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Free Verse
Written for the Poetry Drabble Challenge in April 2005

by Lorraine
April 14, 2005

I'm Captain Jack Sparrow and I don't write poetry, savvy?
Too many more important things to do than to scribble words on paper all the time.
(Is impersonating a poet is a hanging offense? Add it to the list, mate.)

Leave the sonnet writing to Will, beautiful pentameters
Dedicated to his Delicate Flower. Sweet, but sometimes sharp, the best ones are.
(And he should be good at it, after all his name is William)

And Lizzie, she would write limpid responses, rhyming.
A Letter from a Maid in Love. I can hear her snort at the thought.
(Elizabeth's about delicate as I am, for all that she is beautiful)

The Commodore, great epics, battles wage and heroes rage.
Underneath all that gold braid is a man of action, at least he'd like to think so.
(At night does he dream he is Odysseus, or maybe Jason on the Argo?)

Leave the limericks to Gibbs, a ready wit to match the ready flask.
He gets everyone laughing, he does. Five bawdy lines and its better than dessert.
(Well, maybe not pie, but that's a story for another day)

The angry woman poet, that'd be Anamaria.
And Bosun, still rotting in prison, waiting for the noose, he'd have something to say.
(I'd love to see those two face off in a poetry slam, no words barred)

The cryptic avant guard belongs to Cotton. And his Parrot.
Years later, students would be forced to write long essays about their inner truths.
(He would laugh and share a tot of rum with the parrot over that)

But if I did write a poem, it would be An Ode to a Black Pearl
And its rhyme, the whistling wind. Its meter, the slap, slap, slap of waves against her hull.
(And its theme would be the nigh uncatchable horizon)

~.~

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