The Waste Can

Nam Sybyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampula pendere, et cum illi senatori dicerent: What the hell do you want; respondebat illa: An Inheritance Tax.

For H.R. Block
Il miglio ragioniere

I. The filing of the Deadbeats

April is the cruellest month, squeezing
Late tax out of the day's mail, mixing
Purgery and remorse, stirring
Dull wills with stiff fines.
Write-offs were the norm, covering
Wealth with deceptive ease, making
Possible TV shows on Buber.
Kemp-Roth surprised us, coming intact from Joint Committee
With a shower of praise; we dropped the remote control
And stared straight at C-SPAN, without understanding,
Then called accountants, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine persönlichen Gebrauch, echt Geschäft
When we were dependents, deducted by parents,
They filed us, they took us out of the totals,
and we were precious. They said, Thank God,
Marie, you were born. And down I went,
In that column where they loved me.
I read the new tax law, in Lauderdale that Winter.

What are the ins and outs, what loopholes gape
inside this wordy rubbish? Until now,
We could not say, or guess, for we knew only
a heap of old 1040s - then the laws changed.
The new law had no shelters, the new form no relief,
And the stern rules no hint of havens. Only
There were shelters under that new law
(Get into the shelters under that law),
And I will show you something different from either
Commuting each morning, mad drivers behind you
Or martinis each evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in retirement trusts.

Caution: Beginning in 1987,
If you received a distribution
From a qualified retirement plan
You may owe additional tax

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
they called me the hyacinth girl.'
- Yet when you found out late, of the Hyacinths’ value,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, you could not
write, and your eyes failed, and you neither
wrote it nor thought, declaring nothing,
looking into the heart of fraud, the silence.

examples of income you must report.

Monsieur George Soros, bearish clairvoyant,
Sold his greenbacks, nevertheless
is known to be the wisest man in hedge funds,
with a wicked Blackberry habit. Connecting.
Here is your card, the deflating American Bubble
(those were telecoms and dot-coms. Look!)
Here is Unemployment, Inflation, stagnant stocks,
the lowest of situations.

Here is the man with three wars, and here the Pentagon.
And here is some three card monte, and this check,
Which is blank, is something we’ll carry on our backs,
Which we are forbidden to see. I do not find
New income. Fear death by audit.
I see crowds of people, throwing their hats in the ring.
Thank you. If you see Mr. Bradley or Gephardt,
tell them Greenspan does his tax-reform himself:
one must be so careful these days.

......Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over Wilson Bridge, so many,
I had not thought the Feds had hired so many.
Tires were too infrequently impaled,
And each man set his course for IRS.
Flowed out to Carrolton, through service roads
To where First American kept the hours
With no sound whatsoever - L.E.D.
There I saw the motorcade, and heckled, crying: 'Dubya!
You who were with them (in spirit) at My Lai!
That corpse you planted in the Hanging Gardens,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this term?
When will the bloody cost fall on your head?
Oh keep the Bull far hence, you market men,
Or with your overvalued stock you'll crash again!
You! hypocrite arbitrageur! - mon semblable, - mon frere!'

II. A Game of Cat-and-Mouse

The Chair she sat in, like a Spartan's throne,
Rolled on the carpet, where the glass
Of double card-swipe-entry doors stood guard
From which great letters, IRS, sprang out
(and others less important crept below)
Doubled the light from overhead fluorescents
Illuminating neutral-hued hall tiles as
The glitter of her bling-bling sank to meet it -
From day one she’d been told: not at an audit!
The vials of ivory colored coke and meth
Unstoppered just an hour ago, and sniffed
(Uh huh. powder-crystal mix.) confused
And drowned the sense in mania; she needed air
But he won’t crack a window. These accountants
All fat and with their prolongued candid gazes,
Their addictions from the cafeteria
Straining the buttons on their k-mart clothing.
Clear lucite covered parchment
Hung black and white, framed by aluminum
In which dead metal his credentials lived.
Above the man's diploma was displayed
As though a window gave upon the gruesome scene
The tax of Al Capone, by the Chicago branch
So rudely forced; yet there the xeroxed check
Filled all the frame with zero after zero.
And still he cried (and still the Feds pursued)
"deductions" to deaf ears.
And other withered stumps of lives
Were hanging from the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, crackling, clutching the sums enclosed.

