the home page of david prater

Well, there have been some big changes in Daveyland since I arrived back home. One of these has been the strange process of becoming reacquainted with friends and family, after a long period overseas. It's weird. Everyone's exactly the same. I'm exactly the same. Australia is exactly the same. Except, different. Perhaps I should have expected this. What's perhaps even weirder is the process of preparing for a spoken word gig, my first in a long time (unless you count the essential battiness that was my reading for the Korean Modern Poets Association ). Yikes! This gig will be held tomorrow night at Babble , Melbourne's (heck, Australasia's) premier spoken word event, and I'm not just saying that coz I owe host Mr Sean M. Whelan aka Dr Feelgood a favour or two. Okay, that's the only reason I'm saying it. For you superfreaks in Melbourne, I urge you to come on down and support this great tradition. Expect the unexplainable. Here's the juice: 

For all the doubters who cast nasturtiums on my ability to grow a beard , new evidence has emerged in the form of archival photos and painful memories. Please, consider these first impressions of beard, taken whilst freezing my arse off in Sapporo, Japan. Given my albino skin colour, the presence of bed-hair in these shots and the location of the "shoot" inside a dormitory room in a hostel, I think it's fair to say that my beard-modelling career is officially dead in the water.

i got mao's text around eight - i was sitting in some dingy bar watching boxers spar on the tv i'll be late don't wait for me so i ordered some more wasabi peas & massaged my stiff knees dreamily it's always like this i think because mao's the one who's always late (mentioning something about make-up or a facelift in a mausoleum somewhere they're probably touching him up as we speak (friday night in beijing was not quite what i expected it to be despite what the old fortune teller told me about patience being the key to my future life still i can't help wondering what's keeping him - maybe the rain, or a lost taxi? more beer recharge my battery witnessing scuffles by the door more & more peasants turned artists swarm for stools & drink until finally (finally!) there's a buzz by the window & his big moon face floating past i shout mao! mate! & his head swivels & i feel like the devil drinking faust i make way for t

thunderheads line up across the bay as airbirds wait their turn to taxi pulses of energy enter these bodies coming out the other side breathing prevaricating at the petrol station as the passers-by smoked cigarettes the atmosphere was on orange alert but the radios played old gangajang humidity creeps through the gardens as hummingbirds get the final call jasmine supplies dangerously low - tearing off every printed forecast barometric disasters wait to happen as a circling isobar drinks its fill outside even the planetarium wavers & the marathon runners begin to melt six o'clock shadows on a newsreader as the tickertape parade lingers on the potentially explosive air pocket charged like a yearning peace rocket

Most of these poems were written during my time in Korea and Japan, September 2005 to January 2006. Poems marked with an asterisk are located on the PC Bangs blog , as are the poems from my Imaginary Cities project. Channel 15* No News Is Good* 50/49* Makkolli Moon* Jetlag World* Haiku* Mokochukcha* Snow Grocer* Back To the Tourist III* Sound of Vitality* The Hanok Fields* Soju Glacier* Quinton Your Century White Space Hoju Bihang-gi Trans Delete Forever 1001 Nights Beetle 3 Run Visa Run The Bridge of Hesitation Silence Car snow seas swan Lonely Planet Morgenland Saihou Jodo Nagasaki Crows Potentially Explosive Atmosphere Imaginary Mao Renga Jet Moon Karappo vs Okesutura

These poems were all written while travelling through the USA and Europe in July and August 2005. Sarah's travel blog provides some contextual writing and photos. Homesick Alone In An Airport Tintin & the Death Star Kunst-Wet Phone the Sky Abendland Another Death Star Landschaft (Mit Gerhard Richter) Marijuana (In My Mind) Baudelaire in Bruxelles Dachau Unter Dem Radar Marienbr�cke Teenage Mutant Ninja Führer A Clockwork Poem D�rer: Innsbruck 2005 Craptastica Do Not Feed the Tourists Route 666 Travelling Types In the Ljubljana Rain We Were Really Here Ethnographic Relationship City Käthy Kruse Pink City Interface District Split 7" "Summer In Sipan" Abandoned Youth Camp Martello Tower Pigtails Le Tan Jihad (Ultra Mild) Citadels & Crosses Mit Gas! The Two Faces of Zlatyu Boyadziev Death In Dubrovnik Subterrannean Yellowcake Alien Stari Most Goražde Fast Flowing Rivers Infa Riot It's A Mountain Macho: Tour Be

