THE ARGONNE HOTEL PRESS CHAPBOOK SERIES

OLD MOLASSES RUM
Writings by CAP'N CLARK CABLE

The Voyage of the Sassafras • Ralph • The Legend of Muerdeme • Epitaph #1 • Gypsy • Silly Sam The Munchin’ Man • Billy • The Nothing Thing • Bertha • My Darling’s Jugs • Just Suppose • Epitaph #2 • A New Day • Skiddely-Do-Wah • Rhonda • Hilarious Tale #26: The Fitful Laughter of Tortured Souls • Death of a Clown • Measure of Your Mettle • Epitaph #3 • Analysis • My Pal Alphonse • Why Edgar Allen Poe’s Chicken Crossed The Road • A Visit from White Beard • Video Pirates • Ciccada Serenade

$7.00 US • 40 pages

Copyright © 1999 The Argonne Hotel Press. ISBN 1-88761-38-6
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Why Edgar Allen Poe’s Chicken Crossed The Road

Once upon a barnyard cluttered
while I strutted, scratched and fluttered
over many a cracked and copious quantity of kernal’d corn,
suddenly within me burning
came a foul and foolish yearning
to brave the truckers’ wheels a-turning
and the blasting of their horn—
“ ’Tis the Devil’s curse”, I clucked
and crossed the road that very morn.

A Visit From Whitebeard

’Twas the night afore Christmas, and down below decks
all the prisoners was sleepin’—with chains ’round their necks.
A mutineer was hung from the yardarm with care
so’s all o’ the others was sure to beware.
The crew was all nestled below in their bunks:
they slept just like babies—but smelled just like skunks.

The mate with his cutlass, and me with me gun
had just settled in for a long drink o’ rum,
when over the decks there arose such a clamour,
I reached for me pistol, and pulled back the hammer.
Away to the porthole I flew in a wink—
I opened it wide, and I threw up me drink.

The moon to the west was the probable source
of the naggin’ suspicion that we was off course,
when what to me matey’s one eye should appear
but eight flyin’ goats and an old buccaneer!
I went for me spyglass when first they appeared
and I knew in a minute it must be—WHITEBEARD!

More rapid than seagulls they flew toward me quarters—
and he lashed them, and cursed them, and barked out these orders:
“Now, Long Jack! Now, Silver! Now, Dutchman and Flint!
On Barnacle, and Bluster! On Cable, and Quint!
To the top o’ the mains’l, to the top o’ the mast!
Now cast off that line! No, not that one! OH, BLAST!”

As ships that are pitchin’ and driven by blizzard
when met with an obstacle, ram through its gizzard,
so into the crow’s nest his vessel did crash
with a blasphemous curse, and the crack of a lash.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard him aloft
as he climbed down the rigging all stealthy and soft.

As I pulled in me head and went back in the gloom
down onto the deck Whitebeard hit with a BOOM!
He was blackened with powder burns, head down to boot,
and we hid ’neath me bunk as he searched for the loot.
A rusty old cutlass that hung by his side
made me feel very glad we’d decided to hide.

His eye, how it festered! His features, how salty!
He tripped and he fell, ’cause his vision was faulty.
His ratty white hair was tied back with a scarf,
and the beard on his chin was so white you could barf.
The stump of his knee was held up by a peg—
and how well I remember—’twas I took his leg!

He had a long, jagged scar, and a stomach gigantic
that rolled when he walked like the northern Atlantic.
He was ugly and fat—a right scurvy old elf
so I stayed where I was and threw up on myself.
For the look in his eye and the tilt of his head
soon gave me to know that we soon might be dead.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to the hold
and he stole all the silver, and bagged up the gold,
and locking the treasure up inside a chest
went back up the rigging into the crow’s nest.
He boarded his craft, to his team gave a yell,
and away they all flew just like bats out of Hell!

But I heard him proclaim, like a ghost from afar,
“I’ll be back again next year—be ready! Har, harrr!”