portrait painting of Captain James Cook dressed formally and with a map spread out in front of him, but he's looking away from it

Cook was cooked

9
Written by Catherin J Pascal Dunk

for Sol Blackwood

Hawaiʻi, 14 February 1779
Captain James Cook’s head
served up at romantic
Valentine’s Day dinner.

No.

Cook was killed1
as karma decreed
for attempted kidnap
of a Chief

then boiled down
for his bones —
seat of a man’s
power.

Even a cannibal
(which they weren’t)
would pull up
at that white colonial long pig.


[Cook is credited by the British with discovery of the great southern land, Terra Australis, now-called-Australia, in 1770—though as history shows, many had found it before, notably the First Nations people who had been living here for around 60-80,000 years, but also seafarers from China, Portugal, Holland and France had discovered various parts of it before Cook arrived at Gadigal (present-day Sydney). Image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Captainjamescookportrait.jpg]

  1. https://www.captaincooksociety.com/about-us/faq ↩︎

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9 Comments

  1. He mapped the shores of Newfoundland, which is where he built up his seamanship before being an ass in the southern hemisphere. There’s a statue of him in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. I walked up a mountain to kick him in the balls. I’d have peed on him, too, but there were kids around.

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