The Wreckage of the Good Ship Dread

Down in the deep where the slumbering sleep,

All the underhand men who played God in a heap,

Underwater can't weep for their cheap sins undone

By the one true King and the son of the Sun.

This grave is a maze for the rats who have fled

From the blood of the wood of the good ship Dread

Whence the test and the gaze of the mighty decreed

To re-bloody in double these dead souls in fleas.

*

The stowaway whore found a bed below deck

In the straw before they came aboard all bedecked

In their daggers and rags unaware of the swag

Hiding huddled and under the care of a hag.

The law is that women are chores for the crew

Who are outlaws at war and too busy to screw

But to gnaw on a beautiful neck is the cure

And the lure for one's who the dutiful rue.

They found her and bound her, all circling round

The great mast where her feet dangled just off the ground,

Then they angled their knives to rip paper thin cloth

And upon her they ravaged their meaningless wrath.

Blood washed the deck red once her tears were shed,

Once she'd had her clothes shredded and when she'd been bed,

Then she died as the bitch and the bride of the ship,

Lost her riches and hide to the brigadier’s whip.

*

Yet she let out a prayer or a curse to the air

From a verse of a book that I dare not declare,

Unaware of the witch or the saint who repents

The complaint of the snitch tainted not their offense.

Her whisper was caught by the wind as she cried,

Crisper than cold, a strange soft suicide,

And she wished her life sacrificed, taken as bait

On the salty black alter of fisherman's fate.

Disgust not the king with the power to strike

From Poseidon’s own hell with his devilish spike

Whence the wing and the tooth of the Kraken is born,

Made to revel in death with his merciless yawn.

The Kraken cares not for your prayer or your sword,

The inflexible butcher is slave to the Lord,

Bold nor coward hath made him inclined with retort

For his prey knows the way of the world when they’re caught-

His method’s devouring terrified eyes,

Disabusing fresh bones from their fleshy disguise

And then harvesting skins to make harrowing coats

For the offspring of He you unwisely provoked.

*

The ship splintered under his tentacles black,

Ripped apart, and the crew couldn't brave an attack,

For they knew they were done but they'd run nonetheless

Lest the jaws of defeat should prove darker than death.

Thus they drowned down in darkness, salt swallowed and sick,

Found not by the monster who wallows in slick,

Followed too by the trick though her face knew no fear

For she died dried eyed knowing vengeance was near.

Here now the crustaceans pick skin from the bone

While the homeless and lecherous traitors atone

For their pride in the blue, wide and bottomless sea,

All alone while the tide cleans their skeletons free.