Category: The Happy Farang (page 3 of 5)

The Happy Farang is the name of a chapbook I wrote and published at the beginning of the 21st century, signalling my entry into the self-publishing hall of fame.

20 January 2000 / 0 Comments

Oh Blossom

come here blossom fall down
here on my lap & let me
run my fingers through your
delicate pink petals the way
you used to like it in spring-
time when you were all in
bloom oh blossom remember
every season is another reason
to love you tender blossom come
on back over here don’t let
the wind blow your fragrance
in another direction blossom
let me be the lucky little bee
climbing ever so carefully
towards your sweet sticky
centre oh blossom who’d dare
pluck your perfect beauty?
19 January 2000 / 0 Comments

Mountains of Pai

pai bursting through the fog to fly in low 
across the rice paddies dumping its deadly 
load & setting the pond a-tremble with 
aftershocks the size of frogs now skipping 

the mountains of pai untold numbers of 
karen separatists pray fervently for a rain 
cloud to carpet bomb the ponds of burma
we saw one coming over the mountains 

along the surface-tension's wire as quickly 
as it came the raincloud retraces the thirty 
miles back to thailand if only the skies would 
remain blackened by something like smoke ...
18 January 2000 / 0 Comments

Mr Tui

mr tui you'd have to win the "safest driver
in thailand" award you were a man of few
words but smooth driving actions eg your
easy familiarity with the nine hundred &
forty two sharp corners between chiang mai
& pai mr tui you knew when to sound your
horn around a hairpin bend when to change
down to second when to accelerate & swerved
superbly to avoid collapsed road shoulders
but mr tui the one criticism i would have
is that you flicked the windscreen wipers on
& off unnecessarily - it really was raining
quite heavily mr tui & you could have saved
yourself the trouble by leaving them on for
the entire trip - record time nevertheless :
2 hrs 56 mins start to finish khob khun khrap
17 January 2000 / 0 Comments

Emaciated Buddha

fireworks rupture the temple on the hill’s
serenity the interior’s panorama suffocated
by a buddhist vision of hell flavoured with
more than a dash of hindu horror – here’s
a massacre of men & women sawn in half
by grinning & willing fellow men & women
here’s old buddha himself count his ribs
this is before he discovers the middle
path still there are thousands of hungry
children in the buddhist world – more than
a thousand monks & nuns forced to cross
the burmese border in search of alms –
they are all still hungry – count their ribs
16 January 2000 / 0 Comments

The Boys on Thanon Lim Khong

armed with their hideouts & slingshots
& smiles they gather at nightfall beside
a rocky river road to compete in monied
contests dodge tuk-tuks & flurries of
laughter now pulling the notes from their
pockets & placing them on the road’s river
brown & then throwing their thongs from
line-marks towards jackpots of fluttering
notes /see the worn old thongs skim! &
the bigger boys win but the stream of lao
notes stutters onwards it’s 8 in the pm &
time to go home now everybody’s happy
& one lucky boy’s an instant millionaire …
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This is [d/dn], the home of David Prater, a writer and editor currently living in the third person.

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