How to Domesticate a Pirate [Mother Goose's Tongue Remix]

By Aaron Ingram

She sells sea shells by the sea shore; at least she did once–in her small black dress; yet seduction
is the master, rye unkempt commander. He is the wind
and blows over water, an ocean in his hammock,
a son or a daughter?

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum; the smell of brine and varnish, a poem
on the plank he’ll stand, an invitation delivered
by eyes, not
hand; of trouble left
far on the land. Not one glance
back over your shoulder!

Love is a many splendid thing; but purple hearts do not surrender,
but bask in blissful blunderbuss won
horny shelled endeavours. His cutlass
thick and durable–only precious things handled!
The rough hardness of deck-timber, exhibitionists aren’t
so tender.

Two little ducks–over the hill and far away; yet land-legs have weathered…
Oyster shucks left in a line, a Hansel and Gretel memento. Their ocean cries
with bleary blue eyes, while songs
of salt water are rendered dry;
…for midwives are
expensive.

Here comes the bride; ostensibly wide,
the cost of pride is a tent-bound life, fake
rose petals float on aqua shallows, commitment
on whim makes for nervous, hollow limbs.
A speech! A speech! A brief
phosphorescence; the sea an echo of
an ebony fiddle.

“Rumplestiltskin,” she cried; into baby blue eyes, her
baffled indulgent mutterings. The ocean inside her pirate plied
a son of scaly rendering: the tail of a fish, in
glow-worm green, the body of an infant
trembling. Oh Brave New World!
Oh Imagined Glory!
Know you are doomed to love him.

The third little pig built a house of bricks; acquired a life
in the Barbie Doll Sector,
and in the backyard, a salt-water pool, a dominion for her
treasure. But,
jobs that pay, keep pirates at bay, dry-docked
In domestic never-never, loosing
his flair
to synthetic hair–time is unkind
…to the male hairline.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe; What if interest rates rise?
Her being askew in a supermarket queue, the countenance
of a beige-suited wife. Her mind is clouded by
popcorn and prawn-crackers.
So she learnt to smile
at her finely wrought lines:
Unconditionally, painfully, gratefully…

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard: in her middle-class, first world-house,
but when she got there, her suburbanity was
clear: she might be depressed
in her small
black dress; she’s carried the seeds
of malice-less venom–she’s sacrificed
all on their ocean.

And he cast them from paradise; and called back to the sea..
her son and her pirate,
miserably free;
one by ship and another by
tail, the ocean in their
eyes, yet her humanity can
fry?
Don’t cry for your pirate: he slipped out
from your finger.
Don’t cry for your son: his ocean is
bigger.

She sells sea shell by the sea shore; as she once did…
And because when she talks,
she refers
to herself in the third
person:
she glimpses the grit
of a life lost to writ, she takes in
her hand a pen;
not an iron.

The Mother Goose’s Tongue Remix by Aaron Ingram is licensed under a CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia licence. It is a derivative work of Danielle Wood’s CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia licensed story. The original is available at http://www.remixmylit.com/storiesremixes/how-to-domesticate-a-pirate-by-danielle-wood/. For details on how you can reuse the original and this remix see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/au/