Author Archives: Damian Garside

ON THE RIGHT SIDE

ON THE RIGHT SIDE

and so, Peter, we hear
you hauled ass to the Vaticanto confer with the other Peter,
or at least his current avatar

saw you heading to the basilica
swallowing as much incense
smoke as I, as
humble mortal,
would not have thought possible

strange, because it
is thermonuclear war you
worship not
anything low grade chemical

all that death and ovlivion
untold suffering
      exactly believed to
be the engine
of history and
will of God

concern for light and humanity
the stuff of the anti Christ.
province of the Devil

thanks to you
    (yes i feel I really must
thank you)

I know now with perfect clarity
exactly where I stand,
which
     book, which
allegory
tells me
the truth about
the side I am on.


FULL ON SMART SURREAL

FULL ON SMART SURREAL

Don’t have to look far
to find my demon

suddenly across the canyon
strange lyrics and novel tunes

out of nowhere
without warning
springing up out
of the ground
shooting stars and
wonder icons

something in the air
crazy chemistry at work

but
   what we thought
a revolution was nothing
but a script, a
screenplay, an orchestrated
operation

set up
to be demolished, vaporize
before our eyes

and we too Siren songed too
fractured to the core
to march
          to that huge house
rearrange more
than just
the furniture

so much about this
so ultra psyops
psychedelic

so Helter Skelter all fall
down and all die young
you
    did
against the odds
you cool mushrooms

my heroes
            now so of
a sudden
miles down river

a whole generation, my
generation
played,
       duped
taken in

so
   beautiful
a conspiracy

none ever so
full on smart surreal 

my demon
     in agreement

DARK POEM

DARK POEM

some dark poetry
here for you

brooding, sinister:
I wrote it with
my left hand

stretching everything,
present company included,
beyond prior limits

this being a time
for bleak material
without parallel
beyond
comparison,
like none other

would have
clinched the deal
if
   desperate to leave you
flooded by a deluge
of dark insight

I had been able to expand
everything, stretch
things out
to an
ultimate dead end

leaving you with
a parting comment that
could not
be more
conclusive, ultimate,
horribly definitive

HOW

HOW

how may I awaken
when still locked
into the dream
that is
beautiful death

dreaming my love
for you
loving
the dream of you?

we touch, we consume,
believe as souls
we have become
one, are
now tethered together

but
    where to
after this ecstasy, our
bodies fulfilled, spirits
unable
to soar
    too reticent
to fly

towards, away from,
all that we believe we
know, all that we
know
   we believe we require?

CHILDREN OF OUR TIME

CHILDREN OF OUR TIME
“Like the Grateful Dead”
              “HAIR” (1979)

Children of our time
that time
             run its course
we
run our course (well,
almost)

but not before
we made our mark,
         went discovering, opened
up, had our fun
had the hair
              (mine all
gone)

whatever it was
    love, poetry, sex, politics,
community, cosmos, peace,
dope (and more
love
wherever possible)

we tried to
rock with it, be like stars,

Children of our time, whatever
they say today
(so fallen
     from grace flat on
their faces)

nothing like us
they just don’t make
                  our like
anymore.

SUDDENLY SOVIET

SUDDENLY SOVIET

suddenly one morning
woke up transformed
no old
nostalgia for
Cold War days
but fully newborn
Soviet

ready to
assume my place
as Commissar, apparatchik, or
on the sly, samizdat
publishing
poetic
dissident

that the West
would fete, and defend
and love

until
    Glasnost days and
the walls all fell

at which 
(so quick
to change their mighty tune)
suddenly

they
didn’t

NOT DRINKING THE CURRENT COOL-AID

NOT DRINKING THE
CURRENT KOOL-AID

was drinking
some Nazi Germany
orange soda drink

fantasizing a la
the high castle science fiction alternate history
Californian imagination
of Mr K Dick

easier to
drink Fanta than
chew on the nose cone
of a V2 revenge
weapon, of doodle bug

physically
      impossible, also
politically incorrect if
not total verboten

which
     nevertheless, does
suggest an interesting point
of entry
from which to
launch into a Gravity’s Rainbow
type World War two
darkly surreal
satirical fantasy

now more than ever
apt for our age

and yet
    as for that war, its
truth (if such a thing)

after so many remakes,
hand-held camera moments
of Normandy carnage,
historical revisits,
re-
interpretations

have any
clear (not constantly
shifting) sensible
appraisal of
what it
      meant (and means).

for
  if yesterday
is different era

must be
ancient history, dawn
of man we
are talking
about here

tickling my palatte
these soda bubbles
         not gas
in a canister
produced to required
specifications by
FARBEN I. G.