Poetry Deficiency

133 33 8
                                    

Unlike traveler's checks, poetry is not very widely accepted as currency, so whenever I trekked into town I always picked up bottles to swap for nickels and dimes, to swap for things that poetry just wouldn't buy—like, for example, my taxes. It's too bad about the tax people not accepting poetry, because if you ask me, it's one thing they were in need of. Really: just try to read any of their publications and you'll see there isn't a good rhyme or interesting turn of phrase to be found, and the meter sure doesn't scan. It's a wonder they can keep publishing at all, when so many far better periodicals are going under these days. Clearly they had no poetry at all, so I'd offered on several occasions to send them some.

Which is how I'd learned that the tax people are kind of uptight. (Probably a side effect of their poetry deficiency.)

It's important to note that my property taxes used to be really, really low, because—as luckless Ed knew all too well—no one had seen the worth of my crooked house and hill and one-third acre lot . . . no one but me. That is, until a certain mogul decided my hill was the Bailey Building and Loan standing in the way of his glorious Pottersville. (And when I would not budge, I guess I became the spider in his toilet bowl, keeping him from doing his business.)

Now, I had nothing against the tax people, besides their lack of poetry. I was happy enough to help out with the schools, parks, libraries, roads, bridges, police, firefighters, and all that. It's just that, ever since my land got "reassessed"—in light of its potential to be 1/139th of a 46-acre shopping mall—I'd been playing catch-up, and my taxes kept getting away.

I was starting to fear there might not be enough empty bottles and cans in all the valley to keep up with the amount of not-poetry the tax people wanted from me. 

The Myth of Wile EWhere stories live. Discover now