WordSalad: The Poetry of Luke Prater

Ditch by the dilapidated buttress
has my name
poorly pissed into it by a drunken sentry.

Needing to squeeze
the ill-kemp ennui from bittersweet me,
traversing the headlands stealing Trafalgar,
Gibraltar, Pillars of Hercules;

got a physique on short-term lease,
teasing out tattered virility,
percolated coffee-grind mind.

Mindset.

Mind set,
mind where you sit. Or shit.
Do it on your doorstep.
Not mine, not theirs.

Who cares?

‘Unfuck the World’ – nice t-shirt -
cause célèbre Wall Street picket plaudits:
gonna get your hands in the dirt?

How does your garden grow?

Packaged in poly- on sterile shop shelves,
praising plastic neodeities
for fossil-fuel deliverance -
until the slick black,
force-bled from our Mother,
runs dry from drilled vaginas.

Permanent PMT;
increase in natural disasters
hardly surprising. She’s rising.

I’m pissed, pissed off, off, off-colour, colouring,
but my name has sunk now from the
pissed-sentry-piss-ditch piss-off.

Off-piste epistemology.

</rant>

8 people like this post.

Like

Unlike

O Kýrie, eléison.
Engorging, slick, devour her skin;
Man’s avarice runs down his chin.

Atomic Power: blunt shotgun.
Her rising call – she’ll take us all,
tectonic plates unhinge the sun

with no respite, no interim -
O Christe, O eléison.

O Kýrie, eléison.
False credit, carriage, blacksack bin,
can’t hear the birds, can’t hear them sing;

endangered species face the gun.
Her rising thrall will force the fall -
one grimreap day will see us done.

In gouging: shit, sick in her skin -
O Christe, O eléison.

(Octain No. 5 – ‘Kyrielle’ High Octain)

☆

Kýrie, eléison – Greek for ‘Lord, have mercy’

Christe, eléison – ‘Christ, have mercy’ – both used commonly in Christian Liturgy/text.

This is a rewrite, in the Octain form I devised in December 2010, of the Kyrielle Sonnets I wrote recently.

Eight lines as two tercets and a couplet, eight syllables per line with the first line repeated (as much as possible) as the last. Meter is iambic or trochaic tetrameter, but fine to just count eight syllables per line for those who prefer that. I’ve used iambic tetrameter here.

Rhyme scheme – A-b-b a-c/c-a b-A

(A = repeated refrain line. c/c refers to line five having midline (internal) rhyme (eg. here/sneer), which is different to the a- and b-rhymes)

High Octain is simply a double Octain, but as one poem – the refrains are the same (though varying them to some degree is perfectly acceptable), a- and b- rhymes are the same, and the c/c line with the internal rhyme can optionally be rhymed in the second instance (as here). There is no restriction on the level of repetition, but in most cases the stipulated refrain A is enough; this may even feel too repetitive and need varying somewhat (as I have in this one), particularly in the High Octain, where it appears four times.

4 people like this post.

Like

Unlike

Last Flush (Multilingual Refrain)

Engorging, slick, devour her skin
in credit, carriage, blacksack bin.
We spit the dregs of her last flush -
O Lord, be merciful to us.

The itching started, trees were ripped,
mass-drilling and her min’rals stripped.
One grimreap day will see us done -
O Kýrie, eléison.

Industrialise, copulate,
tip landfill, overpopulate.
Her waters break; she’ll take whoever -
O Nkósi, o yibá nencéba.

In gouging, sick, shit in her skin -
Seigneur, ayez pitié de nous.

Unhinge (Greek Refrain)

Engorging, slick, devour her skin
in credit, carriage, blacksack bin.
One grimreap day will see us done -
O Kýrie, eléison.

The itching started, trees were ripped,
mass-drilling and her min’rals stripped.
Atomic power: blunt shotgun -
O Kýrie, eléison.

Industrialise, copulate,
tip landfill, overpopulate.
Tectonic plates unhinge the sun -
O Kýrie, eléison.

In gouging, sick, shit in her skin -
O Kýrie, eléison.

Last Flush (English Refrain)

Engorging, slick, devour her skin
in credit, carriage, blacksack bin.
We spit the dregs of her last flush -
O Lord, be merciful to us.

The itching started, trees were ripped,
mass-drilling and her min’rals stripped.
Atomic power, blunderbuss -
O Lord, be merciful to us.

Industrialise, copulate,
tip landfill, overpopulate.
Economy: collapsing truss -
O Lord, be merciful to us.

In gouging, sick, shit in her skin -
O Lord, be merciful to us.

☆

Kyrielle Sonnet – AabB ccdD eefF AG – bit of a deviation from the norm as I have used four languages for the refrain, so they don’t rhyme/repeat aurally (but mean the same). Also I have an extra syllable on the ends of lines 11 & 12. Normally looks more like this -

AabB ccbB ddbB AB (My second and third follow this pattern/structure).

Sonnet version of Kyrielle, traditionally a Troubadour song/poem in iambic tetrameter/octosyllabic quatrains or couplets with refrain ending every stanza (in the old days the refrain was always something like ‘O Lord, be merciful to us’ but it can be anything). In the sonnet version the first line is also the penultimate, followed by the refrain (like two refrains back-to-back that don’t rhyme).

