Stupid Rhyming Poem Installment #1

I wrote this in the car when P.S. Eliot was on tour in July. Will, Katherine, and I were (as you may have assumed from the title) driving along the old Oregon Trail.

'When Yr on the Oregon Trail'

When you're on the Oregon Trail

Baristas churn to tell you tales

of absent taxes on the sales

of Venti Soy Iced Coffees.

And when you're traveling down this trail

a sharpened ton of pine trees flail

around, their needle-fingers frail 

but never brown or breaking. 

As your wagon caulks and sails,

your Idaho potatoes stale

and leave your palette plain and pale.

She'll break the highway Richter scale.

And some might die along the way

from Typhoid fever, food decay.

The markers left read 'Here She Lay.'

She was too heavy anyway.

And when your memory bails and fails

at photographing small details

just forge the river, you'll prevail.

Oh when you're on the Oregon Trail.