction 25,
What appears to be a halo independent of a single light
Even those among the combination truck stop corner store.
Where the center is everywhere but the circumference nowhere
Where the rural highway plunges into the country side
A town with a single-staged rocket in the town center
But without the liquid fuel engine in its fuselage
A rocket grounded as the town inhabitants scrambling for work
Unless they have a summer home with furniture draped with bed-sheets
For three out of four seasons with the shutters drawn
Once you can walk on the lake you might as well ice-fish
If you don’t fall in, provided you can drill into the ice.
The section that you pull tells a story but not for as long
As the rings of a redwood lasting two thousand years
But instead of an archeology lesson you are ice-fishing
Not delving into the recent past as frozen over on the lake
Anyway the summer on the lakeside is quiet and uneventful.

From January 2

I wanted to dissolve
crushed walnuts in a glass
Thinking I could cure
My persistent headache

The convolutions of the nut
Matching those of the brain
The wine it mixed with
Turning to new blood

To water those mazes
Those rivers of thought
Capricious furrows
Like all medicine, bitter.


From January 3

In the city centers the stadiums and water-parks are immaculate

and so is the frozen-over water fountain.

But in the hinterland families eke out their living from grass and seeds,

and from January branches disappear all songbirds

along with the barn-swallow and the solitary finch.

From a concoction of ether and scarcer antihistamine, or from diesel fumes

comes a numbing intoxication much of the population depends upon,

distilled into mist breathed from a makeshift mask and piece of hose.

While fog shrouds the City, its auditoriums are bright until the power-outs.

And their dreams are filled with white-masked deities and rivers of treacle.

Through the thawing permafrost still cleaves the ox-driven plow.

The value of the paper currency is flatter than a paper upon which it’s
printed.

As are the merits of this work, all meant to flatter.

Last lines

The value of blank paper at the butt-end of a marbled composition book

Is greater than the ink spilled upon them, taking the form of hastily-written sentences

Of even less value than the ink spent to committing them on scarcer paper.

Soon the leaves of the book and the lines that wrinkle their surfaces

Can be counted on a single hand and on just more than one digit

And since more is less according to the laws of value,

As every shop-keeper knows, and since conversely less is more,

Filed leaves are cheaper, blank more costly

The further down I go upon the remaining pages

Until the last blank line in the whole book is priceless,

And the marbled cover less valuable on the market

Than the mill of the Great War or the funny money

Of the five and dime, or the money of Monopoly

When the other pieces of the board game have been lost

Which simply means you can neither win nor lose.