When the Tax Man Cometh--National Poetry Month 2026

 

Before ubiquitous on-line filing, many Post Offices stayed open late and even had employees outside to collect returns from cars to make sure they would be post marked before midnight.

In the U.S.A. April 15 is traditionally the date by which income taxes are due to be filed.  In the quaint days before most people filed electronically, it would be celebrated by TV coverage of long lines at urban Post Offices kept open late for the occasion as hordes of desperate last-minute filers tried to get their returns post marked before midnight.  These days when taxes are due, I am sure there is no less desperation, but much of it is hidden in homes as procrastinators stare at screens in horror when they realize that one critical document without which the return cannot be competed is missing or internet connection mysteriously fails.

Taxes stir up strong emotions—panic, loathing, rage, and self-pity.  Strong emotions evoke poetry.  A lap around web poetry sites turns up hundreds of posted poems.  Some, of course are by famous poets and others by competent published journeymen and women.  But many are by amateurs some apparently stirred to verse for the first time.  It should probably come as no surprise that most of the latter seem to be posted by MAGA types whose hatred of taxes, government, and the bloodsucking weaklings who drain fine productive citizens like themselves may be the strongest emotion they ever have.  Also not surprisingly, many of these poems have all of the poetic beauty and majesty of posts by internet trolls.  You will be grateful that we are ignoring those.

As for me, I don’t mind paying my dues to civilization.  Not that I approve of every expenditure or don’t cluck and shake my head over boondoggles and sometimes jaw dropping waste.  Sure, I’d like to pick and choose.  I don’t want my dollars paying for the drone that wipes out a village wedding party or lets some already fat cat get a second yacht.  But I am down with most of the rest of it and patently benefit from it.

If ever I forgot all of the good, useful, and critical things that Federal tax dollars have supported, the crazed mass layoffs and slashed funding for key agencies and service The Man Who Would be King, Elon Musk, and assorted lackeys and minions reminded me last year.  And I suspect many others including Trump's former supporters. 

My pain is in the way-to-complicated process of filling out the forms and filing and the angst it caused me annually until I gave up and let H&R Block figure and file them.  They usually finish with-in hours and have kept me out of jail.

Here is a sample of what I found.

My Two Cents

Generally, there are two problems

With money: 1. Getting it and 2. What

To do with it. Certainly the food bank

Needs your help. The bristled ant.

Girls’ volleyball and these days even

The water supply, even the sky.

As you may surmise by my raiment,

Drapings really, and the primitive

Medium of this message, I have little

To recommend re: 1. Whereas 2.:

Start small. Make a stack of quarters

Then knock them down like an affordable

Coup d’état. Pennies are mostly zinc

So there’s your source of zinc,

An excellent sunblock. If you crumple

A crisp, uncirculated bill then

Uncrumple it incompletely,

It’ll appear to have shrunk as vivid

Visual aid to the recession. Blame

The president. Blame Congress. Blame

Mexico. For dramatic effect

Abbie Hoffman dropped a few hundred ones

On the New York Stock Exchange floor,

The ensuing pandemonium shutting down

The world economy for a couple hours.

Vermeer-owning industrialists

Stared into the nothing-mist. Oil

Magnates and hotel highnesses stared

Into the mist. Squeak, squeak — tiny, pink

Rat-feet on the wheel. My father worked nights

Most his life then died young but we never

Lacked electricity or clothes. I hate

To suppose money makes everyone its slave

But nearly everyone I know is sleep-

Deprived and wants to send a robot-clone

Into work for them. Squeak, squeak. Often

Money, like gin, can bring out the worst

Although once, after a couple stiff ones,

My mother gave you her mother’s diamond ring.

Maybe she won’t remember a thing, we thought

But she wrote it off as a gift on her taxes.

— Dean Young

The author of Fall Higher

Difference

1

Catch us up
to where we are
today —

these pants!
this hair!

*

It’s been a good year
for unique, differentiated products.

*

I’m more interested
in quarks:

up and down,
bottom and top,

simple units
of meaning.

