Pirated!

At some point, I suppose, I did leave school...
Must have! The last that I recall of it
was that limp operetta: all
us bloodless pirates prancing round the stage,
the parents clapping like the ninnies that they are,
and earlier, the hours of tedious rehearsing -- during which
I found the time to write my new, alternative, 
more violent script, The Pirates of Pen's Pants. Ah,
I remember now, THAT'S when I left school,
a tad before my time! Years after that
I found my hayloft studio
and bought the thermal lance and 4X4
to turn out beetles in sheet metal by the score.

It all goes back to frightened pirates walking home
along a pitch dark twittern known as Cold Blows under trees, 
in uniform -- or costume, if you will --
and that last evening of them all, when Mother Nature
furnished me with props beyond my dreams.
All week I'd walked home leaping, whirling, 
putting Dervishes in shade.
I'd given them the scripts I'd written them, my friends,
but could I get them to join in? God,were they afraid? Of what?
The shadows or the hospital for those who couldn't live?
Who knows? That evening, though, the beetles
fell in curtains from the trees to form 
a carpet that we walked upon, its pile 
was inches thick and crunched beneath our feet...
Okay, fair dos, a nauseating sound. I felt it too,but I am made
of sterner stuff and set about those beetles with a will.
My cutlass thrumped above my head like helicopter rotor blades.
That night I slew a dozen demons in my head,
chopping beetles by the thousand clean in two.

You should have heard them squeal, my yellow-livered crew.
I told them straight: how beetles feel no pain; 
remove a beetle's arse or abdomen, it eats on as before.
It stood me in good stead,that night,helped my career take off
like I had made the world's best mouse trap. People came
and beat that once proverbial path to my front door.
And yet I needed more...
The cutlass was replaced by thermal lance and 4X4.
I threw my beetles from the hayloft door
or ran them over with the 4X4
or with the thermal lance would cut them clean in two --
or three or four.

I asked two of my Cold Blows friends
to join my project, share in my good fortune, 
help me make a mint. The one ghost writing this I asked
and one who's putting sharks in something called
formaldehyde -- like that will catch on sometime soon!
Yellow-livered still, they both declined. 
Ah well, the more for me!

---

Written in response to Hobgoblin's prompt, Acting and the First Person Narrative, which you will find at: dverse Poets' Pub, this is a rewrite of one written several years ago (though posted more recently), but from my viewpoint. Here I have chosen the viewpoint of the main character. Also, this version, unlike the original. is not told in true chronology. You can read the original here.