Piracy

Heavily he coughs, alone! He laughs.
Blood ooze from his mouth.
A deep dreadful gasp.
Eyelids flung wide open.
Eerily staring left to right.
Slowly he slips from this world.
Laying on his back.
He slips into the darkness.

A sudden rush o sensation!
Drags him back to the living.
Mechanically his spine flexes.
Bringing him to a sitting position.
Forcing his cloudy eyes open.
Looking around the room bewildered.
Searching! ‘Could this be hell of heaven?’
His mind jump starts and accelerate!

‘How am I still here?’ he asks his thoughts.
His heart beats like a runaway engine.
I should be dead by now.
Yet staring back at him, three guards.
A fourth a doctor! It seems.
“That’s it come back to us!”
The doctor menacingly says.
Injecting a concoction in his vein.

“Trying to cheat the ‘angman?’
Stepping closer, a guard asks.
“Ya think suicide shall save ya!”
“Ya lowlife pirate scum!”
“At sunrise ya shalt provide,”
“The public with amusement”
“And the ‘angman with fun!”
“Ah, doc! Preparing the execution ‘as begun.

His arms now tightly bound.
To the chair in which he sits.
The break of dawn crawls into his cell
A soft blue glow descends upon him
Somewhere a cock crows piercingly.
Shattering the silence of dawn.
“Your last meal above ground”
Says a guard before letting out a yawn.
The rattling of keys. Clank!
With a screech his cell door opens.
A warm drink in a tin cup.
A slab of bread. “No meat?” he asks
The guard makes a hysterical laugh.
“What for?” returns the guard
“Y’ll be dead before it gets digested!”
The cell door slams shut, the guard chuckles.

Hands still bound. “Damn you guard!”
He sits staring at the stem escaping the cup.
Outside, the crowd gathers at the gallows.
The air thick with excitement.
A peddler offers smoked oysters from a cart.
A young child sits on her dad’s shoulders.
Affording a clear view of the spectacle.
Her dad nibbles at peanuts.

A gate opens! The crowd cheers!
Out comes the procession, escorted by guards.
Nathaniel Gordon, making his way to meet God.
An official, the hangman and the noose.
Standing on the gallows, waiting.
A small flight of stairs
The noose affixed to his neck.
A nod from the hangman.

“Nathaniel Gordon, for the crime”
“Of piracy in breach of the act “
“Of 1820. You have been found guilty.”
“And hereby sentenced to be hung by the neck till dead!”
“May god have mercy on your soul!”
As if on cue, the hangman,
Pulls a lever. The crowd goes wild!