Footsteps shuffled to copiers.
Under fluorescents, under the gun, her share
Spread thin by disallowed points
Glowed into words, digging herself deeper still

‘My write-offs are bad this year?’ ‘Yes, bad.’ ‘Work with me.
Speak to me. Why do you make no sense? Speak.’
......‘What were you thinking? What write-offs? What?’
‘I never know what is not kosher. Think.’

I think you are up shit’s creek,
Where Leona Helmsley moans.

‘What is that noise?”
.................The cash under the table.
‘What is that click on my phone? What is it doing?”
.................Nothing. Again nothing.
.............................................................‘Do
‘You know everything? Do you see everything? Do you remember’
‘Everything?’

....I remember
Those are pearls that are not fake.
‘Am I on trial, or not? Is there nothing in your books?’
.............................................................But
O O O O that IRS audit “red flag” –
It’s so auditable
Not laudable
‘What shall I do now? What shall I do?’
‘I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
‘With my skirt up, so. What shall I do tomorrow?
‘What shall I ever do?’
………………………………In hot water again.
And if she pays, a closed case this year.
Next year another game of cat-and-mouse,
Me pressing thick-lensed eyes, you waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Shaniqua’s husband got demobbed, I say –
Yo, straight up, I get right up in her face and say
DRINK EM UP ITS TIME
Now Rayshaun coming back, get yo self together girl.
He’ll want to know what you done with that art he gave you
From Udai Hussein’s crib. No lie. Seen the GIF.
You get some work done, Shaniqua, and get a nice set,
He say, straight up, them bug bites make me ill.
And girl, you know it, I say, and think of poor Rayshaun.
He been a reservist two years, he want light time,
he up in Iraq. He come home hell yes he want some strange.
Oh hell no she say. Oh hell yes I say.
Then I know who to bust up, she say, and look at me hard.
DRINK EM UP ITS TIME
Yo Miss thang, you don’t want that thang,
You miss that thang, I say. Damn girl!
Rayshaun hook up, don’t act all surprised, I say,
You best check yo self, you already done wreck yo self.
(And she only twenty. Huh.)
No shame in my game, she say, snapping her fingers,
They close the clinic so I took them pills, she say.
(She had five already. She gonna die from George Bush.)
Tyrone, he say I be all right, but I never been right since.
Damn you dumb, I say.
Well if Rayshaun still want that thang, there you go, I say.
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
DRINK EM UP ITS TIME
Well that Sunday Rayshaun come home, they got their freak on,
And they ask me in to dinner, he want some threesome thang –
DRINK EM UP ITS TIME
Later B. Later G. Goonight my Boo. Goonight.
Yo let’s go ladies.
You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.

III. The Hired Servant

Right after rent they’re broke and the best bringers of bread
Clutch and cling 1099s left blank. The sin
Crosses the known facts until the nanny’s deported.
Dean Dems, run softly, till I end my whine.
The record bears no feeding bottles, airtight Pampers,
Milk substitute, Snuggies boxes, applesauce jars,
Or other estimates of baby costs. The nanny’s deported.
And her friends, the other au-pairs known to inspectors;
Deported, have left no expenses.
By the Perrier with lemon I sat down and wept…
Dean Dems, run softly, till I end my whine,
Dean Dems, run softly, for I skipped 1099s.
But at my back-tax-owing-backside, I hear
The rattle on the phone, and income averaged year to year.

A rat reports from each town in the nation
Dragging its slimy paws through every bank
While Bobby Fischer lives in midnight sun
Or a winter evening, Reykjavik time, one. Asses!
Musing upon Don King, another wreck
And M.L. King, who beat tax raps before him.
Nobodies narking, from political low ground
And stones cast at each little celebrity target,
Ratted out by snitches (why me?) year to year.
But at my king knight’s naked flank I hear
Spassky’s score-pad? No, Variety, which brings
Sheen to Mrs. Fleiss in the Spring.
Sun Myung Moon shone spotlights on Mrs. Fleiss
And on her daughters
She dodged her taxes too, they caught her.
Et O ces choix d’enfants, parlant dans la dome de capitol!

