WordSalad: The Poetry of Luke Prater

Eleven strings to arch my bow,
eleven rings in resting row;
totemic as a calving cow.
Polemic: I can’t use them now.

A cat-o’-nine-tails, had nine wives;
tense nine inch nails, I got nine lives.

On seven seasons’ greedy suns,
unheeded sev’ral warning guns.
Spent seven years in great Tibet -
and seven years in bale regret.

Five dances, spinning, and five chances
in circles spin, Five Rhythms dances.

Three phrases, through three stoic mazes,
prove places full freeways from stasis -
this room, this room, this fucking room;
hushed prayers to weave light into loom.

One person, one. No other people.
One wall, and brick; no chink, no peephole.

Spin spin the Earth, maintain its turning;
rotate this man, stretched flesh is burning.

☆

This piece I scrawled almost illegibly on a scrap of paper in a near-dark room in May 2004, when completely bedbound. I lay motionless in the dark for so long, my body went onto a 25-hour clock (a bizarre yet factual occurrence when one has no light), and went round it twice (waking up at 3am/at 5pm as my morning, and everything in between) I also became so thin with muscle wastage I literally looked like I was dying of anorexia. It wasn’t until 2008 that I typed it up, and since have tried about three times to rewrite it to a standard at least shareable with my poetry friends. I failed twice, and thought it was a good bit of personal catharsis charting some deep, dark space that would serve only as poetic journal entry. Finally, after forgetting about it for months, I saw it there in my archives and tried the meter trick: going through the entire piece making it metrically exact, which forces rewriting in many places and thinking very carefully about word-use. Here I have used iambic tetrameter (second half with an added unstressed syllable on the end). Whether it’s done the job is hard to judge for me, but the initial reactions have been positive.

(Image: The Seven Suns megalith, Ireland)

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Amy Winehouse (14 Sept 1983 – 23 July 2011) British R&B/Soul/Jazz singer

I sat with death at twenty-seven.

If death an absence of life, I was alleywayed alongside.
Lying, unafraid, catching a fox’s bark – that eerie
cry for carnal comfort – around the copse across the track.

I wasn’t to be taken back to Earth and Sky;
neither was the fox. Morning light split my face
and drove all nocturnes down.

Cobain’s split by double-barrel self-prescribed
for the deepdarksink; Jimi, Janis, Morrison’s
by uppers, downers and bangdownupside vomit.

Twenty-seven, twenty-seven, twenty-seven.

Read the news today (oh boy). Amy Winehouse, twenty-seven.
Rolling out and unfolding the appled silverback, announcing
online, with every ounce of gravity cyberspace allows -

‘I survived twenty-seven’.

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Helios, Greek God of the Sun

On the Sun -

How it rose, and I didn’t notice,
hurling myself around as soon as hurling
was possible.

How it reached further into the sky,
and didn’t notice because I was
hurling balls around hot asphalt;
spending weekends a toxic nocturne.

How it went beyond a third of its path,
East to West, and for many, many months
didn’t notice because I lay invalid, entombed
in a deathdark room.

As it approaches the zenith of its trajectory,
I look above, and realise where
the warmth and light is coming from.

Helios -

let me remain aware
of your blazing, colossal cargo,
persisting in immense arc,
till the day closes and I see no more.

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“Tool” – that’s what he called me.
Am one. Got one. Need some.

Crowbar to break open the door,
screwdriver to remove the
locks on the windows,

hammer to drive flat old skew nails
that puncture feet and snag socks,
glaring tetanus at me
tentatively treading
uneven oaken floorboards.

No tools,
no shoes,
no air -

force-fed recycled sighs of frustration.
A moribund potplant and I -
it’s hardly an even exchange.

When this is through,
I’d be a fool to reject
the offer of being a tool.

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The Dark Ages concede, recede like tides,
leaving shores to Renaissance sand-castles
built big, with shells and mortar; fairground rides

chitter-chatting dusky-distance rascals.
From beach to fair, knots in my hair, and sand,
shaken out, like doubt of change, the mask-all.
Hey, dance – try throwing shapes! An ampersand?

Just like you, to groove to punctuation.
No ampersand; sniff out a woman’s hand,
claiming back that laddish inclination.

(Stress Matrix Dectet No. 2)

☆

In my own form Stress Matrix Dectet (Stress Checkerboard Stanza). Form details can be found beneath my first, Catholics, Bankers, and Other Self-Pleasurers. Who’s up for writing one? Over ten written so far (just two by me)…

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Getting cosy with Miss Anne Thropy
ain’t all it’s rumoured to be.
She’ll eat you up, and shit you out;
the aftertaste is yours.

Tried to beat her
with London’s Yellow Pages.

She ate two volumes and
spat out the numbers, dialling
each an obscene phonecall.

