Luke Prater
Melanie Brown ☊Where did you go to Melanie Brown?
Did you ever return? Did your hands get burned? Nice to know you, Melanie Brown nice to show you round. Took your wanting wan nightgown pills, and rock CDs Ridgie, Ruth and me friends you made that term in town friends, they let you down? Left on sullied mid-heeled ground your looks, and college books. Travestied; too many cooks. That stinging, scuppered blue-eyed frown shakysmileme down. Do they still try it on, come round lank-haired, rock n' roll boys surreptitious ploys lifting that sorry blue-eyed frown, like they did that term in town? Not a place of great renown - fast-dance saloon - cried, like Syd, for the moon we tried not to let you drown in pools of Melanie Brown. Were you flipped like half-a-crown hung up on highs and whys fed up being fed mud-pies? Was there any joy that term in town before you went on down? Where did you go to Melanie Brown? Did you ever return? Did your tongue get burned? Nice to know you, Melanie Brown nice to show you round. be-all ☊to kiss
as if there was another word tongues searching for that other word words, ways to describe this - tongues, far from foreign foraging for exquisite illustration illustrious forays to kiss such that outside eyes are out of operation for longer than it takes to have a deep bath or lunch with a friend third eyes press like the pad of sated panthers, moving this way and that at the sway of soft brows to kiss not foreplay the be-all meeting of mouths, of faces, of hidden eyes admission to hidden selves selves we surrender only when communion is brought in acts of consummation yet with lips, only lips end-all lips Alice ☊There’s something sad about Alice
she sits there sipping her tea half-gone the cup half-gone the eyes she listens to the song of the sea rocks with a bend of her knee, on the porch of her weatherboard palace. There’s something sad about Alice her gaze runs away to the trees pale soft the skin pale green the eyes lashes that long to fly free won’t you flutter them just once at me? sweet indifference is what becomes Alice. There’s something sad about Alice slips to her caravan to sleep cold dark the night cold dark the bed she listens to the song of the sea rocks with a bend of her knee, and collects her tears in a chalice. There’s something sad about Alice leaving today for the city large white the van large white the man who takes her away to fly free away from the song of the sea away from her weatherboard palace. Scruples ☊Balanced within this
mounted mould of sinew and skin, knowing – for the short stretch I amble the earth - I’d prefer to have, than have not, yet with modesty and generosity; absence of these would sweat the scruples out of me. Calvin's God
I.
I brought death to a fly; then, as Ignatow, felt the gnawing need to write on it. Swinging, with ballpark precision, not expecting to crush a quick-wing, I only wanted it away. As it lay, not yet dead, I struck it twice further to purge Life from a sentient bundle of buzzing nerves. Laying down small cardboard weaponry, I peeled a prayer from disconcerted lips as a ripple of Life-force returned, premature, to the River. II. Recollections came: the day I saved a life - a housefly, dying from exhaustion, hunger - both – gifted custody of emotion as it went through the motions of death. Insect death, without breath, or brain, yet no stranger to life, even if instinctual. A drop of milk, where it could reach, was all required to revive a thrive-and-die metabolism of cold blood that simply s l o w s till upturned tendrils are stifled, and nerve-endings are still. Calvin’s God, I gave, I took. III. Unsheathed, unholy, spitting vigorous saliva into fecund creases of the mother, I swore. |
Small Things ☊Do small things;
we don’t need to bring the mountain to Mohammed. In the dusk, when the door’s open, and the children know better than you or I, do small things. Clear your space, let unseen company visit. Appreciate cushions; let cushions hold you like an infant. Do small things: feed the spouse, allow the spouse to feed you, hand-to-mouth. Take joy in a piecemeal palace, in trusting it’s always enough. Do small things. Move barefoot on the porch to Mozart or LaMontagne; follow fallow feet treading sun-parched planks, licking soles with long, grainy tongues. Purvey acts of the ordinary in extraordinary ways, allow extraordinary days. Do small things; survey your kingdom - a desk. A room. A garden. These will always be enough. Do small things. Make cards from old ones, giving them to old friends on no particular occasion, or rationale, other than that you love them. Do small things. Strap on wire and fabric wings; carve the Pieta or Moses from soap. It will recognise its change of state as much as a mountain recognises its moving. white lie
legs align, bent, three-way weft paths wend
lie, chestnut, copper, ash blond knit-knotting coiffure lie, looselanguid in familial swathe lie, soft, hush; sleep with us lie to me, lie to you: naïveté new, though it won’t last past the white-witch moon on her peering arc we’ve shed neophyte this night Earth and Earthenware
I mourn for the boy, and sit with
the man who lost sight of him. With a throat that cannot swallow, I tell him: it is cyclical. It is the way of Kismet, and Karma. It outreaches our ken; it is not your transgression. The crowd was a seething hustle; the boy was quick, and adventurous. Unless tethered in the heather and clover, rambunctious and ruddy would make steps in directions of his choosing, aware or otherwise. Losing sight allowed the bulbs of Life, the pushing crocus, to rush into focus from earth and earthenware. Yet the pain, the steel skewers threaded longways into the forearm from the wrist, remains insistent – though dulled - as you and I learn to live alongside. palliate
clayey with discomfort
in the unapologetic silence; in the face of the faceless man who fell to the paving and wept as if the silence, or the man noticed the moral trespasses of another upright animal ambling glorified farmyards pig pens, concrete cowpaths bright with streetlights; shopfronts, wants, wants want for the silence to palliate; for the man to find his face beaten hands among guttered bottles and cans nothing is recycled Easy Eggs
- If we stay in this bar any later,
lady, they’ll be throwing eggs at us. - I could go for a couple of eggs. How do you like ‘em? - Over easy. You? - Unfertilised. The crescent moon withered like a post-coital penis. Eros had no money on this one. He had easy eggs; she fell into a cab retching an address and banknotes pilfered from the loveless. Cold, ugly and without passion, insipid cloud-cover failed to spit or heave, instead sitting heavy on daybreak bottom-feeders whistling mockery at all they were, and were not. Stone, Stile, and Chalice
Slim-hipped,
him, slipped; stepping-stones, negotiable Soft-lipped, cloth, ripped - stile pilfers thread and fabric Fine-tipped, shrine, sipped - kneeling as knot is knit and chalice, lip-to-lip
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