Walking one morning down the mist-lined coast

After a breakfast of hot-buttered toast

I daresay I espied on the horizon far off

A high-masted sailing ship covered in froth

My heart skipped a beat as my gaze settled on

A figure aloft outlined by the sun

Pulling at something which seemed in the air

Something so strange that it boggled my stare

What mysterious force had led me up there

Into those Heavens, into that glare?

Was that a smudge just out of his reach

Or a hovering object the size of a peach?

I took off my glasses and peered through slits

The poor man on the yardarm was doing the splits

A deep yellow glow was veering aside

Obviously nearing that mysterious divide

With heart beating faster and pulse ever quickening

The sight I beheld was utterly sickening

With huge legs at the back and whiskers up front

And a chin which was puckered and brutally blunt

I fixed on that object with trembling awe

On the gnashing incisors filling its jaw

Then it happened so slowly, as if in a dream

A haunting, echoing, bansheeing scream

The high-masted schooner flounder betrayed

Its billowing sails like a sinner well flayed

And there on the deck lay the jolly jack tar

Dead from the fall from that glistening spar