Forgotten Myths
The romance of the pirate
created by Hollywood,
a swashbuckling hero
winning bloodless battles,
capturing a Spanish beauty
who hated the barbarian,
then fell in love
with his charming ways.
They sail into the sunset
on the bounding main,
a departed myth.
The pirates of today
a people of poverty,
lurk off the Somalia coast,
capture ships for profit,
rarely kill captain and crew,
but hold them hostage
until they’re paid,
no adventure,
only business.
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director. He has 8 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways (Winter Goose Publishing). Perceptions and Displays will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press) Acts of Defiance (Artema Press). Flawed Connections has been accepted by Black Rose Writing. His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. He lives in New York City.
Copyright © 2016 by Gary Beck
Randomly Accessed Poetics 
Fine poem with a gestural awareness of the media and a camera in a provocative look of a poet’s broadcast of today’s reality as a double vision of timeless orientation
but not a pirated scene out of Hollywood’s golden era in our history.