A young boy screams in the street.
“Mommy, mommy!” The only word
he knows, and the one he desperately
needs

Cannonballs blow through the walls
without even the decency to kill
directly. The resulting crash of
falling buildings, like the storming
sea outside ends the lives of the
colony in a flurry of rubble and panic

The besieging ship itself
a black wretched beauty, only a decade old.
She has been marauding for a century more.
Like a wraith trailing a ghost fog she rolled in
upon the Crown, rising up out of
the banks to Singapore,
lighting fire to the temple,
hurling death upon Normandy.
The world itself knew her.
Man itself denied her.

A crew of the damned kept her,
Trimming the jagged sails by
Selene’s light, revealed as
naught but bone and sinew.
A captain so vile Hades hurled his
heathen soul out of Tartarus

Gold was their passion
Drink and mutton their pleasure
And a woman’s touch their lust.
Upon a forsaken island they found
the first. They sole it for
the purchase of the others.
And cursed they were as the
Conquistador before them.

Cursed to wander aimlessly
Cursed to never be full
Cursed to be parched but ne’re satisfied
Cursed with all the pleasurable company in the world
and not a touch felt by their cursed skin.

Now they have found it, here in
this port. It called to them
Pulling their trapped souls.
And so they fire again
causing the infant to wail
“Mommy , Mommy!” And she
has found him. She picks him up
And flees.