A Taxing Life

(Turn on music at the bottom for the full experience)

Come this cold winter's bend
Uncle gets the first laugh
   At year's end
Enjoying the view
As the ten-ton steam train
   Named Reality
Hurdles straight into 
   January resolutions
Sending financial plans spiraling 
   Down to the penny-scrambled ground

Waiting for pittance paid Piper
Cradled in April
Commoditizing the human soul
To itemize each aching woe
   On the tear-measured days
      Of the taxation craze

He's
   Mr. Monopoly
       Rigging the game
Ensured to churn your Capital Loss
   Into his hoarded gain

Like Smaug
   Basking in the mountain
      Piled high atop digital numbers

Not a December's ghost
   Can reach that money-tainted heart
One so green with deadly sin
   Remaining unpierced by empathy
       Armored in apathy

These aged shaking hands
And dissonance strained smile
    Never connecting with his calculator eyes
Adorned the porcelain mask 
    Painted with the American Dream

No door can shut in his face
Invading all by a rubber stamp
Having bloodied stacks of murdered hopes
   Pages lying under emboldened rejection     

All so diamonds ground from
  Lifetimes of indentured pressure
     Can line his pockets
Glistening from bootstrap to top hat

Pretending to be one with the everyday people
  Those censured to the faceless man's labyrinth
  Forever sailing among a sea of cubes
  In the sacrificial cause to appease
     The Capitalist's Minotaur

Oh - we buy what he's selling
   Raised with an engrained pain 
      The yearn for Earthly possessions
Tidings of a rich man's folly
   Become ambitions of a poor man's desire
Working for the Corporate Family
   Whilst remaining irrevocably replaceable

Yes, that's our Dandy Sam-I-Am
Prided Sheriff of Nottingham