Damian Garside

SHORT CUT

used a short cut
to get to the stage

got hopelessly lost
so they proceeded without me

but then I discovered
there was no stage
all the world
might be
a stage
but according to many
worlds theory
the probabilities dictate
there isn’t one really

and so such thing
as arrow of time which
pretty much screws
with
three-act structure

and so
tunneling out of
my death scene
I made a hard
exit left

found myself
in Elysium
or Illyria, or other
seriously comic kingdom

there beneath
stage
and stars sharing
an aquamarine fleecy blanket

gazing at the stars even
as they gazed at us

hoping for a show, a spectacle
even
if you get my drift

if you
catch
my gist

observer effect upon
observer effect

our bodies perhaps forever
doubly entangled

LIONHEART

Sir Richard
wants British children
to pick up
their toy rifles
head East
to attack Russia

wearing his truth-telling,
have-to-take-me-seriously
air ace
blue uniform

could not have
been more lunatic
could not have
been more clear

that military logic
crystal
as absurd a joke
as you ever heard

last thing
you may ever hear.

WITH ME WITHOUT ME

field connects
field differentiates

wheat, chaff
Nature going
thumbs down on
anything empty

and yet I figure
soon as I open my mouth
I might get
taken
for a vacuum

floating through the green grass
cosmic fluctuation there
to persuade me
stuff dropping
stone dead gone
or nicely
popping into existence

like you
did with me

love
out of nowhere

perpetual constant
borrowing but
before the
ledger
opens
brilliant paying back

I lost my ticket
and all that I hoped
we might
share extremely
disentangled

crossing every field
we crossed together long before

I cannot trade,
exchange such loss

TOUCH

touch is
electromagnetic repulsion

like on like
opposite to attraction
which the brain
gives a
sensuous spin

my personal field
which
could not be
more negatively
charged electric

in this
bed tonight
underpinning, over-
lapping everything
extending
across the
Universe
to the brim (chin
to chin)

above and
below
floating relative to each other
forward backward
if not
surface
to surface at least
close in practice as
theory can be

GARBLE

I stutter
I garble
something

leaves my mouth
dies on the air
not quite mine

and now
millennia later
Jacques D
turns me
upside down
says I
should have
written it down
(focusing
on metaphor,
eschewing rhyme)

and,
following that cue exactly,
what was once there garbled
finds form
function structure even
as
dances across the page

and now
internalized, compartmentalized,
I live inside
a structure, penned in
by these
four walls, a
structure of structures

infinitely layered, anything
but solid in
the old
classical sense

though it will
always surely appear so

story of
our entire take on everything
modus vivendi
with the Universe

fairy
tale and fable
treatise, principia, tractatus,

tall
and charming
tale alike
of what we are, always were,
never shalt be, how
we do and
where
we
came from

stardust rotting
under burial soil

so hapless, helpless, truly
marvellous, utterly outstanding,

as yet again
I garble as I try to
do it justice, go for balance
in expression

wrong and misconstrued
despite (because of) every
total global consensus

and here
      you have whispered it,
captured it
   sealed it in a nutshell
more perfectly than all that I
by very name
and definition
             could ever get
within
striking distance
          ever dying just short
of having achieved

IF ONLY

if only you
could explore
my consciousness

chat with
the best angels of my nature

inner demons, virtual
particles

bring to resolution all
those deep schisms
final polarities

find the exact
point of give and take
between
repulsion and desire
love and hatred
what passes for good
and what we know of evil

(the verse unmistakably
thickening
at this point)

if only you
might consent to
explore me
plant flags all over
strip me
via slick treaty

return me
to my reluctant maker
with all
my ancient proverbs burgled
suddenly made
redundant
every angry truth I need to
used to know

WITH MEDUSA

I had tea
with Medusa

on Solaris (was
hell striving to convince
her I had
been invited)

joke being
that he who fathered me
swore I could
never grow man enough
to be turned
into stone

and then,
of course, so much
snake myself that she
could not but
feel comfortable
dialing down the ancient wrath
to what
barely rose above
a frown

and thus enough frissance,
and indeed camaraderie,
to sustain
this sudden
turn to ceremony, leading
to the pouring
and imbibing of (obviously)
milkless green tea

and thus
taking time out to wonder
which of us
might be real, unless both,
or even neither

or as
the planet itself might
elect to determine
constructed exclusively
from
memories
or producr of
the dialogue, dialectic, between
the snakes
in both our systems
and the alien intellect rooted
in Solaris itself

(such a bugbear, and liberation,
how the human
brain
finds itself shaped to
divine and interpret)

NEW SHOE

fit me
like a new shoe

you fit me
like a new shoe

tight shoe
comfy shoe

need
to wear you

walk a mile
in your shoe

meanwhile let’s
swop a while
try
mine
for size
yours for size

each other’s
for size
every step
of this mile

MANCHESTER ON THE MOON

I wanted to
return to Manchester
study its
poetry its
secret geometry

found it
buried beneath
Roman ruins
there on
the dark and
light sides
of the Moon

and digging there
found Victorian wonders
and once great
football stadiums
forgotten tales
of glory
written in
scarlet red or
sky blue

and
relics of the famous
Royal Eye Hospital
where I
was both treated and
(those green goddess
days) stopped
from burning

and the libraries, and galleries,
and theaters and
universities
where I once
studied
or sojourned

and now must excavate
to find if
memory is real, my
history is true.

FIVE MINUTES

five minutes
with you

and you
had rewired everything

can you imagine
what deconstruction,
reconstruction
if I had
spent a
night?

wandering
out from your arms
into the morning light
totally zombified

only for you
to catch me, hold me
whisper
our
new secret code

and watch
my insides
turn
silver
otherwise gold

my eyes
see
through everything

my wings
begin to grow