See my pirate eye? Blank canvas,
Drawn shade. Paint it black, you say?
Well, there’s a fine flesh wrinkle,
Planks clanking with the cannon.
Haul out those long toms, dearie,
We’ll be getting matey behind
The wheelhouse, in the rigging,
My long mustache dripping salt,
Sash of bullets slid over my chest,
Greatcoat hovering like a cape
Over shoulders, sweat-soaked
Kerchief, the gold rings in my ears,
Your gypsy groom, your robber
Groom, you and ocean air. But
It’s the eyes are the prize: one
Sea-blue, the other a dead bead
Drawn, a laser sight cowled
In a dark mechanical hollow,
The plank you’ll want to walk.
Then I’ll have you, watching
The sunfish and shark revolve
The permeable bathysphere
Of your skull, eyes narrowed
Against my salt. For me you’ll
Be coral: your mind into coral,
Your bones into coral, gone under,
Like my lost eye on the bottom
You’ll be known by your absence:
A tendril, that tingle in a stiff limb
Suddenly stretched.