Pound of Flesh - March 6 2023

 

Pound of Flesh

March 6 2023

I am conscientious

in completing the form.

It's after dark,

and my head is bent

over a cluttered desk

in a warm pool

of incandescent light,

adding and subtracting

and signing away

my annual pound of flesh.

A test

of virtue

and good citizenship,

along with the small symbolic victories

I can’t resist;

the few bucks

niggled here and there,

because only chumps

pay every last cent.

My first tax return

was the stuff of adulthood;

a rite of passage,

like my own apartment

a real job.

And now, it's Elliot's coffee spoons;

a life measured out

in its day-to-day mundanity.

Yes, there are also the occasions

that break the routine,

like St. Patrick's Day

New Years Eve

the winter thaw.

But none more inviolable

than tax deadline,

looming year after year

like a dark impenetrable wall

there's no getting around.

Spring

when the world greens

and young love blossoms.

When the air turns warm and sweet,

and we bleed hard-earned money

for the common good

and peace of mind.

The due diligence

of suburban dads

and the petty bourgeoisie,

who have their paperwork all in order

and adding machine at hand.

Who find that the hard numbers

and finality of summing up

give a sense of control

over lives that are more and more often

feeling overwhelmed.

And with a relieved sigh

completed.

The government mollified    . . . for now,

and the papers returned

to their shoebox

or expandable folder

for another whole year.

For documentation, sure.

Or maybe just to satisfy

the inner pack-rat

who inhabits us all.

And perhaps, as well, for some vague notion of posterity,

where we might outlast our lives

and find the meaning we've been searching for.

Stowed

among the photographs

and lapsed guarantees.

The old report cards

your mother squirrelled away,

a sentimentalist

who saved everything.

Some valentines

exchanged in grade 3,

love letters

no one else has seen.

The record of a life

we can't help but keep,

despite knowing down deep inside

that after we're gone

they'll come to clean out the apartment

and be at a loss

as what to do with it all.

And now

with the self-satisfaction

of an unpleasant task

done for another year,

it's time to stow the shoebox

on a high shelf,

clear the desk

of all but the coffee rings,

and head off

for a well-earned night of sleep.

Now that the paperwork is increasingly electronic, I suppose this poem is already an anachronism. Not to mention that I hire someone to do it for me. And, of course, would never think of niggling a few bucks: absolutely, every last cent!

I hope the nihilistic tone of the penultimate stanza doesn't put the reader off. But it is how I feel. I believe death is final. Am not sentimental. Photograph almost nothing. (Or take a “mental” photograph, if it seems really meaningful.) And realize that hardly anyone is remembered for very long. If at all.