Gas is $4.09 per gallon. Aromatic cedar mulch is $3.49 per 2 cubic foot bag. A flight to Paris is beyond my means.  Today’s Report

Here is today’s report: no condensation, as yet, in the newly repaired kitchen window. Though a chill remains near the glass, which would be spring, which is very cool this year, fashionably late, as usual.
There are gleams of light here and there penetrating the foliage which is heavy and green and punctuated by pink and white blossom.
Gas is $4.09 per gallon. Aromatic cedar mulch is $3.49 per 2 cubic foot bag. A flight to Paris is beyond my means.
Baghdad is full of anomalies, death, men in fatigues and concertina wire, Somalia is on the brink of famine, rice is gold, gold is climbing, the dollar is collapsing, and two men in Hawaii are pursuing a lawsuit to stop a giant particle accelerator in Switzerland from smashing protons together and creating a tiny black hole which could eat the Earth.
Starbucks’ profits are off, Boeing is taking a different tack, and Miley Cyrus is an awkward position.
In the Arabian sea, American warplanes scream off the decks of aircraft carriers while wholesalers haggle and gossip under woolen astrakhan caps at Tehran’s grand bazaar.
Once there was a poet named Paul Valéry who said “Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of ‘truth’ and the language of ‘creation.’”
I worry about telling you the truth. The truth of existence. But I cannot. I do not know what the truth of existence is. Does it need a truth?
I work hard at telling the truth. I work equally hard at avoiding the truth.
Are birds spies? Should they be reported? Are crows terrorists? Are robins seditionists? Are blue jays anarchists? Are sparrows saboteurs?
If you are out there, somewhere far into the future, and you are reading this, that means everything implicated here is happily and blissfully false. The world did not collapse into plague, famine, and endless war. People read. There are books. There are libraries and bookstores. All of this is wrong. Maybe not all of it but most of it is wrong. Happily, rapturously wrong. My report is false. A false report. And trees continue to sway. And the wind continues to blow. And shadows continue to slide. And lovers continue to moan. And jalapeños continue to have that little squiggle over the ‘ñ.’ Because they are hot and the squiggle is pivotal. Pivotal to hot. Pivotal to punctuation. Pivotal to the truth of the jalapeño, which is infinite, and burns in the mouth like a stubborn idea.

Fuck Daylight

Night slowly oozes away as dawn bursts over the Cascades to the west. It is a strange process. No one paints it. It just happens. Happens like reptiles. Happens like beads of water trickling down a kitchen window. It is one of the few things in life that doesn’t require any work. No installation. No batteries. No inlets. No outlets. No wires or plugs or sockets. Night peacefully retires and the new day is heralded by the neighbor’s rooster.
My neighbor doesn’t have a rooster but the implication that he might incites tendrils of arbitrary significance, which is candy to the eyes.
My neighbor has a girlfriend and a terrible personality but that’s another story.
Let us return to the high and metaphysical.
So here comes the day. In fact, it’s already here. That’s right. Daylight spread like butter everywhere. Daylight on the floor. Daylight on the ceiling. Daylight between my fingers. Daylight crashing through the window. Daylight nudging the toaster in the far dark corner of the kitchen. Daylight walking around like a radiant king. The king of daylight. Proud, sober, lavish, and nonchalant.
Fuck daylight.
I hate daylight.
Daylight is the color of work. Daylight is the color of people rubbing their eyes at bus stops. Daylight is the color of people contracting within themselves so as not to be seen. Daylight is the color of complication. Daylight is the color of grouchy drivers and overly sensitive cooks. Daylight is the ape of vanity. Daylight leaps around bumping and gouging and elbowing people as they daydream behind their laptops and newspapers. Daylight is gauche. The ultimate in gaucherie. Bumptious, obnoxious, and loud like a rock star on meth.
Fuck daylight.
I hate daylight.
Give me night. Give me night and oblivion and warm socks and a warm bed and a warm woman and a warm house. Give me stars and comets and planets and asteroids and oceans of billowing plasma. Give me dark nebulae and spiral arms and big bangs and relativity and quarks and moon rocks. Give me liberty or give me Jupiter. Chuck Berry in a spacecraft. Extraterrestrial peacocks and hyperdimensionality.
But please. No daylight. Not even that tiniest of glimmers peeping over the crags. I will have none of it. Curtains closed. Mind made up. Fuck daylight. I hate daylight.