Poetry Thursday: Four-Letter Gulf

This week I was thinking about four-letter words. Not the "four-letter-word" kind of four-letter words. Just words with four letters. Rules: 1) How about a poem written exclusively in four-letter words, 2) only you can't use any "naughty" four-letter words?

Well, I hammered and hammered and found out it was

hard
work

Then I got a somewhat decent poem, but after I was absolutely certain I was finished, I found a gosh-darn five-letter word! It was

shoes

And the way I felt was [Insert favorite four-letter expletive here]. And I had to

slap

my forehead and try yet again. And when I endeavored to take out the shoes, I had to change feet to foot, which worked well to get rid of the plural but made a not-as-good sounding poem (in my opinion) and lost a pleasant rhyme.

So I have two versions: one that follows the rules exactly, and one that just barely doesn't.

Blogger absolutely, routinely, and subversively will not allow me to put my line breaks or in-line spaces or what would appear as tabs where I want them or permit me to put in deliberate WELL KNOWN HTML CODE for such spaces in its "Edit HTML" supposed feature, so it can go eat itself. Because of this, my poems do not appear as I graphically designed them, and this makes me furious. Despite the fact that I know how to code, these poems are misrepresented as posted.

To that I say, Bu@@ CRa9!

I. Four-Letter Gulf (with five letter word, ohwell, sigh, oohh, sigh is four)

Boys trot toes thru sand,
find star fish arms.
They slap full guts over surf;
foam wash tops damp hair.
Land sips shoes, shoes slip from feet;
wade bath sops bald heat.
Gust, wind!
Leap this deep dew's pool.
Air's hand, clap!
Drag time.
Wave wets away dusk:
gold orbs slip down, gild back seas.

Hail, cool sky's moon.

II. Four-Letter Gulf (with all four-letter words--not so good)

Boys trot toes thru sand,
find star fish arms.
They slap full guts over surf;
foam wash tops damp hair.
Land sips shoe, shoe slip from foot;
wade bath sops bald heat.
Gust, wind!
Leap this deep dew's pool.
Air's hand, clap!
Drag time.
Wave wets away dusk:
gold orbs slip down, gild back seas.

Hail, cool sky's moon.