2

If self-love
were a mirage,

it would decorate
distance,

shimmer over
others’ eyes,

evaporate
on contact

— Rae Armantrout
The author of Money Shot

During the Vietnam War, Allen Ginsberg beat the drums for outright tax resistance.  Pete Seeger regularly recited this poem at concerts and rallys in the 1970s.

No Money, No War

        Government anarchy prolongs illegal planet war 

        Over decades in Vietnam

        Federal anarchy plunges U.S. Cities into violent chaos 

        Conscientious objection to war-tax payment 

        is a refusal to subsidize mass murder abroad 

        and consequent ecological disaster at home. 

        This refusal will save lives and labor 

        and is the gentlest means of political revolution. 

        If money talks, hundreds of thousands of 

        citizens refusing war-tax payments 

        can short circuit the nerve system 

        of our electronic bureaucracy. 

        No money, no war.

        --Allen Ginsberg 

And last but not least, my favorite, an import from the U.K.—Scotland to be exact—which evokes a pastoral past and foreboding.

Taxman

Seven scythes leaned at the wall.

Beard upon golden beard

The last barley load

Swayed through the yard.

The girls uncorked the ale.

Fiddle and feet moved together.

Then between stubble and heather

A horseman rode.

—George  Mackay Brown

from Fishermen with Ploughs

The Taxman Cometh—National Poetry Month 2025

 

                        Cars lined up at the Memphis Post Office in 1968 to get their tax returns post marked before midnight. 

In the U.S.A. April 15 is traditionally the date by which income taxes are due to be filed.  In the quaint days before most people filed electronically, it would be celebrated by TV coverage of long lines at urban Post Offices kept open late for the occasion as hordes of desperate last minute filers tried to get their returns post marked before midnight.  These days when taxes are due, I am sure there is no less desperation, but much of it is hidden in homes as procrastinators stare at screens in horror when they realize that one critical document without which the return cannot be competed is missing or internet connection mysteriously fails.

Taxes stir up strong emotions—panic, loathing, rage, and self-pity.  Strong emotions evoke poetry.  A lap around web poetry sites turns up hundreds of posted poems.  Some, of course are by famous poets and others by competent published journeymen and women.  But many are by amateurs some apparently stirred to verse for the first time.  It should probably come as no surprise that most of the latter seem to be posted by MAGA types whose hatred of taxes, government, and the bloodsucking weakling who drain fine productive citizens like themselves may be the strongest emotion they ever have.  Also not surprisingly many of these poems have all of the poetic beauty and majesty of posts by internet trolls.  You will be grateful that we are ignoring those.

As for me, I don’t mind paying my dues to civilization.  Not that I approve of every expenditure or don’t cluck and shake my head over boondoggles and sometimes jaw dropping waste.  Sure I’d like to pick and choose.  I don’t want my dollars paying for the drone that wipes out a village wedding party or lets some already fat cat get a second yacht.  But I am down with most of the rest of it and patently benefit from it.

If ever I forgot all of the good, useful, and critical things that Federal tax dollars have supported, the crazed mass layoffs and slashed funding for key agencies and service The Man Who Would be King, Elon Musk, and assorted lackeys and minions have reminded me.  And I suspect many others including Trump's former supporters. 

My pain is in the way-to-complicated process of filling out the forms and filing and the angst it caused me annually until I gave up and let H&R Block figure and file them.  They usually finish with in hours and have kept me out of jail.

Here is a sample of what I found.

My Two Cents

Generally, there are two problems

With money: 1. Getting it and 2. What

To do with it. Certainly the food bank

Needs your help. The bristled ant.

Girls’ volleyball and these days even

The water supply, even the sky.

As you may surmise by my raiment,

Drapings really, and the primitive

Medium of this message, I have little

To recommend re: 1. Whereas 2.:

Start small. Make a stack of quarters

Then knock them down like an affordable

Coup d’état. Pennies are mostly zinc

So there’s your source of zinc,

An excellent sunblock. If you crumple

A crisp, uncirculated bill then

Uncrumple it incompletely,

It’ll appear to have shrunk as vivid

Visual aid to the recession. Blame

The president. Blame Congress. Blame

Mexico. For dramatic effect

Abbie Hoffman dropped a few hundred ones

On the New York Stock Exchange floor,

The ensuing pandemonium shutting down

The world economy for a couple hours.

