WordSalad: The Poetry of Luke Prater

We cannot live an afterlife in lieu;
the next is predicated on the last,
dependent on the lessons: many, few.

Not satisfied rewriting teachings, you
absolve him of his race, Semitic cast.
Yes, Yeshua ben Yosef was a Jew.

Depict him as Caucasian, and to woo
those acts he railed against (wage war? Aghast).
Step out of stone, of darker ageing hue.

No ‘Jew’ as the Messiah, yet you view
their lineage as sacred scriptured past.
Yes, Yeshua ben Josef was a Jew.

His sexuality’s been taken, too,
and Maryam declassed, a whore (out)cast.*
Such carnal inadmission tends to skew.

Staunch Theocratic hegemony’s due
its Karmic fate: no Heaven’s Gate, at last.
We cannot live an afterlife in lieu -

it rests upon the lessons: many, few.

 
 
✩

*Pope Gregory the Great‘s homily on Luke’s gospel dated 14 September 591 first suggested that Mary Magdalene (Maryam/Miriam) was a prostitute: “She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark. And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices? … It is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts.”(homily XXXIII).

(Source: Wikipedia). Sources generally: several over many years (none including Dan Brown), and just the tip of a rather large iceberg. It was pretty difficult packing even this much into nineteen lines. I feel a free verse rewrite coming on.

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Your sons and daughters don’t belong to you -
they are life’s longing for itself, preplanned;
though in this incarnation, you they choose,

they’re not possessions to be kept and used.
Give love, but let your thoughts awash in sand;
your sons and daughters don’t belong to you.

Those children have thoughts of their own, enthuse.
May house their bodies, yet not souls command.
Though in this incarnation, you they choose,

their souls dwell in tomorrow’s house; refused
a visit – yes, in truth. Please understand:
your sons and daughters don’t belong to you.

May strive to be like them, though they’ll confuse;
seek not to make them like you, heavy hand,
though in this incarnation, you they choose.

You are the bows; like living arrows true,
your children are sent forth to life and land.
Your sons and daughters don’t belong to you.

For life it tarries not with wrack and rue
of yesterday, on moving sea and strand;
though in this incarnation, you they choose,
your sons and daughters don’t belong to you.

✩

This is a modified villanelle rewrite in iambic pentameter of Lebanese-American artist, poet and writer Khalil Gibran’s prose-poetry piece On Children, from his famous collection The Prophet (1923). Most of the first stanza I owe to poet friend Michael James Murphy. Thank you.

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.

Slifting into low-slung winter sun,
savouring the effably ineffable -

this. moment.

every s e c o n d

sat in the first,
sensing the third;

present, sentient.

Shiftslip into the taxi bound for
rural railway,

as the Nokia blinked
for the first time in over a week.

“Ah, freedom, eh?”

Oddly apposite to embrace a stranger
for gutkick realisation
of the opposite.

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.

Flaxen ringlets, eyes
precariously close to powder-blue;
lithe flesh and edible complexion

pleasantly festooning a stretch of
summer grass, lazily embracing
a manifest juvenescence.

She will die.

Before that, she will witness, inexorably,
bodily attributes

fading, warping, sagging,

being bent earthwards by
gravity, age, emotion, vicissitudes.

She will be erased,
living out the rigmarole -

infinitesimal

unrelenting

moments,

until pallbearers are the last
to carry the burden of her shell.

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.

soft fall,
upturned hands;
luxuriate in let-go forget.

the relief trust brings
the falling leaf, held aloft
with an exhalation

of cobalt firmament;
ephemerality taken
with soft, upturned hands,

and held.

☆

Join us for Meeting the Bar: Crit and Craft at d’Verse Poets’ Pub where we are exploring the Craft of Poetry and the giving and receiving of Constructive Criticism. Bring a poem to link and pull a stool up to the bar.

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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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Pariah speaks to no one but himself,
though children chatter, women, menfolk busy;
Pariah has Herr Nietzsche on a shelf.

Across the street fat vinyl hums Thin Lizzie;
Pariah counterpoises mantric chants
and dons a sheet, spun disincarnate dizzy.

Cuckolded, sent to Coventry and France,
knew well that what they glimpse in him, they’re lacking.
Move comfortably in chafe discomfort-dance.

Went fumbling for the truth, continued cracking;
slipped down the sofa, dripped askance askew,
that fell off trucks, from acid-scathe flash-backing.

Once Coventry showed empty palms, and few
of Nietzsche’s words held piss, his sheet was through.

☆

The meaning and origins of the British idiom to ‘Send to Coventry’ can be found here.

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Madam Karma (blank verse)

God damn it, Madam Karma, you pre-empt
my stint with Destiny. What is the debt?

Freewill is not enough to keep a man;
true Self-Determinism’s tough, I rue
the bedbound wretch with seeping sleepless fettle.

The Universe is in rogue bedlam, a
pre-Ordered pandemonium (stop. Breathe.)
where Karma, Des and Will all ashram-kneel,
chant mantras: cymbals, with harmonium.

Madam Karma (the light version)

God damn you, Madam Karma -
upstaged my date with Destiny.
Yeah, she’s a little charmer,
but basically she lets me be.

Freewill just ain’t enough, y’know,
to keep a man alive, true Self-
Determinism’s tough, y’know;
ill-fettled wretch with weeping wealth.

The Universe is Bedlam Hill,
pre-Ordered pandemonium,
where Madam Karma, Des and Will
chant mantras with harmonium.

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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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True deference is how I view
our meetings, cradled, innocent.
Our greetings peel, are quickly spent,

hours bulge, disfigure, warp, with you.
These keen eyes trace a joyful face
each time two friends embrace anew.

From other lifetimes roads are leant;
true deference, my point of view.

☆

This piece is in my own form, the Octain that I devised in December 2010, of which over a hundred have now been written (just five by me – this is my fourth). Wanna try one? Details on the form can be found beneath my first, Breathe.

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