WordSalad: The Poetry of Luke Prater

A hard hand had her in the dirt,
twelve-year-old school skirt rent, awry;
fetor of blood and semen.

Clutching callow fruit to her breast,
insidiously inseminated; the race
programmed to propagate.

A destitute Mestiza grandmother
is taken in childbirth, slipping and keening
in a crimson flood, awash and away
after shock conception (bravely, a miracle).

Gaia barely blinked as
She spun on the callous breeze,
shivering the limbs of trees.

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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>

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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.

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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)?

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Collapsed

a deck chair
face to Earth
bleeding salt

envelop me, Mother
offer your breast, succour

craving redeliverance of
ignorance; the impurity and
inconvenience of Adulthood

worn like a suit fashioned
by a hue and cry of enraged
madding seamstresses

drip
tears
sweat

impregnate soil, your skin
let a bird fly, or

swallow this man in
darkdamp pulsing utero

Lammas (First Fruits) Ceremony - Early August

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