the home page of david prater

silhouettes of moons rising boxcars are stencils the shape of projections made by performance poets who've never fallen in love wincing through their routines screaming call a doctor (a doctor's haunted holiday home the leafless trees the free shots administered at dawn the freezing branches stacked with animals cries like a gurgling brook an owl falls from a telegraph pole it disappears before sunrise jack frosts (interred like jackals highways streaked with radioactive delay yellow buzzards playing banjos the courthouse gang that put their own spittle on trial beef jerky (tales of harvest balloons let loose in the ballroom as deadwood slurs drool from the corpse's mouth

Little grains of crazy sand fall in slow motion through the world's gigantic hour glass, making snows seem electric & water all-powerful. Your silver wingtips slice the future skies & make my atmosphere go crazy, each little moment, each tiny hit. Last night I awoke to the sound of crazy winds strafing my lonely house, circles under my eyes, bad dreams knocking. Come soon, gekkie! Time winds down like false alarms, a siren signalling the all-clear. This constant fight against desperation. Pitched battles in the early morning. It hadn't rained. Fall, crazy sands, fall!

One cloudy day last August, at the Rock En Seine music festival in Paris, me and Kat were lucky enough to see one of my favourite bands, Broken Social Scene , perform to a rapturous crowd in the rain (see the pics here ). While we missed the band's opening numbers, a surge of excitement pulsed through my body when the opening bass lines of "Stars & Sons" crackled over the loudspeakers. It's my favourite song of theirs, partly because of said bassline but also because of the joyous handclaps that kick in halfway through. Those of you who are familiar with BSS will know already that it's a kind of collective, with a constantly changing cast of band members. That day, as the section where the handclaps were supposed to kick in approached, I wondered how they were going to replicate that special moment, given that every member of the band had his or her hands full playing instruments of one kind or another. Then, just when I thought it wasn't going to happen,...

rivers roads borders & towns overturn regimes impose your own! take me before you take him (say light up that disease & crush those feeble ants! he's crazy they whispered true to the end he keeps on smiling & i just want to eat! myself or throw them off the scent that might do it! fool black birds swooping down to check my pulse! wise white birds (chase these daylights home! across borders rivers roads & towns dim people come out & cry! it's time! & don't tell me youse weren't aware we're moving into serious stages of riot! roads rivers borders towns towns (rivers roads borders & rivers (roads borders & towns - burn & blow up sounds! bring the regime down!

he was the star that floated in water, lacking space (& she was an astronomer in hawaii, or in lower case (she's the satellite's document of a dreamy eclipse (he's like a word once lost, now formed by her lips (when she says goodbye & oh! that word all the stars go out (& it gets dark: he drives through the night with just a radio & his doubt (the elegant simplicity of life & her, of their separation (caused snows from november to fall across the nation (never does, we never knew that the stars could dream (the reflection we'll never see; the white flakes' mist a pane's beam (their lonely message across a face we call the skies (cry or close your eyes                                                        ...

He was a jealous husband without a wife. I needed security and he gave me bullets to rain down upon those discreet affairs (which came, and passed. We settled in to our familiar routine: me with my cat and he out stalking prey. At night he'd return with greenbacks in his ochre eye, demanding fidelity, abstract truth and an Amerikan way of life. I don't understand how it came to this. I trusted him with my life savings. He didn't believe in me. I see it now (with the clarity of sight denied the blind. I sign divorce papers. His mistrust did not (a coalition make.

                       

I've gone through most of my life thinking my name is fairly weird - not my first name, my surname, der - and that the chances of anyone else having it are slim. That was until I found out that Dave from legendary soul duo Sam and Dave was also a Prater (he died in 1998) and that there's another one, a guitarist and producer with the band (Dream Theater). Now we can add a couple more to the list - the extremely photogenic real estate agent David Prater of www.davidprater.com and the newly-elected DA of Oklahoma County, from whose campaign web site I ripped the pics above. Seems a lot of fans (or enemies) of said DA have been visiting this site in recent weeks, presumably thinking I'm him. Well, I'm not. I'm the David Prater. Best of luck to all of us, anyway. I'm sure there's millions more ...

Nul kussen. What a nightmare, and what a way to wake up. The anti-kussen machines bleat like soft alarms, tiringly monotonous, just sitting there, doing nothing. In denial, or simply incapable of action. What use does the world have for such machines? I'd rather run a marathon. And so I kissed you secretly, on your shoulder, while the lasers and cheap dry ice provided cover. So subtle and discreet you never knew. But zero doesn't count, anyway. I remain alone. Een kus is a start, but not enough. There we were standing in the doorway and suddenly - kus! A brief encounter with the moon, the night like cold fire. How did we get there? The staircase dared me to jump and I did, headlong, into the words coming out of your mouth. The tip of my tongue an iceberg, my arms around you trying to be the sun. That didn't work either. But even goodbye was a lovely word. I kept running. Twee kussen - one each, or a combo kus, followed by coffee. It doesn't get any better than that - tw...

One day I'll delete all of my passwords, all those hard to remember combinations of numbers and letters, and replace them with various names I've made up for you. That way, I'll never forget my passwords again, and every time I type one of them in I'll think of you, or at least one of those names for you I already mentioned. I've got all the security I'll ever need right here in this series of secret code words no one else could ever crack. This plan will however require me to think up a few more. You see, I have too many pass- words, and not enough names for you yet.

I am the crow! Sitting on the horse's head! Listen to me, bloated fields! Hark, ye old windmills and lanes! I'm a children's story book! Hé, black wings! Scary rainbow oils! I am the snow! Waiting for the sun to die! Stomping through their lonely hoofprints! Running off like steam at the mouth! Let's eradicate gold and plagiarise the sunset! I am the know! Together with the horse and crow I bang out hits to feed the sparrows! Incendiary! Bonfire whig! I am the element that science hasn't discovered yet! Wham! I am the crow! Sitting on the horse's head! I am the horse! Sit somewhere else instead!

I'm scared. Is that right? Even if it's not, I am. I'm scared the world will soon be underwater, along with us. Not that I would mind being underwater with you, as our scuba tanks nudge lazily and our hope bubbles fly upwards towards the surface but I'm scared of that. What will be left? What's floating up there, in the new space climate, that we've made? Not us, you and me, but in a way yes, we've done it. That's what I'm scared of. What I've done. What that will do. To you, to them. To the sky, full of weird blue bubbles. Yes, I'm scared. I'm scared of men. Their world. Their bright lies dressed as ideas. They truly scare me. Down here, in the black rain, it's hard to hear them but they're here. Oh, yes. I'm scared. I have the fear. A year ago I'd have laughed at myself but now - well, what do you think? Are you scared too? The ice. Here it comes, the ice. I'm scared. The rain that makes night. The train that won...

I'm eating your voice like it's sugar and it is: raw brown sugar on a spoon. The phone is a spoon. Your voice is inside the phone. I'm inside your rainbows, ice. I hear beeps (the time runs out and we're disconnecting again. Outside the weather reporter runs around on cloud nine because here's another sunny day! I told you so. Translation engine, re-kindle these lonely spoons! I'm a hurried shower or a missed train. Some things remain constant: freckles, sunshine and coffee. Others start to blur: time differences, texts and dreams, expressing new beginnings, small bird calls.