In Drift
By Michael H. Kew
[Two surf poems.]
Ae freislighe (Literally “lying down poetry”) is one of the most common forms of Irish verse. Four lines to each stanza, with seven syllables in each line. Lines 1 and 3 employ a three syllable end-rhyme, while lines 2 and 4 use a two syllable end-rhyme. The final syllable of the poem should be the same as the first syllable. (Connor Sansby, Thanet Writers)
WEENEOLITH
Sun-greased midday Kettletoft
I’m walking a bike uphill
Been sweating nuts eversoft
Aside peat bay of windchill
Atop curls of cleanliness
Drop down wave face, shore rocky
Thin white streak towards Tankerness
Small remote-controlled surfer (stocky)
Lilliputian Nazaré
White streak really is fishing—
Line, it drags, not surfari
Pole gripped by stout man wishing
He is Robert Trujillo
Mex Metallica bassist
With iPhone-sized burrito
Blefuscudian playlist
He pushes Play suddenly
Lifts a sword, sharp and shiny
Becomes black fish, luckily
As my skin becomes slimy
Now Robert be vomiting—
Burrito of fish rancid
Surf starts to look promising
Over Orkney reef slanted
Puke pile pic for Instagram
Sun Ra toots from Rob’s speaker—
As ‘likes’ flow from Pakistan
Phone falls as he grows weaker
I wonder ‘bout Eynhallow
The wind is shifting southeast
Rob asks for a wheelbarrow
Before he is soon deceased
Boolean [As in George Boole, 19th-century English mathematician who first defined an algebraic system of logic.] Boolean Logic is a form of algebra which is centered around three simple words known as Boolean Operators: “Or,” “And,” and “Not”. At the heart of Boolean Logic is the idea that all values are either true or false. (Lotame Solutions)
WITHERSHINS KALIFORNIA
If I’m to paddle a surfboard from Frisco to Crescent City
With no wetsuit nor food nor water
Will I be greeted by a Point Arena shark subcommittee?
Will King Newscum surveil my slaughter?
“Maybe I can stroke north wearing just blue latex gloves,”
I say to Miki Dora as we feed some doves
On guano-caked rocks just past the Golden Gate
I ask if he’d like to help me search for lost pieces-of-eight
He says no ‘cept suddenly we’re beached, arid and hot
Watching 18 surfers hound small green left-handers
Must be where they grow pounds of legal pot
‘cept to naked tweakers licking orange salamanders
Miki vanishes, or maybe he gets smoked
Stuffed into huge rolling papers not soaked
Now the surfers are all fishing for sharks
I tell them about my life in Shelter Cove, mowing parks
But four of them do not want to hear my old rusty tale
And then I’m in some townhouse, greeted by two beautiful women
One is joking with me and she has a nice ass, plump and pale
She wears white spandex shorts and offers me gin with lemon
I assume she is Miki’s girlfriend, except Miki is now Ryan Burch
She is drunk and tells me she never drinks, instead preferring church
She pukes into Ryan’s hair while he plays video games on the curb
But he’s now Jessie from the Cove, surfarmer of sweet herb
Then I’m with family in San Diego in my grandmother’s holy kitchen
Someone yells “Merry Christmas!” and “Would you like to pitch in?”
Church bells gong and Jessie leaps away, screaming “Yum blanc!”
Grandma wipes her Rudolph sweater as an elk horn now honks
I quiver with anxiety and my gut balloons with dread
I hear her unique voice crisply, except she is dead
She piles homecooked food 12 inches high on my plate
But look!—
Indeed I’ve paddled to the wrong side of the state
{Both excerpted from Purplēdeneye, formulaic 2020 dream poesy stew per Spruce Coast Press available from Amazon; signed copies from here.}
Photos: Kew.