Only a fool
gets crushed
under her wheels in thrall.

Like Succubi, she’ll suck you dry -
of laughter, goodwill, the wish
to touch and be touched.

She is young, she is old; old as
Adam and Eve, as every agape,
semi-erect Darwinian avatar.

Hardly warm, often glacial -
a bitch, like the
mother of Mussolini

but the only friend I had,
after dropping off the radar,
presumed Killed In Action.

Anne never loved me
and I had love for no-one,
yet fell and hurt for her.

Then she was gone, like
an exonerated banshee.

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I’m standing with a handful of white pills; the road-sign glares.
Fuck the fork is knifing me, but spades I need for freedom;
this pit, knee-deep with blood and shit, and drug-induced night-scares.
Managing to claw out, cleanse, trade spades for forks and demons:

Do you reach up, or stay half-stuck? (My conscience hard as brick) -
needing pills and dins on pins, you wanna keep that going?
A half-existence meted out online, box-bound, brain-sick?

Welcome back the sun, the smell of life, the people showing
their faces, children tying laces, buskers jamming licks.
Market day, a happy fray – a safe foray, not knowing

what’s up ahead. ‘Extempore’ is in the keynote speech.
Feeling free is getting easier, on this condition:

eschew the drugs, and choose the road you see the traffic reach;
moving on, sing just for one, a renaissance rendition.

☆

This is the Sonnet version of my form Stress Matrix Dectet/Stress Checkerboard Stanza -

14 lines, 14 syllables per line – aBaB cDc DcD eF eF

where lowercase are iambic heptameter (7 beats/stresses per line), and uppercase trochaic heptameter. This yields a perfect ‘checkerboard’ of stressed and unstressed syllables (14 x 14, equalling 196 syllables).

Depending on where the Volta arrives (the ‘turn’ – resolution, or at least, change in tone, crucial aspect to a sonnet), there are 3 different stanza layouts (the rhyme-scheme stays the same). My turn quite obviously arrives with the last two lines, as is traditional in English Sonnets, hence the layout with a couplet to end on.

If the turn comes after the first eight lines, as it does in Italian Sonnets, the layout is
aBa BcDcD cDe FeF.

If it comes after line ten (unique!), then it’s aBaB cDc DcD eFeF (same as English but ending on a quatrain rather than the two couplets).

Who’s up for writing one? :)

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.

See as I banquet, dining with the King,
and esoteric Arts taught me, the Mage.
Up dancing with the Queen, hear voices ring,
we cheek-to-cheek upon a festooned stage.

Oh, sing me silly with the minstrels! Mirth,
yes jesting lowbrow banter with the Fool.
Rough-hewn, we raise our flagons like a serf,
unsteady, glorious, on wooden stool.

Down in the kitchen mixing with the cooks,
and taking time to serve the slaves’ old bench.
I won’t be stopped from shooting furtive looks,
that sexual glance to chance the scull’ry wench.

Yet sudden: horribly, I seem unfit;
there’s no rejoining Court where I should sit.

☆

Written in 2005 as a ‘modern’ Shakespearean Sonnet with short lines (no iambic pentameter), and looser rhyme-scheme, now expanded to full Shakespearean Sonnet. The bones of this written when very unwell indeed, totally bed-bound. The descent through a Medieval Court hierarchy and the resulting inability to rejoin my Sovereign is a metaphor for what happened to my life. I lay in bed for a very, very long time. Anyone wanting to see the original ‘modern’ version, click here.

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Many flaws
got no ceiling
many doors
doorknobs missing

Never yours
never feeling
many whores
careless kissing

Many chores
life in Ealing
many bores
listless pissing

Watching Jaws
reel-to-reeling
many mores
shit-flick dissing

Tiger claws
tea, Darjeeling
many Coors
empty drinking

Slew of straws
for the dealing
many draws
short ones picking

On all fours
make-a-mealing
many scores
bed-knobs dicking

★

Many floors
got my healing
many doors
doorknobs clicking

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Coulda been this
turned out that;
shoulda been his
‘sall old hat

Coulda been fizz
turned out flat;
was a whizz
took exeat

Knocked at the door
a-rat-a-tat-tat!
No-one. Saw
just some old bat

Dance the floor!
He never sat.
Nobody’s whore
no ‘Welcome’ mat

Stuck to the floor
where they spat;
take no more -
tell them that

Went for gloss
he got matte;
a stone with moss
stays where it’s at

Grandpa’s gloves
but lost his hat;
no true loves
just Jane and Kat

He was lean
he got fat;
he was Green
still tries that

Sang true B
went B-flat;
circles of three
ain’t where it’s at

Coulda been this
turned out that;
shoulda been his
‘sall old hat.

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