The Cook
A rage of hideous screaming stirs and hastens me below, The cook babbles and pleads in a banshee’s cry of dread, He wears a hair’s breadth line of blood beneath his fleshy jaw, The heedless, hell-bent riot of sailors soon will have him dead. ‘Drop the butcher’s cleaver before you harm him more!’ The cook’s bloodied neck now caused me great alarm, ‘He steals our food, I’ll carve him into meat and bone!’ ‘Is it true, Cook? Speak man, before you come to harm!’ ‘Tonight, the crew have prawns, and all men eat the same!’ The cook now starts to argue, which the sailor’s cleaver quells, ‘He’s a damned and cursed liar! You might have the prawns, This thieving bastard cook feeds us the heads and shells!’ Photo: Chris Pagan on Unsplash