When poetry and income taxes
collide in inner space it’s like the apogee
and the nadir of the human race
have intersected on the dashboard of your heart.
The other day while doing taxes,
I wondered why my tide-filled, fluid well
appeared to have gone bone-dry and empty.
The guillotined sharpness of dealing
with pennies, nickels, dimes and dollars
had mortified my use of rhymes,
the latter were not to be found anywhere.
The usual group I float within my soup
were arid, dry, desert-like, and missing.
Not a shark, parking lark, thistle, whistle,
or crow’s shrill, head-banging call
bounced off my walls, only the dull thud
off bottom lines colliding with gravity.
Then I gave some thought and wondered if
both sides of the brain were mutually exclusive,
like portions of the human race left unseated
on an empty bus to Nowhere...
“Nah, can’t be,” I exclaimed,
“I can open the windows and
let them all back in again...”
And I did, like whispers and typhoons
they entered and took their seats,
rattling glass and lunch bags,
dropping their peanut butter sandwiches
and lunch money quarters
in both laughter and applause.
But no IRS agent I’m sure in cubicle’d grandeur
or cluttered counter space will endure the
atrophying of his brain while circumcising
the bottom line of my drain’s return this year.
If he or she can’t find this funny, all bets are off by 8%.
©Peter Bray, 3/28/10 All rights reserved
