She was a less-than-truckload lady
Who’d signed a contract for the long haul
With the interstate driver she married.
But that trucker kept a bogus bill of lading
And a logbook full of lot lizard flings.
So now she’s rolling down the big slab
In her hubby’s bobtail bulldog,
His gooseneck flatbed stranded in the wings.
She’d just renewed her CDL for diesel;
Her unexpected dispatch wasn’t forced.
Her old man was a cracker-headed weasel.
She left him feeling semi divorced.
Semi divorced, like a rider unhorsed.
She took away his way to keep on trucking.
Semi divorced was the judgement, of course.
He fooled around with fire and got a f*cking.
What you say?
I say, he fooled around with fire and got a f*cking!
We hear dat.
The dark, drenched forest
was tinkling with tuis and bellbirds,
blind to the ledger book,
the bill of lading,
the glint in the eye of the ax.
Pious settlers wired the land for religion
and switched on the lights.
The natives were dazzled,
but loved the portly man in the red suit
who gave them everything they wanted.
On the Historical Society outing,
we struggle for footholds
in whirlpools of organized ennui,
clutch at the slack rope
that cordons off irrelevant ancestries.
‘The end is not nigh,’
the Dom-Post tells its readers.
Doors are bolted against the wind,
the tick, tick of the electric fence
around eroded pastures.
First published in Southern Ocean Review
Thy elegance of form
Hast weakened my body and soul
As the weight of thy splendor and beauty
Hast become my payload
To carry thy love
Within my pitiful heart
Hast become my penance
For wanting more than I deserve
Pardon me for my weakness
But worry not for my struggles
For I have harvested thy bounty
And now must boldly ferry thy lading
I beg thee do not smile in my presence
For the weight of joy
It will add to my corpulent heart
Will surely be my undoing
Let me trudge along my road to happiness
And like an oxen who carries goods
Without complaint of discourse
I shall always be your love’s beast of burden
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