Translation, Please (written in 1987)

[Doreen Peri]

I could learn to speak Japanese if I had enough ambition.
I could go to school, learn Thai Siamese if I had enough tuition.
One day I could learn to speak in Greek if I ever get the notion.
Or maybe learn how Russians speak if I travel across the ocean.

But there's a language, I swear, that I just can't get no matter how hard I try.
It's the language printed in the ten-forty book that's written for you and I.
They call it TAXESE and it's like a disease that just won't go away.
With complicated phrases written down on the pages which are very hard to say.

Like "non-qualified deferred compensation"....How do they expect us to get it?
Especially those without education! Oh my God, forget it!
If all of us spoke Vietnamese, we'd know we all made sense.
But trying to read the TAXESE book is like trying to learn to speak Spench.

It can't be deciphered or translated like Italian, Portuguese or French.
It's called TAXESE, no-one has expertise, and its written in the present tench.
It's a fictional language we can't understand written by some fictional staff.
If we didn't know they were serious, we'd roll our eyes and laugh!

But please remember to itemize, figure deductions and dividends.
And it's most important to learn TAXESE before buying your Mercedes Benz.

[Arcadia]

so true..! , great poem!!

[Stinkyfinger]

Very funny, and appropriate to this rapidly approaching ticktocking, heard so loudly, by so many clenched teethed, sweaty palmed, mortified to obsession, persons, awaiting the tax time bomb, on the verge of spewing all over us all.....ugh

[mtmynd]

good stuff... and it doesn't show it's age, which could be good or bad..?

tyvm. enjoyed.