DEAD ON ARRIVAL (Special Version - A storytelling track from my ABERGOWRIE VALLEY tribute collection.)

If you've ever been transplanted, of necessity, way out of your comfort zone

You might relate to my arrival as a female and stranger to a hothouse world of academics and testosterone

I call this piece, Dead on Arrival. Poetically speaking, give me an A, fellas. I believe I earned it

Cross-eyed Jill from Nanny Goat Hill

Lost the farm but kept the bill

With son to raise and banks to curse

Turned again to be a nurse

Lord save me, I can't fail

A world of male beyond the pale

Of chauvinists and chicken pox

A boarding school, the culture shocks

Be silent and forget your jokes

There's little humor in these blokes

Don't be seeing them in rhyme

Just hold your tongue and bide your time

Oh lordy, bide your time

Thus I died upon arrival

My life was lost to their survival

No more to gaze upon the sea

And pen a song with spirit free

Buried here beyond the range

The gary life to her was strange

Their dogs have even got the mane

A poet's feast, the comic line

And yet I left my pen to rob a card

Well, local I had learned

A foreign critic would be burned

Burned, burned, burned, burned

No one knows how much I yearned

My pen and itch to do them justice

Shut up, pen, or they'll bust us

Don't be seeing them in rhyme

Just hold your tongue and bide your time

Oh lordy, bide your time

For seven years I've paid my dues

Footy fractures, boils and spews

Few suspect the solemn nurse

Is cross-eyed Jill the cartwhale curse

Call the hearse

For none at home would get away

With half the rot I pass today

Put to pen immortalized

Their capers would be highly prized

But can I claim immunity

Am I yet community

Tis said I'm called the gary witch

So am I free to scratch the itch

Too late to wonder if it's so