POEM: Benjamin Franklin, the Lady and a Runaway Enslaved Boy named King by h.e Ross
As Part of Noise of Art’s Black Montmartre project, exploring the long relationship between black American and European street music, we commissioned US poet H.E Ross to write about the true story of King, an enslaved boy owned by Benjamin Franklin who ran away on a visit to London. King was adopted by a women in Suffolk and joined the British Navy. Ross, a San Franciscan born poet who was active in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam protests and started the Black Maritime History movement in San Francisco. He wrote the poem while living in Suffolk during the 2020 pandemic.
Benjamin Franklin, the Lady and a Runaway Enslaved Boy named King
by H.E. Ross
By the River Deben there is a spot with a worn away grave stone and a story of a boy…
Benjamin Franklin was signed on as an indentured servant to his brutal brother
Ben apprenticed learned to print before he fled from Boston to Philadelphia
Ben worked hard and earned enough to start his own printing service
Ben started printing a newspaper for the booming township of Philadelphia
Ben started the first newspaper chain along the East coast of British America
Benjamin Franklin enjoyed a wild youth as a successful gentleman about town
Ben was in the new sin town of Philly and had a son, William, with an unknown lady
Ben took a common-law marriage with a nice girl named Deborah
Ben took William into their home as his son and gave him the name Franklin
Ben purchased George to help with the expanding newspaper business
Benjamin Franklin enlarged his family and moved from smaller to larger homes
Ben’s baby son, Francis, died at four from the smallpox brought from Europe
Ben’s daughter, Sally, lived and is a very lively young girl
Ben purchased Peter and his wife Jemima to take care of the household
Ben purchased Othello, Peter and Jemima’s baby boy for them
Benjamin Franklin is famous and respected and grooms William to be successful
Ben’s son, William, becomes a naval officer and war hero and politician
Ben being proud, purchases King, a light skin boy of eleven, for William
Ben does not like the boy because he doesn’t seem to like work and plays too much
Ben does not call them slaves only servants and Peter likes King
Benjamin Franklin takes William to England with Peter and young King in service
King boards the ship goes to sea with wide eyes of horizon all around
King learns knots and splices from sailors of many accents and languages
King learns songs hears tales drinks rum with sailors of all colours
King rolls with the roll of the ship fills with the wind in the sails
Benjamin Franklin and William tour and enjoy fame and welcome everywhere
Ben and William stay in homes across Ireland Scotland and England
King in London sees friendliness unknown in Philadelphia loosely had in London
King plays with kids eats at their homes learns London Peter tells him to run away
King laughs a lot and Peter encourages him to live free and go East
King is thirteen and happy and free with good memories of Peter’s help
King and Peter pack what he needs, they giggle a lot, a violin, William’s clothes
King packs a good hat with a silver button and a loop
King packs an old blue frock a good waistcoat dirty breeches stockings
King walks to Suffolk and is found tired and wet by a Lady in a carriage
Benjamin Franklin is honoured in Scotland and Doctored at Cambridge
Dr Ben travels and travels with William happy dad and son
Dr Ben meets scientists and Masons and ladies and ladies
Dr Ben’s stomach grows and gout ensues with William there to rely on
Dr Ben and William return to London to find that King has gone
King learns to be a christian read and write play violin and French horn at Playford
King explores Suffolk in the carriage with the Lady, Miss Anne
King is like her child as real babies come to her and her husband
King cares for Thomas first, then John later as time moves slowly on
King teaches Thomas to climb trees and fish and tales of sailors’s tales
II
King as a young man of sixteen becomes John and yearns for the seas horizons so sails
John King is hired and sails aboard local pilots on the River Deben
John King learns to repair caulking rigging work of the hand and eye and feel
John King enlists in the navy and waves goodbye to young Thomas and baby John
John King cries at last sight of Miss Anne with her boys and Reverend Clarkson
John King with violin sails against the French blockading and battling and frolics in Spain
John King rises in rank wounded in back and leg fighting hand to hand
John King rests in hospital at Greenwich seeing the kid friends in London
John King goes to Playford puts gifts and tears on Miss Anne’s grave
John King leaves a letter addressed to Miss Anne with Thomas and John and baby Anne
John King is a first mate on Endeavour blockading the Americans at the Chesapeake Bay
John King crews a prize Baltimore Clipper to England and gets a percentage of her selling
John King meets Anne the blacksmith’s daughter and they fall in love
John King and Anne moved to Liverpool with pilot work for him and they are happy
John King suffers Anne tortured dying of smallpox in his arms and tears out his heart
John King’s head cannot rise to see the sky in Liverpool with his eyes only on memory and gutters
John King drinks his rags to dirt on his course without any port as a destination
John King is pulled from the black waters by Henry who takes him aboard an outbound ship
John King breathes again aboard the little brig, Whistler, and what he breathes is sea air
John King rolls with the long swell and smiles as broadly as his horizon
John King tilts his head upward again as he and Henry frolic their wages away in Santo Domingo
John King and Henry join the royal navy in Jamaica and are put aboard a small cutter
John King becomes first mate and Henry is boatswain on the Punch Captain John Perkins
John King plays fiddle and befriends the mulatto Captain Black Jack (John) Perkins
John King Black Jack Henry spree and frolic in Les Cayes, Saint Domingue
John King Black Jack Henry Fellows arrested by French as spies as Haiti’s enslaved revolt
John King Henry escape to Punch and patrolling 26-gun frigate who press for Black Jack
John King delivers formal letter to destroy Les Cayes if Black Jack is executed
John King comes back to Punch with Captain John Perkins and they show ass to French
John King in the Punch captures hundreds of American prize vessels Henry is killed in battle
John King retires from the navy with a heavy chest of prize money books mementos and a violin
John King returns to Philadelphia spies Benjamin Franklin saddened by son William leaving
John King returns to Liverpool with a heart full of his beautiful Anne but a bottle kept full
John King returns to Playford listens to Thomas and little Anne about abolition of slavery
John King applauds John in royal navy taking former enslaved back to Africa
John King reads letter he gave to Thomas intended for Miss Anne and reads this part over:
Though time has separated us your teachings have not and the search
and findings of freedoms, with my eyes not always on our Lord God,
has left me a man content and not bothered by the machinations of
any class as we are all children of the same God. Thank you for those
words, Dear Miss Anne. Bless your wondrous spirit that every day now
fills my heart.
John King sees a long ago tear blotching the ink between any and class with a small smile
Worn away is the name on a stone marker near the entrance to the River Deben. You can barely even see the stone itself so covered around by yellow flowers shimmering in any breeze and the rolling of grasses at an horizon that never ends.
