20.0a

The Joy Of Tax

Dylan Harris

20.0a

The Joy Of Tax

Dylan Harris

Potato Press

One of these poems has appeared in First Time.

by Dylan Harris

4 anticipating the metaverse, 3 nation six dog, 2 discard

chapbooks

20.0: s chew, r dye-de-ho, q antwerp, p tension nitro ego, o church is dangerous vital, n tin rush, m the A rush, l an engineering rush (ii), k Miss Demeanour, j flock state, i be infinity, h Namings, g nation six dog, f uncivil law, e dead write, d chase chase, c an engineering rush (i), b a much for we, a The Joy Of Tax

19.9: c Inn, b Swoop, a An Ode To The A14

19.8: c Rose, b Hymnen, a Darmstadt

Copyright © 1985-2007, Dylan Harris

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Recitals of some of these poems may be found online

Poems

The Joy Of Tax

the clarion

China Poem

poetry

Scorpion

On Hunting With Hounds

The Joy Of Tax

“Each time you buy your love a gift

they gain some goods they don’t declare.”

said Ima Heirach, quoted for the Revenue.

“All income should be taxed,

so we intend to introduce

the ‘extra purchase’ rule.

Say you buy your girlfriend flowers,

one time in three,

you’ll buy an extra bunch

and post it off to us.

And should you buy romantic meals,

one time in three,

you’ll pay for one of us

to join you at the trough.

And, er, if you and she, um, yes,

well, that’s not our business, yet.

But we’ll tax the consequences,

when they’re fully grown.”

the clarion

lord pisswater’s clarion

the extreme rapist

a Russian madman

killed sixty

the extreme serial killer

Dr. Harold Shipman

murdered three hundred fifty

the extreme racist

genocides

five hundred people dead

for each one victim

of Dr. Harold Shipman

that’s all the souls you love

everyone you’ve ever met

think their faces now

family

people you chat

every glanced stranger

all of them

dead

skin awful white bloodlessness

life ripped

that dread vision is where the racist goes

when some big history incites his blind

he dare not civilise his difference terror

allow sane life to those he fears betters

Serbian Herzegovina

Hutu Burundi

De Montford’s England

we all have fear of strangers

fear needs courage for control

so how can you not detest

lord pisswater’s clarion

for reciting that howling bigotry

at fallen down outsiders

and how can you respect a nationalist

who daren’t comprehend his murder of belief

the murder that’s always seen

when his howling fuckalikes

steal the power of state

we know

lord pisswater’s grandfather

sucked the cock of hitler

but why does this modern fool

suck the cock of hitler’s corpse

beer and pindar

it’s like believing the gangster lords

and their sister

– female as a volcano –

will break the race

their hounds will win the catford dogs

and i’m there cheering

– the crowd cheers –

and i sing – we sing –

the words of the running dog song

i feel raised like the buddha

to a purity of judgement

i am to decide the race

i naked before a thousand opinions

will pronounce

i have seen great challenges met

a fox giving up eggs

a farm of trees and engines giving up monotony

a clarion reader giving up racism

so i will make

all those chaotic opinions

all those contradictory bets

all that violent self assertion

wilt

and there she stands

like a city on fire

promising ecstasy like a fruit promising juice

as naked as a tree in her leaves of spring

and though england may race like fools for gold

and though lord pisswater may promote his coward gestalt

and though i may burn such a squalid lust

to open her like tower bridge

i will not pursue

i would be foolish

damn the clarion

let’s get this straight

a rascist cliché states

“us Brits are wondrous at invention

but haven’t got the managers

to transmute ideas to wealth

so all our great creations

enrich non–British companies”

you’d think the empty peddle heads

would follow through and say

“that since our land needs managers to manage

and foreigners clearly do it well

why let’s invite ten million in”

yet lord pisswater’s clarion

that peddle rascist daily rank

screech at entrepreneurs

who happen to be foreigners

whom in their rascist hatred–speak

they castigate “economic migrants”

these foreigners whom in different lands

have the wit of management

the rascists argue ours do not

so let’s say it straight

the rascists state our managers

are stupid like themselves

“our country’s losing out”

yet screech a parrot hate

at foreign gifted women men

who immigrate and wealth create

by its own corrupted thoughts

the clarion howls stupidity

is written for idiots

little diddems

aah

poor little diddems

scared of desperate strangers

there

let little diddems hide

in mother blunket’s black skirts

until those nasty strangers go away

aah

poor little diddems

little diddems hide

whilst us grown–ups

negotiate these self–rescuers

enable their ventures

make our worlds rich

Scared Of Spiders

Some fear spiders

but why extinct them?

What else so controls flies,

the diseases spread?

Some fear immigrants

but why expel them?

what else so generates entrepreneurs,

the wealth spread?

Papers

If a toddler’s scared of beauty,

would a true parent

encourage the baby’s terror?

