Author Archives: Damian Garside

CERTAINTY

CERTAINTY

river
sea

enough water there
to slowly
slowly wash
away
hatred

one drop at
a time

while still praying
for the Holy chaos
of a love
tidal wave, a
peace tsunami

who can tell us
what is impossible, when
barriers, boundaries
washed away

all set in atithesus
to this
great poem
of being

forget itself,
     cease to remember

as thing so fiercely sure
of its own identity

take
    leap of faith

no longer demand
its own certainty

between
the river and the sea

LIGHT OF DAY(VID)

LIGHT OF DAY(VID)

Hey StarMan

if Creation were
a Burroughs cut-up

what would it look like?
how would
it read? How
now brown cow

short of
spiders on Mars
how would
it sound?

imagine you carefully cutting
up every conceivable world
down
   to the size
of subatomic particles

taking great care
to mash them together
perfectly
     at random

see
   what we have

whether it will survive
the light of day.

TWO POEMS (FLOOD; LUMINE)

FLOOD

poetry should
come
in flood

to be
any good

he said, this
bar room
brawler, boozer
of the word
            did

and who am I
to pick
   a fight with him

(what kind of
Charlie would I then be?)

and truth be told
hate the very
thought of once
more into
the rewriting, yet
more drafting

the thing with a mind to
resist, go
   where it secretly insists,
be the
very soul
     of entropy

and here we are
draft five, six, eight
or seven

express elevator down to Hell
it feels, no
             stairwell to
                            melodic heaven

fast and furious
        brain to paper

nothing lost
       perfect tbirty seconds

and me, slaving away to
                                  be
contrapuntal, speak
counter-
    argument

wondering, dear reader,
dear reader

how so many of you
                 so so quick
to come
      to snap judgement

make slick quick poetic love
to the smokey
     soul of this man

who would not have
you touch the poem

until it
    scresms at you

insisting
     on birth
insisting on life

        life on the line
down with an offer you
dare not refuse

****

LUMINE

you wound me
up like
a clockword

gave me
an extra turn

then pushed
me to the limit

harder a taskmastee
more cruel
in your tutelage
than Tarantino’s Pai Mei

but when
    we broke that limit
my limit

brought me back
from a death

that bird sang a song
sweet fluting lyric that

touched
     the firmament

DARKER TURN

DARKER TURN

when I die
condense all
I was
and now am

into a love poen
single, short, to the point

thing of night and dream
and moment when
all our darkness
all that
we are
    of  darkness
thrives, comes alive

knows
the bliss
    of a star

when I die
turn me into
a love poem

short
and to the point
         nothing special
of diamond, golden

   thing in the heavens
like Romeo’s heart
                      speaking plainly

not
    (as Juliet did envision)
beautifully scattered

and then
    if I am read

(if you
are the one to read)

put
    what did, what was

into some
forever parenthesis

just to say, remind me,
that I am
           thing of absence,
thing of
the darkness now

this
    small, petty life that
writes

being so
preoccupied with what it says
                                           what said

took a
      sweeter, darker turn