I don't know what I'll be writing to you this morning because the kitten (whose current name is Lil Ruckus) is trying to take control of the keyboard while also pulling the stone out of the ring on my left typing hand. Yes, he's about to step on a key . . . and, aha! ≥ is what he decided you needed to know. Think of it as a metaphor. Or a warning.

Anyway the sun is shining and the air is cool and dry. It is a lovely morning to be eaten by a cat. My plans for today are much like my plans for yesterday, with the addition of barn cleaning and grocery shopping. Band practice was canceled yesterday because the guitar player's hay baler broke. I dare you to parse that sentence for logic, yet at the time it seemed perfectly rational.

I read another article wailing about conceptualist poetry. Conceptualist angst seems to be all the rage these days. As far as I can tell, the poems in question are just dumb and and the poets in question are semi-charlatans masked as marketing whizzes. The tedium overwhelms, but I can't take this stuff seriously. Clearly I've got to stop reading these articles. Sometimes it's better to be ignorant.

But tell me: why are words such as charlatan and chicanery so beautiful?