The ‘Lord have mercy (upon us)’ refrain is in three languages in addition to English:

O Kýrie, eléison – Greek (found in many old Liturgies, and hence the name of the form)

O Nkosi, o yiba nenceba – Xhosa (Sth Africa), and used in SA Black Gospel

Seigneur, ayez pitié de nous – French… where the form originated

In three versions, as you see. Which do you prefer (as a matter of interest)?

7 people like this post.

Like

Unlike

Fat Neverland (I’m Loathin’ It) – Villanelle original

Factory farm ‘em on rainforest land,
jab ‘em with jittery antibiotics, in
serving a hoodwinked world’s worst burger-stand.

Nutrient nadir, damn should have you banned,
even when just drunken teens in your night-kitchen
sucking down scared meat from rainforest land.

Wretched obese bloat and fall at your hand;
farmers on statutory antidepressants been
plying, supplying world’s worst burger-stand.

Consciences slip through ringed fingers like sand.
Wallets are plump; I’m still wondering why? (you grin)
greenlighting greenfelling greenforest land.

Golden the arches, but ain’t worth a grand;
Ronald’s grave future sees past catching up with him -
homeless – McCuster’s last fastburger-stand.

Clown let the kids party Fat Neverland,
Tinkerbell grounded by chow she’s demolishing.
Cattle confused grazing rainforest land,
passed off as food at world’s worst burger-stand.

Fat Neverland (I’m Loathin’ It) – free verse rewrite

Factory-farmed on rainforest land;
force-fed with antibiotics to serve a
hoodwinked world’s worst burger-stand.

A nutrient nadir that should have
them banned, even when just drunken
teens in their night-kitchen, sucking
down scared meat with cardboard and Coke.

Wretched obese bloat oily soak, in
triple chins of self-loathing they wallow;
farmers swallow disgust and
statutory antidepressants
supplying mass substandard beef.

Consciences slip through
ringed fingers like sand.

Wallets are plump
greenlighting
greenfelling
greenforest land.

Golden the arches, but ain’t worth a thing;
Ronald’s grave future sees
past catching up with him -
homeless – McCuster’s last fastburger-stand.

Clown let the kids carouse Fat Neverland,
now Tinkerbell’s grounded
by chow she’s demolishing.

Cattle confused, passed off as food
at world’s worst burger-stand.

☆

Villanelle in dactylic tetrameter (dactyl is the trisyllabic foot that goes stress-unstress-unstress), ‘a’-rhymes (land/stand, etc.) are minus the two last unstressed syllables, ie. masculine rhyme in a normally feminine-rhyming meter. Example of meter from lines one and two:

FAC to ry | FARM ‘em on | RAIN for est | LAND = dactylic tetrameter minus its last two unstressed syllables (masculine end-rhyme)

JAB ‘em with | JI tte ry | AN ti bi | OT ics, in        = dactylic tetrameter proper (feminine end-rhyme)

‘Statutory’ counting as three syllables not four (Americans say it as four, Brits three, ie. ‘statut’ry’). The technical side of poetry – ain’t it fun…? (Maybe my next should be a Limerick…).

Underneath you see I’ve rewritten it in free verse, for those who dislike form poetry. I felt the content was important enough.

Incidentally, I also rewrote this as a Pushkin Sonnet. Which version of the three do you prefer, I wonder?

8 people like this post.

Like

Unlike

The cattle farmed where once was leafage,
force-fed with drugs unfit for us,
supplying world’s worst burger beefage
by farmers in disguised disgust.

Nutrition nadir should be outlawed,
to spare the trees the rasping chainsaw;
to spare the cattle cheap mince fate;
to close the flooding fast-food gate.

In wilful ignorance we swallow,
in sucking down scared meat with Coke.
Obese, they bloat in oily soak,

in lack of self-esteem they wallow.
Let kids carouse Fat Neverland,
at Ronald’s clowning, cloying hand.

☆

OK, so here’s a rewrite of the difficultly-metered, experimental villanelle Fat Neverland (next post), in completely different form – Pushkin’s Onegin Stanza (Pushkin Sonnet). I wonder which version you prefer?

Rhyme-scheme:

A-b-A-b
C-C-d-d
E-f-f
E-g-g

where lowercase letters represent iambic tetrameter, and capital letters iambic tetrameter + unstressed syllable on the end (giving those lines a ‘feminine’ rhyme). The mix makes this the most musical of all the sonnets. Thanks to poet friend José Rizal M. Reyes for introducing me to this wonderful form. I’m lovin’ it.

6 people like this post.

Like

Unlike

“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.

2 people like this post.

Like

Unlike

BP: look
at me.
I flinch; God
you’re ugly.
Myopic, dystopic.

This topic
dares me
to fight you;
scares me, but
fuck you.

If

you

go

d

o

w

n

I will be
digging.

Happily.

Sweat never
tasted sweeter;
a graveyard never
more sun-filled.

Birds sing
this morning,
done mourning
their cousins,
they sing.

Happily.

1 person likes this post.

Like

Unlike