Rat tat tat
Thug thug thug thug thug thug
So rudely forc’d
Revenue

Unreal City
Under the smoke screen it’s Reverend Moon,
Mr. Pruden’s boss, the Seoul Merchant
Unfettered now, with pockets full of currency
f.o.b. Washington Times, calling all the shots.
Asked me, in my Democratic trench,
To luncheon at the Old Ebbet’s Grill
Followed by receipts for both (for just one bill.)

At the happy hour, when the red-eyed hacks
Turn upward from the desk, when the dry martini waits
Like a tax bill growing waiting,
I, Publicanus, though blind-drunk, growing every year,
Bald man with wrinkled polo shirt, can see
At the happy hour, the evening hour that shirks
Barward, for a drink or maybe three,
The typist from the law firm, changes shoes and lights
A smoke, and plays with hair extensions.
Eyeing a table perilously spread
(Her slimming new dimensions, such can be gone in days)
O the divine shrimp pile (with Old Bay red)
Hot wings, poppers, nacho chips and Lays!
I Publicanus, old man with vodka breath
Perceived the scene, through drink, foretold the rest –
I too could be the tart’s expected guest!
I, the old man avuncular, arrive,
A tax examiner, with one bald pate,
One GS-12 for whom insurance sales
Would have been fine, but wound up at the State.
The time is now propitious, two-for-one shooters,
Her clique’s not here yet, she is bored and hot,
And looking like a waitress straight from Hooters,
But buttoned-down, pure. (Who says she’s not?)
Trashed and excited, I assault in bounds;
Explore with novel words – ‘You come here often?’
Her vanity requires several rounds;
She’ll make a welcome-mat of me, but soften
When I Publicanus have paid for all
(An act that’s never failed to lead to bed:
I who have grabbed the thieves by sorry balls
And bilked a sum from those who durst drop dead.)
She blows a final patronising kiss-kiss,
I grope my way to Metro with her digits…

She turns to watch me through her horn-rimmed glasses
Hardly aware a younger brighter lover
Has strained his neck to gawk. This thought now passes:
“Well now, that’s one less bill I had to cover.”
When single woman stoops to happy hour,
Waiting for a shining knight to come,
A smooth line or some smooth drink may empower
The illusion of him, Visa Platinum.

Bad music barked at me upon the barstool
And toward the platform, at M and Seventeenth.
O City city, I can barely hear
Beside a public bar on Northwest K Street
A pleasant flashback to the seventies
And not a jukebox – O, the unfair tease!
The old band plays at eight: the Orange Line
Of Metro’s coming. Cold.
Inexplicably ‘Survivor’ is a repeat. Richard Hatch’s gold.

…………The torch exhales
…………Sterno fumes
…………Alliances split
…………With the turning tide
…………White butt
…………Wide
…………Sue’s reeling. Swing in the Borneo breeze.
…………Producers place
…………Drifting logs
…………Just out of reach
…………Cast, paddle like dogs.
……………………………………………Weialala leia
……………………………………………Wallala leialala

…………Gervase, Colleen, and Jenna
…………Drawing straws
…………(with Dr. Sean
…………they may as well)
…………Rice and Grubs
…………They risked Hell
…………Richard out-thought
…………Season One
…………Carried their flames
…………To beating drums:
…………Tribal Council

…………’Scams and duty-frees.
…………How Rudy bored me. Richard and Sue
…………Undid me. At Richard I lost my lunch
…………Sue defined “pine” like a dugout canoe.’

…………’My feet at the Service, and my heart
…………Under my feet. After the arrest
…………He wept. Hatch promised “a new start”
…………I fined him double. What did he expect?’

…………’On Pulau’s sands
…………I could connect
…………Prizes with Income.
…………The crate’s ten-penny nails scratch dirty hands.
…………My people civil servants who expect
…………everything.’
……………………………………………la la

…………To Richard Hatch I came

…………Taxing Taxing Taxing Taxing
…………O Lord, Thou votest me off
…………O Lord, Thou votest

…………Taxing

IV. Death by Audit

Agnew the Amer-Grecian, a fortnight gone,
Forgot the Gallup Polls, and the CREEP’s old bills
And the Senate and House.
… ………………………………………………The current press may see
Nicked up tax statistics. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of the campaign trail
Presaging The Landslide.
… …………………………………Quaker or Jew
O you who burn the oval office, looking inward,
Consider Spiro, who was once rich and evasive too.

