A Pirate Fit to Opine on Feet
for Sonya
This is my main hand,
says the Pirate,
and it has made me what I am: the main man
on the Main!
Yes, I’m a radical rapscallion
cruising around in my Spanish galleon,
filling the sails with northeasterly trade winds,
discharging cannons and making nice with the maidens.
I stand on the fore, I stand on the aft,
it’s the lifestyle I like, not the golden calf.
Any time you ask me if I want rum,
I’ll say, Thank you, I will have some!
Enter MC Squared.
MC2: Ahoy mate,
spare some pieces of eight?
Pi: Get a job, you nogoodnik!
MC2: Alas, I am psychologically unable to work.
Pi: I can identify with that.
Offers to give him a coin but MC Squared catches him by the arm and performs jewjitsu.
MC2: Pirate pirate, tell me the value of pi!
Pi: 3.14159…—I don’t know how it ends.
MC2: Then prepare to die!
Pi: Ack! Spare me please! Don’t orphan my parrot!
I’ll give you a diamond of 25 carat.
MC2: Save you carrots for bunnies! They’ll clean ‘em and clear 'em.
Gimme the proof of the Pythagorean theorem!
Pi: No!!! That’s the theorem before which I in fear am!
Please mister,
Ask me something I’m good in,
like romance or dance.
When this leg wasn’t wooden
how I pranced without pants!
When we pull into port
I rush off to ballet,
greeting every plié
with a loud Olé!
MC2: Well then who in the Bay Area is the famousest dancer on pointe?
Pi: That’s easy! It’s Sonya Ostashevskaya-Gohstand.
MC2: You are free to go.
The pirate gets up, groaning and rubbing his поясница. Curtain.
"A Pirate Fit to Opine on Feet" first appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, print annual 3 (2006), issue 74.