Fair Maid and the Beast

I recently ran across this poem-for-tax-season that I wrote a number of years ago. This was before I married an accountant. Tax filing is much easier these days ... he takes care of it all. (That's him in the photo below.)

My apologies to the IRS and any faithful employees there who receive the short end of the stick in this poem. I write in hyperbole ... mostly.

Duty in Service and Paying Lots of Taxes

TAXES

"What a burden!"
She mutters as sloggingly 
Forms and dashes of paperwork
Are gathered into one pile
And sleeves rolled up
To attack the Beast.

Could there be a way to 
Brighten this task,
To turn grit into
Delectable morsel of duty?
Could the wordiness and
Numberliness and clumsiness
Be slimmed and trimmed
Into task of lighter fare?

Nay! Shouts the man whose
Paycheck depends on
Hatching numbers into 
Prepared statements of 
How-I-spent-last-year
Via numbers and columns and codes.

Nay! Shouts the politicians whose
Paycheck depends on 
Expanding the forms and
Explaining the numbers in 
Documents tedious, long, and overdone. 

Nay! Shouts the IRS whose
Existence bulges with the fatness of 
Forms and Instructions ad infinitum
And row upon row of terse-lipped
Lackey who spins the web of 
Helpful Confusion in
Media massive and tiny-fonted.

And so the yearly battle
Rages 'twixt fair maid
In slippered feet
And Revenue Beast in
Multi-layered Black and White cloak;
The brutal fight will end when 
She sighs and lays down her pen,
And remarks with quiet resolve,
"Next year I'll beat him at his game
And fire the first shot
Before he steals all the gold
From my tiny pot."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

MUSIC LINKS

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (JSBach) - after-tax version