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Baxter Black: The Squeeze Chute

Baxter Black
On the Edge of Common Sense

The sun shone dull on its metal bars.

The snow lay drifted against her frame.

Behind the barn near the rusting cars



She’s ended up all crippled and lame.



An ol’ squeeze chute I’d opened and closed

On a hundred thousand heads and horns

Dragged to the bone yard to decompose

Forgotten rose in a bed of thorns.

I lay a hand on the frozen steel,

The head bar polished as smooth as glass.

The mem’ries flowed and the past revealed

Itself like magic. I knew at last.

Why, through the years of sweat and toil.

Despite the urge to romanticize,

I hated it just like a boil

That throbbed like the Starship Enterprise!

Its dinosaurial devious brain

Laying in wait for liver and loin

Slipped a ratchet and jiggled a chain

Then rendered me a blow to the groin!

It came to collect its pound of flesh.

A finger here, there, a piece of shin.

The aching ribs, recalling a’fresh

A gleeful, scything crack to the chin!

Hot forged in hell by the River Styx.

It’s what they’d make if devils could weld!

They say machinery and cows don’t mix

And that truth has never been dispelled,

But maybe I’m being too unkind.

There’s some that says she deserves a crown

And, in fairness I could be inclined,

As final tribute, to melt her down

And mold her into a plumber’s snake.

A generous way to salute’r.

And pay her homage, for ol’ time’s sake

Everytime I called Roto Rooter!