A Taxing Countdown

A Taxing Countdown

(NaPoWriMo, Day 14)

Bottom line, a temporary fat ten

This yearly ritual, as-in nine

My return a windfall they eight

So very odd, it ’seven

Entitled for the Six

But not so ifI’ve...

My wallet’s four

Rich th'ree-

Gents too.

Who...

Won.

© Julie Bartha-Vasquez, 2013

It's Here Again!

Notes on the Poem:

More word play. But sorry, no sex today, unless tax returns and number puns turn you on. 

The NaPoWriMo prompt wanted us to write in the voice of a superhero, but since I already kicked things off with The Ballad of Lois Lane, I went in a different direction. I was inspired by... the dreaded  IRS deadline. (Because I'm weird, that's why.)

I realized that most of the numbers between one and ten have homophones (again, because I am weird). Homophones are words that are spelled differently, with different meanings but sound alike.  BTW, they're different from homonyms, which are spelled exactly the same, usually spoken exactly the same way, but have a completely different meaning. And here endeth the grammar lesson.

 So I started with that. For the other numbers, I had to come up with words or word combinations that created the other numbers. "Six" and "Three" were the hardest to pull off. I don't think I was completely successful, but read it aloud a few times and see if you can figure out what alternate word (or words) I was going for there.

Here's a hint: (It might help, but probably won't.) Just to make things more complicated, I decided each line had to be the same number of syllables as the number I was writing for... so Ten was 10 syllables long, Nine was 9 syllables, and so forth.

From there, I tried to write a poem that was semi-coherent in meaning. Again, I don't know how successful it is, but it was an interesting exercise to try to pull off. And only slightly less complicated than doing taxes. - WNG

PS: I skipped a day. I'll make it up later this week. You have to live life in order to write about it, sometimes.