Vermeer-owning industrialists

Stared into the nothing-mist. Oil

Magnates and hotel highnesses stared

Into the mist. Squeak, squeak — tiny, pink

Rat-feet on the wheel. My father worked nights

Most his life then died young but we never

Lacked electricity or clothes. I hate

To suppose money makes everyone its slave

But nearly everyone I know is sleep-

Deprived and wants to send a robot-clone

Into work for them. Squeak, squeak. Often

Money, like gin, can bring out the worst

Although once, after a couple stiff ones,

My mother gave you her mother’s diamond ring.

Maybe she won’t remember a thing, we thought

But she wrote it off as a gift on her taxes.

— Dean Young

The author of Fall Higher

Difference

1

Catch us up
to where we are
today —

these pants!
this hair!

*

It’s been a good year
for unique, differentiated products.

*

I’m more interested
in quarks:

up and down,
bottom and top,

simple units
of meaning.

2

If self-love
were a mirage,

it would decorate
distance,

shimmer over
others’ eyes,

evaporate
on contact

— Rae Armantrout
The author of Money Shot

This parody is by one of the bathrobe poets.  Is it Left Wing, Right Wing?  Who knows?  Tropes from both sides can be found.  Likely the writer has no clear ideology only a dollop of tax angst and a sense of playfulness.

Dr Seuss-style-Mister Obama Please Tax The Rich Man

Mister Obama please tax the rich man!

The cost’s are up.

The pay is down.

Tax.

TAX!

All over town.

There is tax on GAS!

There is tax on tan.

Mister Obama please tax the rich man.

There is tax on CARS.

There is tax on trees.

There is tax on our food.

No

More tax.

Please!

We can’t pay.

There is tax

On LAND.

ROCKS, DIRT, SAND

There is tax.

There is tax

This I know

On tobacco, too.

But tax, tax, TAX!

The rich do, do, DO!

Mister Obama

Please tax the

Rich man!

There is tax on pills.

There is tax on HEALTH.

There is tax on insurance

Just for wealth.

Just for wealth

There is tax

On telecom.

And on low tech

And CD-ROM.

Mister Obama

Change the queue.

Tax the rich man.

Just do, do, DO!

Now start this show!

Please Mister O.!

There’s even tax on electricity.

There is tax on our dog...

Ducks and hog.

There is tax on our water

And imbibements we drink.

There is tax on our underwear

...and clothes.

Middle class has floundered.

It shows!

Mister Obama!

Tax the rich man.

Mister Obama!

Please tax the

Rich man!

It’s time

For

No

More

Drama!

Tax the rich man

Please...

Mister Obama.

—Deborah  Burch

And last but not least, my favorite, an import from the U.K.—Scotland to be exact—which evokes a pastoral past and foreboding.

Taxman

Seven scythes leaned at the wall.

Beard upon golden beard

The last barley load

Swayed through the yard.

The girls uncorked the ale.

Fiddle and feet moved together.

Then between stubble and heather

A horseman rode.

—George  Mackay Brown

from Fishermen with Ploughs

 

It’s the Anniversary of the You Lick ‘em U.S. Adhesive Postage Stamp

The first self-adhesive postage stamps issued by the U.S. Post Office in 1847.

On July 1, 1847, the United States Post Office issued its first official adhesive-backed postage stamps.  This was only 7 years after the world’s first stamp, the famous Penny Black, was issued by the British.  Only a handful of other countries, notably Switzerland and Brazil, had adopted pre-paid stamps.

The Post Office issued two stamps.  The 5¢ Benjamin Franklin covered the cost of a half-ounce letter addressed within 300 miles.  There was also a 10¢ stamp featuring George Washington for greater distances.  Lest you think that this was a great bargain, the 5¢ stamp would cost a little less than $1 at the current value of the Dollar.

