Death and Taxes

Tax applied to salt and sugar,
fat and ‘bacco make life longer.

Subsidies for veggies green
add their weight and make us keen

to lose ours and so get trim
sweating in our local gym

or to walk ten thousand steps
(never mind arthritic hips).

Monitors now follow us
where‘er we go and make a fuss

if our movements – bowels or feet –
measure up as incomplete.

Now we need to work much longer
to cut the debt and so be stronger,

and salted chips are too expensive,
so naturally we feel defensive,

and all the health food fiddle-tax
we’d prefer to simply axe,

and not delay our parting breath
to mark our happy tax-free death.

The Rising Tide

 ‘Glebe Crash Repairs’ – the entrance sign –
to the small workshop is flaking,
The crab has shucked his shell.
and the hermit has departed
after decades of breathing fumes
and the fine sand of grinder dust,
eyes fading from the flash of welding,
flesh cut ten thousand times
on cracked metal edges.

A scribbled note tells
how his property was acquired
for the M4 motorway.

Put your ear to the shell:
hear gentle waves
as the dark tide rises.

The Ides of January

Manhattan’s in the dumps:

the fault’s entirely Trump’s.

There’s lots of snow and ice

and Donald isn’t nice.

You need to mind your feet

to avoid the piles of Tweet.

CNN is in the poo:

Buzzfeed is in there, too.

Vladimir’s his mate but

Angela missed her date.

The Inauguration’s soon –

a waning orange moon…

He’s going to build a wall

but n’er forget those all

who did not vote for Hillary

but for HIM – whose hair is biliary.

But here’s the point my friend:

Trump’s just the start, not end.

You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet:

Lest we forget, lest we forget.

Chorus

At age seven,

masked and dressed in red silk,

I announced,

before the curtain rose,

 ‘I am the chorus,

‘and I am here to tell you …’

I could not know how hard it is

to foretell even on stage

how players will behave,

but my role mattered

and I received applause.

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH

"I'd like to die on Mars,"

Elon Musk opined,

"but not on impact."

He founded SpaceX

and builds reusable rockets

only half of which have crashed.

$200,000 will buy you

a one-way ticket to Mars

forsaking gas bills,

wedding ring, aged parrot,

Christmas, tax returns,

and unanswered emails.

Musk is planning infrastructure:

loos that recycle

to feed hydroponic orchards;

vats of genetically modified coliforms

that make steak and vegetables;

a birthing bay;

a euthanasia chair.

He seeks to plant DNA,

stocks of fine deep-frozen ova,

sperm, even blastocysts,

gifts of diverse donors

drawn from Donegal to Dubbo.

But should an error happen

Musk has a plan:

still vague, we understand

it involves a prison

built entirely of Mars bars.

LOST FOR WORDS

How long had I known him?

Forty years I realised

sitting opposite at lunch.

His eyes stopped me:

I could not recall them

so bright, his skin so clear,

no trace of angst,

no evidence of his ambitions,

conversation diminished,

mini-twitches and adjustments,

his gaze, though happy,

time-lapsed as was his smile.

I was lost, though not shocked,

when two days later

I learned that he had died.

THE PROPRIETY OF DEATH

At 102, his death was judged
to be appropriate,
“The end of an era,”
one eulogust opined
and ancient listeners -
white-haired colleagues
albeit somewhat younger -
nodded yes, mmm,
trees bending
in a passing breeze.

His ashes were in a pint-sized casket
on the dais of the Great Hall
under distant gothic light.
Reductio ad absurdum, I thought,
as words lifted to the vault
on currents of warm air.

He’d outlived two wives:
his incapacity from a fall –
although his mind was sharp
and bright as the blade
of a Jerusalem sword –
suggested he should go.
“Time, gentlemen!” the barman said.
He had drunk his fill.

Organ, formality, no poetry,
no religion that winter afternoon.
When the curtain split
unadorned finality like his ashes
in the urn was distributed to us
 in metaphorical unmarked packets –
as appropriate – one for each to carry
as he or she was able.