V. What the Numbers Said

After the torchlight, Feds ate Richard’s rations.
After the rumors, reliance on a pardon,
After the Agnew bust, the resignations
The motions and objections
Nattering Nabobs of Negativism
Of blunders that spring up like history’s fountains
He who was living is now “Dad”
They who weren’t living are now paying
With a little interest

Here is no shelter but only stock
Stock and no future (a la Roosevelt)
The road to debt winding among the mountains
Which are mountains of debt without shelter
If there was shelter we could stop and think
Amongst the stocks, which drop and shrink
Debt is high and mires us in the banks
If there were only gains amongst the stocks
Debt mountain. Sell the curious stock that cannot split.
Here one can neither put not call nor sit
There are not even write-offs against this mountain
But highly futile blunder without gain
There is not even leverage to move this mountain
But Feds’ federal cases snare and snatch
From debt-poor HUD-built houses
… …………………………………If there were audits
…And no stock
…If there were stock
…and also shelter
…And shelter
…A string
…To pull to move the stock
…If there were belief in recovery only
…Not for the Pradas
…But the Walmarts, the Wendys
…Belief in futures, belief in a stock
…Where the vermin pull strings on a golf tee
…Stock drop stock drop stock drop drop
…But there is no shelter

Who takes a third of checks always astride you?
When I count, there is only your and my subsistence
But when I look ahead up the career path
There is always another, not working, beside you
Sliding, red-white-and-blue mantled, hooded
I do not know whether reptile or vermin
- Whose hand’s in your pocket, on the other side of you?

What is that sound in the mid-April air
Revenue Internal lamentation
Who are those harried herds swarming
Over Postal gates, stumbling in, out of breath
Singed not by some flat-tax promise only
What is the city this should be addressed to
Tax reform each year in the midnight air
Falling brackets
Thirty-three percent. Twenty-eight. Twenty-five.
Fifteen. Nothing.
Unreal.

A woman mailed her envelope tonight
And scribbled in her checkbook at the end
Bureaucrats with baby faces in fluorescent light
Will check her math, if need be make amend
And call head downward, tell her of the fall
Turn upside-down her world with late fees,
Taxing retroactive, hellish penalties,
And choices stinging out of garnished wages and exhausted wills

In this depressed hole among debt mountains
Was Sun Myung Moon right, the cash is singing
Over the bungled forms, the mangled schedules
There is the hanging scabbard, Leona’s home.
It has barred windows, and no door swings.
My loans could interest someone.
Only a cop stands on the roof free
Co co RICO co co RICO
If you’re racketeering, or had sham trusts
Bringing pain.

Gangrene has sunk in while my limp hand
Waited for the knife, while the black ink
Spattered car payment numbers in a blank.
The bungler crouched, considering violence.
Then spoke the numbers
DA
Damm: what have I given?
My friends shook down my bleeding heart
The lawful declaring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of searching can never redeem
This year, and every year, I have these listed
Which are not to be found in my receipts
From the charities scraping for beneficent spenders
Or under piles spindled, from the phone solicitors
In prescient gloom
DA
Damn it:I have filed a free
Return at this hour once, and only once
At least it’s tax-free, living in prison
Living as if tax-free, each confirms a prison
Only at midnight, mercurial humors
Create for a moment a postman Coriolanus
DA
God damn it! The buzzer’s sounded
Yearly, to the hand expert at putting off
I’ve had four months, you’d think I’d have responded
Early, when incited, filing compliant
In control of tax.
… …………………………………I sat upon the chair
Fishing, scary Schedule C before me
Shall I at least set my forms in order?
From the fridge they’re falling down falling down falling down
E Pluribus Unum; Novus Ordo Seclorum
Quando posso avere luogo come la sfregi-faccia? – O wallow wallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine, l’impot a abolie
These fragments! Time is short until my ruin
Why then file online - But AOL’s down again.
………………Damn fees Damn fees Damn fees

© Dan Halberstein