The cost meant that most local letters were still hand delivered and that long distance ones were still often put in the hands of travelers to carry.  Still, the convenience did cause an increase in use of the Postal system and over time, with the introduction of amenities like home delivery and still later Rural Free Delivery, helped create a system that was reliable not just for personal messages, but importantly for business which boomed along with expanded postal use.

As the railroads and other means of modern transportation cut the cost of carrying the mail, the price of postage shrank both in real terms in terms of the relatively modest inflation over the next century.  In 1947, centennial of American postage, a First Class stamp good for up to one ounce cost only 3¢.  That price held steady from 1932-1958.

Old Post Office Department Seal...when delivering the mail was a public service.

Prices have risen steadily since then until First Class postage is now 55¢ for the first once and 20¢ for each additional ounce.  Now, in just two weeks a First-Class Mail Forever stamp will jump from 68¢  to 73¢.

The familiar lick-em adhesive back stamps have been phased out.  The United States Postal Service, heir to the Post Office, now issues only self-adhesive stamps with peel-off backs.  But the vast majority of first class postage moves without a conventional stamp but is metered or created and printed from programs sold by the USPS.

First Class Forever Stamps will get more expensive yet again thus July 14.

The rise of e-mail and other electronic communications has decimated the use of letters for personal communications.  Few people get or receive personal messages by post anymore.  Many bills are now paid online or by automatic withdrawal drastically reducing both mailed bills and remittances.   The rising cost of Second and Third Class and Bulk mailings have also put a dent in advertising, as business looks for cost effective alternatives to junk mail.  Then the Postal service saw a huge fall off in use and revenue after the 2008 economic collapse.

The Postal Service is in perpetual crisis, constantly raising prices to meet costs, saddled with a system designed for much greater volume, and considering severe cutbacks including the reduction of home delivery to four, or even three days a week. 

This trend came to a head last year during the 2020 presidential campaign.  Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, an ardent mail privatizer and an investor in logistics companies with current contracts with the USPS, began a systematic dismantling of postal services including the removal of collection boxes and curtailed hours for letter carriers that predictably caused huge delays in delivery and put vote by mail in peril.  Outrage over the blatant attempt to interfere in the election caused DeJoy to walk-back some of his alleged “efficiency reforms” but other hollowing-out of the Postal Service is still on track.  President Joe Biden fired members of the Board of Governors and appointed replacements, but DeJoy can remain in charge for the rest of his 10 year term unless Congress intervenes.  

In a wreck the Postal Service/wreck democracy scheme mail collection boxes were removed from convenient locations around the country before the 2021 Federal elections.

But even with all the trouble a belt-tightened Postal Service would today be in the black and not threatened with draconian cuts.  A provision stealthily slipped into the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) in 2006 by Republicans set the service up to collapse.  PAEA was a supposedly bi-partisan effort to streamline and modernize the Postal Service to meet the reality of modern needs.  It called for the closure of marginal Post Offices, increased use of automation and technology, and the commiserate reduction of personnel.  But a little noticed provision required that the Service fully pre-fund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years within a ten-year window.   This means that the Postal Service is required to send to the U. S. Treasury $5.5 billion each September 30.   This is to pay for the future retirement health benefits of workers who haven’t even been born yet. 

No other public or private health benefits system requires this kind of pre-payment.  Most are pay-as-you-go systems funding benefits for a year or two in advance.  This guaranteed that the Postal Service would go broke and into a crisis that would cause Congress to require drastic service cuts that would doom the agency.  The idea was to force the takeover of as many services as possible by private enterprise.  A major motivating factor was the prospect of decimating and ultimately destroying the unionized Postal Service workers.  The destruction of the Postal Unions would be a blow to Democrats who benefit from the support of organized labor.

The Postal Service is supposed to function as a profit making business, which is virtually impossible under the circumstances, and not as an essential public service.  So, the future of the mail—and postage stamps is open to doubt.