WordSalad: The Poetry of Luke Prater

Thinking
need to get a life.
Missing
someone else’s wife.
Kissing
sweetly in my dreams
kissing
through the thinning seams
of her
flimsy summer dress

To caress and be caressed
to covet and be coveted
by this
unwitting enchanting
non-adulteress.

“Show me what you
looked like at my age”, I say
“Boring”, she says. Okay.

Then look into my eyes,
say some words, don’t care which.
Give me your now:
wish, wish for those things.

The phone rings. It’s time to go.

I know it, before she says it
she lets me kiss her face,
that face
and touch her black,
Oriental-black hair.

“See you later”, she says.
I’m there.

To caress and be caressed
to covet and be coveted
by this
unknowing enchanting
non-adulteress.

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Lamp-posts/Girls at dawn

Sex is for breeding. That’s it.
Like junk food – I salivate,
but afterwards feel sick.

The fucking smell
of post-coital bedsheets
is nauseating.

Bodily fluids, lubricants, latex and
Nonoxynol-9 spermicide stain bedclothes,
repugnate to the pit of the stomach.

Fucking is a messy inconvenience.

Nature kept tapping me on the
shoulder, I kept telling her to piss off.

Stop making me strut and preen and cartwheel
and sweet-talk and stand up against walls like that.
And say things I quite possibly don’t mean.

The girl walking past my piece of
pavement smarms sex at me
like honey dripping from a waffle-maker.

If I was asexual
I wouldn’t have picked her
out from the lamp-posts.

Dammit to hell
I wanna screw that thing.

☆

I’ve been reading Bukowski. Which may have influenced the tone of this piece, but to be clear: these are sentiments I have wanted to express since my early twenties, when I felt them keenly. I no longer feel this way, at least, not anything like as strongly, but if you construe the above poem to be misogynistic, then you need to reread it. My resentment was towards Nature for driving me to feel these urges, when quite often I really would have preferred to just be left alone to get on with my work, see friends, etc. Never did I take it out on any of the girls/women concerned, because I knew it wasn’t their fault. It was my battle with Nature. However, I believe that this problem can, and does, create misogyny if not kept in check and fairly thought-through. I own my part in it entirely.

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Entwine they did, enthrallingly,
two artists penning poetry.
Replete with rhythm thrumming, rhyme,
handwritten figures moved in time;
abscond diurnal ordin’ry.

Their verse was wrought so eagerly,
lithe forms, of trope, those aurally,
awoke her from an act in mime;
entwine they did.

A union urged, compellingly,
yet tender, and so palpably,
sublime the peaking mountain-climb.
Collaboration, fluid line,
denouement reached, euphorically;
entwine they did.

☆

Rondeau – one of the several forms springing from what were peasants’ verse set to music with anything from 8 to 21 lines in pre-Medieval France; all then subsumed under the name ‘rondeau’, but later given separate monikers. This is the one still referred to as the rondeau; its four other relatives are the rondel, the rondelet/roundelay, a shortened version of the rondel, triolet (also a short version of the rondel – see my previous post Slipped from Sixers for examples of both the triolet and rondel), and the roundel, devised by Swinburne when the rondeau came to England. Just to confuse you, there is also the rondeau redoublé, which is a 24/25-line version of a rondeau with an outrageous refrain-scheme.

Technical specifics of the rondeau: 15 lines, two end-rhymes, eight syllables per line (no specific metrical foot, though I used iambic tetrameter here to ensure a smooth flow). First half of first line (ie. first four syllables) used as the refrain, repeated at the end of stanzas two and three. Viz. -

a-a-b-b-a
a-a-b + refrain: c
a-a-b-b-a + refrain: c

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how impossibly brown the eyes
how surrendering-soft the lips
hands between furnace-hot thighs

how undulating the hips
how maim-me blonde the hair
vertiginous waist it dips

how unfair the face so fair
how surging moist the centre
lured to lascivious lair

how spread are you, and enter
how luxuriating, melded
inside, rapturous venture

how exquisitely, bodies welded

☆

Terza rima - a stanza structure and rhyme-scheme devised by the ancient Italian poet Dante, which comprises tercets continuously interlocking in the following manner:

a-b-a | b-c-b | c-d-c | e-d-e | d-c-d | e (e)

It is not a poetic form in itself (as a sonnet is, for instance), but can be used in a piece of any length. The final line out on its own (alternatively a rhyming couplet) must rhyme with the middle line of the final tercet. Metre: any; I have used three beats per line (not counting syllables, as I didn’t want to compromise on word-use). Many poets employing Terza rima in English use iambic pentameter (yaaaaawn. What a surprise).

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Age of loins is not the question
the fire is felt, whenever born.
Lust, like fictive fruit of Mallorn;
this lust is trussed up in hessian.

Younger senses need to freshen
to see the pedestal you’re on.
I placed you there, with care, upon
that height that teeters in high-heels,
this night that meted out the meals -
maybe ours are already done?

☆

Mallorn are trees of Middle-Earth from the immense imagination of J R R Tolkien.

The decimá is a rare old form originating in Spain and still practiced today in many parts of Latin America, including Puerto Rico and Cuba. It is written and sung, sometimes extemporaneously. I should thank Marilyn Mair for introducing me to this form, and for inspiring me to write my first. She writes many, and most excellently. The decimá structure is as follows:

Ten lines (hence the name), eight syllables per line, with the following rhyme-scheme:

a-b-b-a
a-c-c-d-d-c

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Red Setter, boy, go out and get ‘er
smell her out, you haven’t met ‘er
that what that nose is for,
Red Setter?

You didn’t phone or write a letter
e-mail, text, or even better
see her face again,
Red Setter

Quite the charming panties-wetter
take all you want, owe no debt, ya
let ‘er suck and more,
Red Setter

Ever on the case, a-go-go getter
won’t be told, be tamed, no fetter
how many do you claim,
Red Setter?

Red, colour of dawgs who know better
but don’t; won’t have a tête-à-têter
one night enough, enough for
Red Setter

Dine her on wine, black olives and feta
she’ll come back to the kennel if you let ‘er
how many do you feign,
Red Setter?

Red Setter, boy, go out and get ‘er
smell her flesh, you haven’t et ‘er
that what those teeth are for,
Red Setter?

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