Blackbeard Poem by Robert Rorabeck

You were my fiancé
And I loved your cleav-ge
Milky in the phosphorescent
Hiss of kerosene lights
Burning like a fuse
So close to your flesh
But the night when Blackbeard
Came in, you swooned
You left me and straddled
Him at the bar
And served him
Rum the color of sunset
Dripping from the inlet
of your brea$ts
Shallow waters where
His black lips swam
And you let yourself drip
Down his long unruly beard
That frightened the men
And tickled the women
And all the lights turned out
In my head
Like a ship sinking,
Cut on the rocks,
I turned very grim
I resolved to kill the pirate,
But when I came up to him,
Fists clenched, face set,
He just chuckled heartily
In a motion like a drunken sea,
He twisted around and gave me
The boot
And made you laugh and squeal
When he pinched your flesh
And kissed your cheeks
He sent me rolling out with
The other artisans
Into the humid salt air of
The night exhaled from the sea-
I made to go back in
but my brothers held me back-
When I looked, you were already
Topless your flesh open to
The famous pirate who only
A week before had capture the
Port of Charleston-
You were so impressed,
You undid your self for him
And slid like a salacious mermaid
Between his thighs-
Completely devastated,
I went across the street to
The Dry Bean
I got drunk on cheap rum
And crawled down to the docks
To drown myself,
But I fell asleep instead.
In the morning the gulls flying
Through sunlight awoke me
And there you were
Walking in Blackbeard’s arms to
The Queen Anne’s Revenge
Your eyes were hostages in love
And so pressed against his body,
His unruly black beard fell in your
Blouse, coarse hair scraping against
Your softness,
And I knew then that night before
That he had had you many times
Slippery from rum and coconut butter,
Feeling you like the steerage of a new
Vessel
Though you had said to me with a kiss
That you were saving your womanhood
For the night we were wed-
The hung-over sunlight of that new
Terrible day showed me how you had
Changed for him in love,
A devilish cutthroat who had plundered
You out from under me-
I did not stay to watch the ceremony
On his ship
I went right away to get drunk
And then I went and signed up for
The Queen’s Navy,
But my brothers told me he did marry
You that day on that ship, and then he slipped
Into you, making you swoon as he took
You to his private quarters
He made love to you for two weeks in port
Only to leave you compromised,
In a needing position,
Stranded, immobile,
Helpless and weeping as you watched him go
Did he promise to come back for you some day,
To steal you away once more?
Your belly crawling with his ba$tard
Seed
I suppose you broke down then,
Tore at yourself and meant to heave yourself
Into the natural force of the sea,
But the other whores pulled you back,
Though they were weeping too
To see their captain leave
Word around Nassau was you
Came looking for me, a far second
When only weeks before I’d been your first,
Wanting me back
But I had joined the naval forces
Under Governor Rogers
Whose sworn purpose was to hunt down
And garret Blackbeard
They gave me new clothes and a pistol
They ordered me into a new life which
I gladly took, since you’d
Destroyed the one I left with your frivolity
I became a sailor in Her Majesty’s
Armada,
My heart pierced from you infidelity
From your one lasting night with him
My eyes a stormy birth
I left your needing for the sea
Chasing after the man who had forever
Stolen you away from me for two week’s game,
For the rest of my life,
Hurricanes, my wrath,
I would end your love for him and stop
His for you with a bullet plugging his heart
I would take his scalp and go home to show
You and his child the prize I had made myself
From your cheating,
but when I came
To his frigate he shot us down with cannon
Bucks from his broadsides,
And I nearly drowned,
Sinking to the coral deeps
With your anchor chained about my middle,
When I emerged I was a ghost,
Fretful, destroyed, I threw down the
Badges of my past
Hearing Blackbeard’s laughter,
I walked far inland away from your sea.