Eugene Ostashevsky

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.

Eugene Ostashevsky

A Pirate Fit to Opine on Feet first appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, print annual 3 (2006), issue 74.

Posted on November 18, 2006 6:53 AM