The Righteous Tax Evaders

Ironically, they have begun levying taxes. Or “tithes” as they prefer to say.

What began as an earnest protest, and journeys downriver to avoid the tollbooth on the very road they had helped preserve and protect, has ended as do all journeys towards regional importance.

The thing about protecting places is that it inevitably costs money – a militia, walls, wells, equipment. And if you, the ruler, pay for it all out-of-pocket, you might create enough inflationary pressure that monsters become a lesser concern. The dragons, they could deal with. The forces of macroeconomics not so much.

So the Righteous Tax Evaders are in the process of quietly burying their old moniker, much aided by the fact that until recently – despite all their giant- and undead-slaying – no one had really known who they were.

One could say they are disgruntled, but above all, they are realists.

What I am missing

You told me I was missing Monster

And until I saw the insides of

Doki Doki Literature Club

I would be incomplete

But I am always looking

Away from darkness, unless

Mundane worries lurk

Or there is the perfect niche

To hide my messes away

I believe you even though

I will never watch or play them

And if you were here, I’d gladly hear

You saying it all again

https://ottawacitizen.remembering.ca/obituary/michael-ip-1082083615

Time limitless

Night grows reflective

When on your way home

There is another tempo

For being alone

–

Image from Wallpaper Flare

Shizuo

You know, a look can kill,

He said,

And that makes this self-defense

From then on I was walking home

With eyes for no one else

The decision-making process

Certain heavenly bureaucrats

Could have told the tale

Eons of analysis (note: pleading)

And single-sided briefing notes

Convincing the gods that this,

This was what they wanted;

A least-bad option for

The creation of All

The trouble with melons

Bobby Werther, at a luncheon

Partook of melon medley sorbet

And then reacted so badly, he

Was laid up the next four days

So he called for an appointment

And two years later, duly went

To be plastered with little patches

Of potent allergens

“This is the fruit sampler?” he asked

To which, “Oh yes,” the nurses said

So Bobby went home and itched

The next week and a bit

Then he returned to the clinic

With its exhorbitant parking rate

Unshowered, as instructed

Since his last appointment date

That day, the doctor appeared

And seeing him, declared

“You are quite allergic to shelfish,

And that is all I see – take care!”

“But what about the melons?”

Bobby asked as she rose to go

“Well, we didn’t have all the samples,”

She said. “They’re a hassle to get, you know.

So you may be allergic to a melon

And it may be prudent to abstain,

But its the shellfish and the crayfish

That would surely fry your brains.”

“Oh, but that I knew,” said Bobby

“I always avoid crustaceans

Had I known about those patches

I’d have asked to skip them.”

But the doctor was long gone

Nurses hustling in her wake

So Bobby shrugged and got his coat

And went to pay the parking rate

From within

Wait for the crabapple

When at last its leaves fall down

Then stand vigil for the fairies

Sprinkling the frost around

Sleepwalking

We have grown glad of slumbering

And making in ordinary time

Small changes to our realities

Days we count before we find

–

When a dreaming is a sadness

For all that it grows rare

And outside loses the wonders

That were its breath and fare

We can sleep, and we can sleep

Or go to the sounds and lights

Yet the remedy waits in the dreams

We lose after the night