from the series "Poetry Economics: A Moronic Oxymoron"
WHY MUST POETRY BE TAXED WHEN IT'S A GIFT?

So I just filed and sent in my sales tax payment to the state of California for my activities as a poetry publisher/bookseller. A munificent sum of

$110.00

This is the kind of thing that's difficult to pigeonhole as either good news or bad news. Coughing up taxes is bad. But coughing up sales taxes means that one actually sold poetry books!

Still, revenues -- thus sales proceeds for the state of California -- are down. This is my third year of generating sales tax revenues:

2006: $110.00
2005: $254.00
2004: $2.00

2004! Two bucks. From a cyclical standpoint, poetry's ups and downs go pretty extreme....which may be apt as a poetry tax may as well mirror poetry's psychic toll.

Eh. Yawn. I'd rather talk about moi garden, to wit:

THE CITY SLICKER'S HARVEST TALLY, to date

35 sprigs of parsley
3 yellow squashes
1 cherry
42 sprigs of basil
2 Santa Rosa plums
2 lemon cucumbers...or is it cucumber lemons?

Now, if only I can figure out what to do with these baseball-shaped cucumbers besides juggling them...