But then there’s racist logic,

which no doubt is why

Goebbels stood proud

of Pisswater’s mail.

Even the tallest

needs two short planks

to accept the racist

Pisswater mail.

bigot reinforcement

how to keep your paper bought

incite your customers to hate those only the stupid hate

all the reasonable people tell ’em they’re wankers

since butter is better than fact

you tell ’em they’re intelligent

and all the reasonable people are naïf

for not detesting desperate strangers

and incoming entrepreneurs

keep your customers dim and defensive

too het to hear their many betters

too prickly to break your deception

keep ’em racist

grab their coinage

the only disadvantage

causing the occasional mass–murdering war

but hey

that’s then

this is profit

China Poem

China’s history has five thousand years.

I’ve met three poets from two T’ang centuries,

still words transmuted into rushing English.

All I’ve really found’s my ignorance,

not just of province names and geography,

but of their photo ordinary, to me exotic, moments.

And if the future foreign people look back to our now,

will they use their times’ conceits

to misunderstand our misconsidered hopes?

Bollox to living in history, its canine worry.

Listen. Balance. Write, write.

Be.

poetry

push pop

The tradition state:

“let the language move

by charm of physick wit,

chemical syllable glue,

fusions d’etrangers,

and bureaucratic contraptionisations:

poets shall heel.”

And once the strong words

are meaning squandered,

how shall we poets say?

The lingo pack is bounding on:

why the fuck aren’t we scouting ahead?

select

when you hear brilliant works

Wordsworth Beethoven

do you recall

their philistines shouted them

avant guarde idiots

we have those who condemn

who forget their ancient brethren

detested their supposèdly safe heroes

we thank our past’s enlightened ears

who heard their avant guarde

and selected

we now

we have the duty

to seek the diamond in the charcoal

but those who don’t try

who stand and piss in

who contribute derision

abuse the taste

their predecessors hated

we who write

we poets

we must push

must risk

our glist may die before us

with us

but may survive the hundred years of staid

for some future child

born beyond the death of all the living now

to glint our work alight

techno

find emotion

can’t see concept

suffocate

or stretch

lazy leftover fools

attack original

announcing own empty

i must not let other people’s flaws restrain me

i must grow poetry

i must learn better work

what

poetry − words ≡ music

poetry − music ≡ speech

poetry − precision ≡ prose

\ (words music precision) ⊂ poetry

poetry ‡ content

Copyleft

Homer, this pub philosopher’s heard,

created to sing The Odyssey,

but ‘only’ edited all The Iliad

combining Helene colleagues’ poetry myth.

These, the songs that began written epic,

became his world’s Kernighan & Ritchie,

are older than Christianity’s crutch

and every foolish looping nationalist ‘us’.

Yet we, we only hear the single voice.

Works, once published, are inviolate.

This fat respect prevents relay creation.

We adore The Odyssey. We ignore The Iliad.

With ‘copyleft’, not for the empty, hated by empire,

programmers reuse and revise others’ recipes

causing original and imitative solidity;

it could prime a time–long poetic chiro–blast.

Collaboration, writing united, is not the same;

each ego can veto the other’s invention.

A copyleft author can declare and decamp;

others may sooth a clash–cultural chaos.

This gnu idea, it bypasses the island man’s blindness;

he cannot stop a work deepening through

lives cultures genders generations histories worlds.

Consider the Mahabharata.

pah!

gotta rag note

“read modern poetry”

oh i do

it’s old work

obese fill words

lard heavy

we rush world

yet verbosities still inject

vacant verbal burble

go get go

push pop the lingo

scout

early a

find out

i never did

if poetry your mortal moved

it’s to me as walking

and these I’m written

early a…

Scorpion

When men are fools, the devil dances sway.

Israeli fools, they swill their neighbours’ land.

The U.S. fools, they paid, they looked away.

Bin Laden dances fey; for this he planned.

Resenting fools, they took his lying school

to learn his angel never fell. He wove

his way. But he’s no devil, just a fool

who starved his human soul, replacing love

with fallen thought, empathy with stone.

His heart is dead, his brain a slave to one

corrupted goal. This man has never blown

a smile to someone new, nor lit a stranger’s fun.

Bin Laden’s men: revive survival checks;

he needs your death for his perverted sex.

On Hunting With Hounds

The anti–hunt majority

for whom the chasing is despicable

but the killing acceptable:

well, that must be so, for otherwise

they would not fill their gravy plates

with pre–masticated carcasses

of what once might have been

conscious animal beings

young and politely murdered.

10.3.7

20.0a The Joy Of Tax

A Chapbook of poetry from Dylan Harris

20.0a Dylan Harris poetry poems

(c) 2000-2004 Dylan Harris. This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence 2.0.
See dylanharris.org for details.

2003-12-14T19:12:26