One of Crikey’s poets has taken to the new tax regime with a pen and beaten it senseless, enjoy.

Slapping our knees, coughing like hags, we sucked cigars,

Till on the burning logs we turned our backs

And towards our comfy beds began to trudge.

Men laughed aloud. Many had lost their thoughts

But sipped port, blood-red. All unsteady; all blind;

Drunk with largesse; deaf even to the hoots

Of cunning Costello looming behind.

Tax! TAX! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling,

Finding a loophole just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And howling like a man in debt, or fined.

Dim, through the misty panes and Limousine lights

As under a street sweeper, I saw him falling

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He lurches in the gutter, begging, crawling.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the garbage truck we flung him in;

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His haggard face, like an unshaven crim;

If you could watch, at every jolt, the fleas

Come jumping from his debt-ridden hide,

Obscene little dancers – fitter than thieves

>From Parliament House and Tax Office Drive;

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To partners ardent for some desperate glory,

The old lie: Dulce Christ accountant bill?

No pay any mori.*

(*Sweet Christ, have you seen the accountant’s bill?

He can go and get stuffed)