WordSalad: The Poetry of Luke Prater

congregate, philosophise
negotiate; trip the tenuous compass of mores

eat, fuck, shit, sleep

reincarnate, empathise
dedicate; weep on white at pluperfect cruelty

eat, sleep, shit, sleep

music-make, romanticise
thus spake; plead ivory towers from gown and gavel

gather, eat, fuck, shit

painstake, synthesise
for art’s sake; frame from cauldrons of cortex conception

eat, fuck, shit, sleep

kill
kill
kill

vindicate, rationalise

run (on)

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Destroying buoyant aid
surging the planet’s largest lockup

(Alcatraz never dreamt
such island alienation).



State-Sponsored Terrorism
feigns law, pretends sense, claims pretence.


Chocolate without milk: darkest, bitter.



Another sanctioned skip towards Genocide -
does wearing a badge make
that surging chest Holier with pride?

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Obama’s been laden
with ways to get re-elected.

Osama bin Laden
Hollywood CIA stakeout, SEAL shoot-up:
ideal.

Guys in black, downstairs of out back,
with black double espressos sitting silent
but for the clickety-clack of white fingers on
black laptops, black granite tabletops,
inconspicuous manilla folders in black briefcases

advocated and took care of it.

Obama sighs relief, knowing he can’t dance
in light so black and white.

USama bin Laden (no relation),
gestalt entity known to select few -
the public never knew, will never know,
until it doesn’t matter anymore.

But

if a leaked photo of ‘dead’ Osama
helps Obama
end the War on Terror,
end the War
end the Terror

close Guantanamo Bay,
prevent the warmongers
resuming office

then this is a Nobel white lie.

Earn that fucking Peace Prize. Realise
with real eyes, this War
is either over, or cannot be won;
not with Truth, or real lies.

But your hands been tied by

red-tie Congressmen
do-or-die Pentagon
black-tie invisiblemen
black-tie evenin’

worthless smile
merciless guile
keep us clean to keep him in

Still the Economy ominously rocks;
will not withstand the shocks
of billions spent on ‘defense’ much longer.

Corps become corpses;
body of Infantry, bodies of Infantry.

Obama knew Osama had been gone,
ten-to-one not associated with the impossible
inauspices of a September mourning that
Ground us to Zero.

☆

– May 02 2011: bin Laden killed inside private compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by US Navy SEALs in a covert operation ordered by U.S. President Obama. Within 24 hours of his death, bin Laden’s body was buried at sea. Al-Qaeda allegedly acknowledged his death on a website May 6, 2011, vowing to retaliate. No official pictures or video were released –

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Armless (unrhymed)

In the heat the people stand like statues,
children scuffle up against the long wall.
Hotel California, but no entrance -
visa, passport, transport, no-show shoeless.

Children scuffle up against the long wall;
strangle and garottes the hopeless hoping.
Visa, passport, transport, no-show shoeless -
UN bugger-alling, vetoed armless,

strangles and garottes the hopeless hoping.
Strip ‘em, strap ‘em, limb-from-limb ‘em, all, all;
UN bugger-alling, vetoed armless,
on an island in a sea of loathing.

Strip ‘em, strap ‘em, limb-from-limb ‘em, all, all.
Soldier killed by sniper and it’s “Terror!”,
on an island, in a sea of loathing.
Tank in ‘error’ slaughters six civilians.

Soldier killed by sniper and it’s “Terror!”,
media control our ears and eyes, screened.
Tank in ‘error’ slaughters six civilians;
forces on offensive, so defensive.

Media control our ears and eyes, screened.
Hotel California, but not entrance.
Forces on offensive, so defensive;
in the heat the people sit like statues.

Armless (rhymed)

In the heat they stand like humbled gentry,
children scuffle up against the long wall.
Hotel California, yet no entry;
strip ‘em, strap ‘em, limb-from-limb ‘em, all, all.

Children scuffle up against the long wall.
UN bugger-alling, vetoed armless -
strip ‘em, strap ‘em, limb-from-limb ‘em, all, all.
Visa, passport, transport, no-show shoeless -

UN bugger-alling, vetoed armless,
strangles and garottes the hopeless hoping.
Visa, passport, transport, no-show shoeless,
on an island in a sea of loathing,

strangles and garottes the hopeless hoping.
Soldier killed by sniper and it’s “Terror!”,
on an island in a sea of loathing.
Tank cuts down civilians, six, in ‘Error’,

soldier killed by sniper and it’s “Terror!”
Media control our eyes and ears, sieved;
tank cuts down civilians, six, in ‘Error’.
Forces on offensive, so defensive,

media control our eyes and ears, sieved.
Hotel California, yet no entry;
forces on offensive, so defensive.

