the home page of david prater

Beyond the firewall, Thetes a-drilling. Scintillation, precise as tubes. Spot flares bask the gamma rays in fog. What use is a snow pistol? My electronic ink freezes the display. My read-outs betray a breeze. I wheeze � in & out � relieved & finally on Mars.

it will not go away driving in a car kissing your lover goodbye smell it in the air feel it in your lungs shave off all of your hair & say �goodbye this time coz i�m breathing the flicker of a breeze i see it in your eyes its time to go away were coming into spring� kissed your lover goodbye you�ll taste �the difference is i�m not a child� no nicotine i an no gst i oh no nicotine angst yes I know nicotine angst �

only these three things can make me cry images of deaf children hearing for the first time (the first word: mother) a look of utter joy most of us cannot remember a memory of my mother bringing me hot chocolate and a biscuit she drops the tray that one makes me cry small families with no money and those looks in a little one's eyes battered and bludgeoned by capital somehow even these two lovers managed to hold hands to these i can now add the fourth trigger unhappy water puppets in hanoi a laughing boy spits water out of his mouth though one-dimensional how could i fail to feel sorry for him and you my love we have a million reasons to cry our impending departures weigh heavily on your eyes just close them how it will be all right we are together now & i can hear your baby & her looks of stunned surprise so that's what the word for you sounds like all along there has been no need to utter single syllables old times though it's hard laugh at everyone else only ...

given the unenviable task of delivering mail in a cantonese walled city charged with entropy & chaos criss-crossing its aerial corridors conduits they call them linked towers that change positions days how the garbage piles up forming strata to be studied by future archaeologists � he can never decipher the old city's next move & remains astounded by the most innocuous envelope's habit of finding a home scratching out addresses or the deceased another day a map to discard notice how randomness thrives within the most carefully chosen boundaries first published in my debut collection, "The Happy Farang" (2000)

the human ear is a barrier between us & the world of sound once its lost then we have no need to tell birds apart in effect eternal sounds erased an inverted dome the brain sets in like a permaculture pond sucks the earth it can hear your blood & your heart's a rising crescendo of comepressed air the syringe of wax stuck inside there to make plugs that keep the oceans out sharp pincers ripping a dried glob cram a cotton bud or ball then gauze crackle a scabs drum goes pop release pressure falls barometers beneath hiss & spin about no sounds come out lying flat in that recovery room i felt brittle eardrums now lanced in a dumb zone shielding eyes from sounds of a mime recurring thatched straw piles of mats slats improbably white rooms hearing the bright lights i cried out at no-one listening hearing myself talking inside while making out that single external sound a code memory stacked like the crackle of a soft page at your ear like thirty ta...

if velo wears a cardboard crown then surely vera appears draped in green. her streets lean lovingly into nature strips, storm drains and kerbs. through electric streets traffic whirs as through a blender, anti-clockwise, in unsprawled packets. and the ever insisting mosquito, its visa due to expire momentarily then mysteriously validated, like a light switch turned on and then off. the corner's perspective affords an uninterrupted miasma of melaleukas, dreaming the next layer of sky. vera the mosquito virus, planes of insistence, blood for eggs. wings like torn curtains, legs a spangle of sticks above a fireplace, teepee supports, the trail of my breath steps on which she climbs, seeking skin hosts. vera, city of the guarded woman behind electricity grids. skin, the steps on which shadows climb seeking fruit and the drip's amnesia. erotic phone cards and the leopard's skin pass outs, shingles on a sparsely-lit shore, etcetera of the intact glycerine dawn. vera the night p...

stripes of dry land trapped beneath a pale halogen daymurk, the cities of pau teem with anchors of all persuasions, latching onto protruding rusted vehicle parts and the hind treads of mopeds, vine-like and all-pervasive, the innards of the sea's communication channels clamped fast to a series of dry wharves and makeshift station platforms, interconnecting with the steel rain. pau station mainline midway between palmerston sprawl and the nominal city, terminus of the now-extinct east-west line, pigmented sunshades and the abundance of tarpaulins, corrugated iron huts and the humanity of a hawker at the invisible entrance. one's only reminder a faint nagging at consciousness, feeding straight into the cerebral cortex, its dreams. snapshot memory of a shadow that was missing, when you looked down that street and saw instead a long, empty plane perpendicular, beyond it the rustling of animated leaves. pau is rearriving and leaving simultaneously, climbing overpasses to nowhere, ...