Author Archives: Damian Garside

AND FIRE

Suddenly the sky faded, went
watercolours

turned blueberry ripple
as
   at that end of the spectrum
they flowed into each other
all those short
wavelength colours
in all their pastel shades

or maybe not suddenly, maybe
I might have been
distracted and missed
the entire
    sequence

the transformation as
it progressed step
by tiny step

and so
     mystified by the allure
of all these blue -mauves
I let my fancy,
                   for a moment,
run away with me

taking
    a serious bet with
higher powers

that Angels on bicycles
would shortly appear

miraculously pedalling
through the lilac clouds

not to
    be likened to, or mistaken for
military drones

loaded to capacity
with all that they need
to turn
   everything moving
to smoke and fire

MOVES

rotten at
chess puzzles

hopeless
at Rubik’s Cube

have such trouble
with all your
straps and fasteners

near clear skies
and an ocean
that is
a millpond

to set sail
and make my
killer move

LET ME

let me
make you
my masterpiece

a love portrait
to bring out
the ecstatic
best in you

painting
to the limit of my artistry
pushing
    the envelope
of my craft

using this simple, humble,
custom-designed brush

LONELY PARK

am here
I am not here

my five cats
assuming I am here

which is
existentially reassuring

sunset on its way
three of the five felines —
Twinkle, Sasha, Panda Buddy —
scouting around me

powerful it is
this shared animal connection
assumption of presence

drums threading their way
through the village
seem to need
to find me

thumping bass
possibly from
the same location, same direction

hard to
get a
fix, judge
the distance

there is
always distance

am here
am not here

fit in
I do not fit in

am loved
I am unloved
am sort of loved perhaps
almost entirely

just sitting here, settled
my little room
getting cleaned
behind me

minding my own business
that business being
scribbling ideas
for the final scene
in “Demolition”
the novel I am writing

the world
turning

observing me minding away
curious about
      the nature of
this final scene I do
believe
will clinch everything

scene in which I sit
pretty much as I am doing
right now

watching the world — if
not my world —
fall to pieces

RED SHIFT

I am
getting
red-shifted

stretched out
and with this insane
elasticity

the laws of physics
laws of human society
changing
  as space time itself changes

as idiots
get stretched out, magnified,
find themselves
in positions of power

owing everything
to entropy, to the twenty
first century
media miracle
of slavish stability

sitting dumbfounded as
it all goes to
shit around them
             yet not
quite dumb enough
to go down
with the ship

easy exoneration
one of the true, necessary
blessings of absolute power

this red
shifting me beyond
the old
degrees of
acceptance this
practice requires

SNOW ON THE SAHARA

snow on the Sahara
crazy
    as it sounds

were once grasslands here
far and wide as can be seen

but these
just niceties of
the catastrophic model

desert encroaching further
scurrying as we speak
through the Sahel

and we
         forgetful children of
near extinction
walking products still
prey to aftershock

but
memory is blessed here
will edit out such nightmares,
annihilate them

leave us
       suddenly sure

  primally certain

boundless of being
never again to lapse
into
   find ourselves
at the mercy
of uncertainty

sifting the signs
to remove
    portents, omens

look only with eyes
that see
     kaleidoscopically

snow
on the Sahara, need
to be there to see

THREE DAYS

he told us he would
rise in three days

we believed
but it was three days of
agony waiting

I wondered why three days
what was so special, so
symbolic, so crucial about
this particular duration

three days after his crucifixion
he did rise, did return

to give hope to the world
for then, if he
had not returned
what
   hope for mankind?
what landscape of nightmare?