In the heat they sit like ruined gentry.

☆

Pantoum: Usually blank (unrhymed), and no meter dictated, but quite often these elements are added to this unusual, repetition-rich old form from Malaysia, originally song and adapted as poetry by the French Colonialists (one of the better things to arise from Imperialism). I’ve used trochaic pentameter in both versions.

Repetition-scheme is simply that the second and fourth line of every stanza becomes the first and third of the next. In the final stanza, the same applies, plus the second and fourth lines are repetitions of lines one and three of the very first stanza. So every line is repeated once. Variations in repetition are acceptable (quite nice actually, in my opinion).

Which is more effective, the rhymed or unrhymed version?

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Tony Blair addressing Britain

Ex-’president’ Bush and Mister
Blair thought they’d play God,
create Hell somewhere.

Take those black, widowing hands
and say your earnest prayers,
because, sure as Hell:

you’re going there.

.

☆

This was written in 2009, when Tony Blair’s New ‘Labour’ Government was still pacing the Corridors of Power in Westminster, though he had wilfully, as planned, given up the Premiership to Gordon Brown by then. Quoting something about ‘health’, and admitting popularity was a problem (for him, and for his Party), he resigned an ashen-faced shadow of the young and vibrant man who came to Government with a landslide in the 1997 UK General Election. The ‘War on Terror’ continues, George W Bush and Blair never held to account for quoting ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (and links to Al-Qaeda) as reasons for  invading Iraq in 2003. None were found.

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Today, according to my Events Diary,
was the International Day of Peace:
Tuesday the twenty-first of September.

If I hadn’t remembered
to write what I needed to do tomorrow,
Wednesday the twenty-second of September,

I may never have noticed that today was
the International Day of Peace.
Uncannily though, mine was rather troubled.

Had laundry to do, and the colours ran.
Wondered how many others
didn’t feel the Peace? I scoured the Internet for

news stories of ceasefire, just for today,
in Afghanistan.
For reports of football played in

No Man’s Land, dribbling around land-mines,
using helmets for goalposts.
Enemies shaking hands,

tasting happy sweat for the first time in forever.
Three hundred and sixty-five days;
one dedicated to Peace.

And the damn colours ran.
I wondered, as I folded my spoiled laundry,
if the colours had bled in Kandahar today.

☆

I have been reading the two-time US Poet Laureate Billy Collins lately. Being the sponge I am, inevitably a poem was to vomit forth in his style. This is a first for me, writing so low-key in tone yet attentive to small detail, and more notably, with no aural poetic device whatsoever bar some repetition of key words/phrases (and very little visual device either).

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“I’ve gone to look for America” *

Expansive, America
what now?
Expensive, America
what, now?

Detroit -
Mad Maxing social fractures; both sides
are the wrong side of the tracks.
Eight Mile disintegrated
Eminem dissociated

Detroit -
where the Industrial Revolution
finished up. Where carbon-coughing
chrome horses are foaled

The Four Chryslers of the Apocalypse
are upon your bereft
blacktired black streets

“Michigan seems like a dream to me now”

George Clinton -
singin’ “Paint the Whitehouse Black”,
prophesied

Black Obama, well, black enough
(if you’re brown, stick around, they say,
but the First Lady’s blacker, ain’t that enough?
Does she sully the White House white sheets
with her naked Negritude?)

Health-Care Reform for oil -
you spoil the gesture. Oil, that is,
Black Gold, asphyxiates
beneath black slicks

(Beverly Hillbilly hicks, archived,
remain analogue black-and-white)

Nobel Peace Prizer-
make Peace that goes beyond
getting elected over warmongers

They, in their black sedans;
they, with their missiles launched
from hallelujah high-horses
kneading bread-dough minds,
destroying Iraqi lives.

They, who climb down only
from a lectern and
starrystriped standing ovation

“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why”

Expansive, America
what now?
Expended, America
what, now?

Let’s cheek-to-cheek the Decadance
on this broken ballroom floor,
you and I, till our feet fall off

You
are already missing a
shoe

“They’ve all come to look for America”

☆

*NB: Lines in speech-marks are from the Simon and Garfunkel song America (video with lyrics beneath)

NOTE: This poem is in no way intended as an attack on the American people, nor America generally. I ran it by American poet friends before posting to make sure it didn’t come over as anti-American/ignorant/xenophobic. Some is observational, some is socioeconomic/geopolitical statement, the ramifications of which ultimately encompass all Western Civilisation, Europe included. We are on the downturn, unequivocally. The Romans denied it too. They all did. The question is whether we can, as we fall, gently integrate into the Global economic village that China and India are swiftly building, or whether we allow ourselves, through the myopia that avarice and collective ego bring, to be overrun by neo-Vandals.

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