After lacerating your
salty flesh with our hefty
cannonballs, swords, gunpowder
you sent sail and flying line
into the fray, catching men
like crabs in your open arms
scooping them up wrapped in
sails like bulky packages,
choking them with their own lines
I grabbed a harpoon and
jumped into the dense water,
diving down until I faced
one of your gargantuan
eyes and sliced in the metal,
watched the black ink squid out
I stabbed until every last
extension of you fell back
in final dying retreat
then I saw my beloved
ship slowly crawl down to curl
on the bare ocean floor
in anger I wrapped a
line around you and hauled
your carcass with me toward
a deserted island where
I beached you and sat
eating octopus for days
Cadence Collective: Long Beach Poets 