"It          remains possible to believe there was          nothing anyone could do about the          melted bottles, burnt coins etc ... as for the corpses          lying in the streets and wreckage of          Nagasaki, we tend to forget how the          body resists history; we pretend that Koreans          look different, or that          victims are all the same, even when they remained          silent, we could hear their voices, scattered          across the unbelievably blue sky, hanging in          trees, or from twisted crosses, populating the          horror invisibly, keeping time, giving ruins          a human aspect, a curtain of dead flesh longer          than a shroud, sadder than          silent bells, more dignified than any          surrender, never to be buried like the others.       One          day we shall know their names, the reason          for their being there, that morning. Death is          just another criminal, an adversary that          doe

who will carry me to saihou jodo* what to bring there what to wear?    take me to the top of a mountain    leave something behind to forget who`ll build another kogetsudai+ fire my body at the silvery moon?    leave something behind to forget    falling into orbit & spinning space who`ll throw me into ginshadan~ drown all my past in the wet sand?    falling into orbit & spinning space    shutting my eyes in the darkness who will carry me to saihou jodo* what to bring there what to wear?    shutting my eyes in the darkness        take me to the top of a mountain * paradise mountain in the west + platform towards the moon ~ silver sand sea [silver pavilion, kyoto]

breaks it down & pulls it out & blows up with a sonic whoo-hoo! boy wheelbarrow atlas pines & the guru josh (splat matter terminal bohos & sprinting programmes colossal frenetic spaced-out & sane like a metaphor for similes or a goo-shaved belt-buckle international collateral dam age of aquarius you confused with "hair" tied back in a pony-trail sideways babe don`t look back be proud to attack the rhyme of riots the wide black timelines street crimes they won`t ever mention boing! all your money`s gone draining balanced like an empty tightrope wire between pure space & future weeds on introductory collision courses solemn as a broken bird at a garage sale later dudes wash their stares mixing greys & antiseptic whites (while translation whales transmit comic rays onto silver burritos bloc party & a new iprequel stop it there reverse & shadow hands abendland go betweens morgenland now appearing on yesterday`s maps

There`s a train that`s stopped moving, in the middle of Hokkaido, in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter. The sound of a thousand snores, a thousand sleepy sighs. The rumble of a passing train. The one the driver`s waiting for. There`s a train that`s stopped moving but any minute now it`ll tug at its carriages, jerk into motion, shudder into being. No one wakes up. The girl in the smoking area crouches over the table, asleep, a full ashtray next to her head. Icy wastes. There`s a train bound for nowhere or the bottom of the ocean, diving into a tunnel that tries to cut a dragon`s head in two. Maybe outside the windows, beyond the steamed glass, there`s a community of future humans with gills staring at the train. There`s a train going through a tunnel that never ends and the farther it travels the harder it is to reach, to hear. The lights are all still on but the air in the carriages is full of bubbles. How to remain forever frozen, underwater. There`s a train with n

That is the question I have been asking myself for the past ten days here in Japan, where I have given into the temptation to let my facial hair grow, partly as a form of self-amusement and partly because it`s something I like to try out every now and then, in the hope that I can pull it off. The results have been less than overwhelming: whenever I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror it either simply looks dirty or else I don`t recognise myself. After my brief brush with looking like Steve Winwood , you`d think I would have learnt my lesson but no - I ended up looking like Peter Hook from New Order. And I never did feel comfortable with the idea of a member of a so-called pop group sporting a beard. Actually, now I think about it, I began to look like Jason Donovan in the ABC medical drama MDA . The issue came to a head for me this morning when I sat down and thought about how this beard will look to my friends and family when I get home. Long ago, in my foolish youth, I tried t

Snow globules hanging from the trees, like silvery pollen or the larvae of worms. Rice fields smothered by six months of snow, their feeder canals obliterated, the shallow stream a black slit in the hollow. Houses dwarfed by their new snow skins, train stations drowning beneath the sky`s white tears. More snow than I have ever seen in my life. Seas coloured metallic grey and gun barrel blue, heaving and sludge. Water befuddled by the frozen wastes that feed it, concrete storm buttresses the colour of the disappeared sands. Tiny harbours and breakwaters holding several frozen boats. Views across gigantic bays and technical seas, towards mountains of snow coloured like oceans, rising. Swan so white its feathers are like blasted snow, bobbing in the swell near the storm water outlet. Birds so elegant in the water they are the animal kingdom`s icebergs. Treacherous on land, rearing up to strike the feeding hands. A diorama of peace, just there in the freezing water, a family of swans s

i was born in a silence car with only her heartbeat for a drum no ringing bells or false alarms i swam through the day`s eclipses i was born in a silence car but the sounds infected my tiny ears & the world gushed into that tiny space where first i breathed and lived i was born in a silence car underneath the surface of where we are connected to the earth by sonic rays shuddering like an unlit ghost i was born in a silence car it slowly revolves around this star one day i`ll return to cosmic air and the radiant clang of oblivion