WordSalad: The Poetry of Luke Prater

Where did you go to Melanie Brown?
Did you ever return?
Did your hands get burned?
Nice to know you, Melanie Brown
nice to show you round.

Took your wanting wan nightgown
pills, and rock CDs
Ridgie, Ruth and me
friends you made that term in town
friends, they let you down?

Left on sullied mid-heeled ground
your looks, and college books.
Travestied; too many cooks.
That stinging, scuppered blue-eyed frown
shakysmileme down.

Do they still try it on, come round
gangle lank-haired boys
surreptitious ploys
to steal that sorry blue-eyed frown,
like they did that term in town?

Not a place of great renown -
fast-dance saloon -
cried, like Syd, for the moon
we tried not to let you drown
in pools of Melanie Brown.

Were you flipped like half-a-crown
hung up on highs and whys
fed up being fed mud pies?
Was there any joy that term in town
before you went on down?

Where did you go to Melanie Brown?
Did you ever return?
Did your tongue get burned?
Nice to know you, Melanie Brown
nice to show you round.

✩

A Modern Ballad about a girl I knew in my first term/semester at University (Autumn/Winter 1998). Written in 2004, originally blogged 2010, reposting as it’s had a thorough overhaul for meter and phrasing.

Also celebrating 100,000 visitors to my blog (unique visitors count that resets every 24 hrs). Seems like just the other day I decided to sully a pristine WordPress page with my iambic innards. Hard to believe it was in fact April 2010. Thank you all for the support… hugely appreciated.

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Her top was pink.
Beneath pink lipstick,
lips were pink.
Cheeks exuded pink.

I was skint; she bought the drinks.
Rosé-tint winking
in salubrious sink, we drank.

Back to her Halls on the bank;
knickers were pink.
Hair, though, was Essex-blonde.

As pink clothing littered the litter
of a pleasant pig-stye of pink,
a pink princess went her pinkest
in a delicious Rosé-tint wink.

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☆

Is there someone behind me?
Silent, unblinking.

Pulling ’round from pretending
I’m not looking at you looking at me,
we share an endless gaze.

The longest three seconds of my life.

Scarlet creeps uncomfortably
onto my cheeks, searing into them
like droplets of hot fat. Lips burn.

The ground refuses to swallow me whole.

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Monday evening. Tired. Tired of the must-do’s and must-be’s, tired of work, tired of me. Desultory thoughts, back and forth, formed no train in that ransacked brain. She was hours away, if I knew.

“Just one, then”. I cursed my inability to say no. The Green Goose was thrumming, humming like an alcoholic beehive: lanky geezers, serious boozers, student schmoozers. Beer-bellied BA hons propped up complaining pool-cues, lassies tried pints for a larf and splish-splashed them down their bras and over tables; ladettes showed ‘em how it’s done with a few swift raisings of the wrist – gulp gulp – only adding to that belly fat, such a disgrace in a pair of jeans two sizes too small. Tummy-blubber bulged over beltlines; bling bling bellybutton-rings and belly bracelets out-of-place on bellies like that, shitfaced and disgraceful fat ladettes. Here’s a quid: buy yourself some save-face decency. I caught my critical eye and forced it the fuck shut.

Jason, and drinks. A few we knew swept us up in their lager-lust and we danced a trail of pubs, bars, and the Club was in sight. Hazy Quid Mondays. Student Night. Always. Though not for me, not that year. One minute, one beer, and I was pressed up against the velvet wall by lips that looked like they belonged to a girl from class. Relinquishing my glass, I managed a glance in Jason’s direction: him and her friend were locking faces.

“Come back to our place?” They lured us back to their lair in the sharp October air with promiscuity and the promise of their housemate’s Absinthe we would pilfer. Absinthe… I wondered as I wandered in the fresh air, the booze draining from my head full of dreads and dreams and dreadful schemes.

Shots of Absinthe: disgusting. Disgusting taste, disgusting sticky-bench tasteless student kitchen, disgustingly tasty sticky situation; looking forward to it getting even stickier. Down came the owner of the precious green vomit. Explain away, girls. Blaring, raving, then appeased at 4am, returned to his cave. I didn’t care. I was young, felt sexy. I laughed, disgracefully shitfaced. Need a quid, Luke? I moved my eyes in the direction of the stairs. Angelina, angel of the moment, acquiesced and we slunk to her bedroom. Lavalamp. Ambient electro… no… that’s trip-hop… uh… Stop. A peculiarly pert pair of breasts stared at me.

“I need to tell you something,” she said. I lay back on the bed. “I’ve had implants”. And she was keen with a razor. Nothing normal about this Monday night. Not my normal natural girl, with naturals, and natural curls.

The next day I was the colour of the precious green and reeling, feeling about to vomit. I reached, half-blind, for my wallet. Where was it? Black leather held together with undergraduate dreams, weighed down at the seams with shrapnel and receipts from Tesco cash machines. It was empty. I was empty. All I needed was a quid.

I never went out on a Monday again.

NB. ‘Quid’ is British slang for Pound, as in GBP £ (currency); ‘shitfaced’ is very drunk; ‘Tescos’ are large supermarkets students often shop at. The story above is all true. I was twenty-three and in the third year of my first degree (see picture). This is my first attempt at prose-poetry proper.

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