Ode On A Treasurer

You fire your tax bullets

Into the heart of my business

And I fall, crying for justice

Wondering, when shall humanity find peace?

When will we learn, that tax is not the answer?

How many more businesses

Must lie torn and bleeding in the muddy trenches

Young entrepreneurial concepts

Gone before their time

Because of taxes, cruel and cold, penetrating the soft corporate flesh

Thousands of mothers fall, weeping, on their doorsteps

As they open the letter

Telling them their business has been murdered

By tax

Flowers grow where once proud young businesses marched

But no field of poppies can make us forget

That here, once, there was economic activity

And here, now, there is none

Why did we welcome the taxes?

Why did we not heed warnings of the hell unleashed

When taxes are let loose, to kill and maim?

Why did we not see the tears, the howls, the survivors left helpless in hospital beds

Dreams shattered, minds loosed from their moorings by the deaths of the businesses

They once held dear?

I look at my children

And I pray only this

That they live in a world where business lives free

Where business lives happy

Where tax will not stop our hearts

Or lay waste our hopes

I pray only that my children know not the pain

Of tax

Splintering the skull

Of an innocent business

May they never say those blasted words

Dulce et decorum est

Pro negotium mori