Damian Garside

TO SHAKESPEARE’S WOODS

SELFLESS

I wanted
to leave selfless

but there
was the fruit
half-eaten
at my feet

and there was
the serpent
I was already
starting
to morph into

and there were the skyscrapers
and Tarot towers plunging upwards
about to
dominate the skyline

and there was Eve
dark with all
her fresh mythology

against which no option
but to delve downwards
mine
that treasure

soar with the schene
of things now aspiring
beyond the sky
to
name the stars
as they
thus multiplied

on route to our conquest
of the heavens.

ALICE UNDERGROWTH

Lasker
Capablanca
Fischer

it’s a grid for turning mind
into machine

a lattice that reads
like a labyrinth

fair enough
when I dream chess I am
deep within the Alice undergrowth

dee meets dum and
it is internecine war
because they are genetically
divided
by the colour of
their suits

inside this tiny teapot
the technicolour inner
world of many
a world champion

and there
the kettle they got to
run the show

down in that undergrowth
there are the pieces
nut none have as yet
evolved
aa far as basic
moves are concerned

aa yet no leopard crawl, crab
scuttle or anything vaguely
approaching
snakes and ladders serpent
swallow
and slither

is chess
not the perfect practice
wrapped in a nutshell
for your
average ambush predator

love that phrase, but
why Oh why
when I go charging from
square to
square across rank down
file liks
Napoleon at Austerlitz

does it always escape me;
must I always
fail to remember it?

ZOMBIE

thought it waa
a zombie
but it was
the Muse
of poetry

would trade
me inspiration for
best part of my brain

thought it must
be a vampire
but it was
my most
cultivated reader

a gallon of best
universal donor special
for what
sounds like sincere praise

INCIDENTAL

farm told me
(all the leaves, plants, creatures)
we not
integral
we incidental

not the place to
which all road
and rail leads
like we eternal
station central

no
here where green
proclaims its domain,
its power so
insistent

may flash
a hint, a glimpse,
of that
we forsook, place
we abandoned,
upped
and right out left

a paradise, albeit the odd
viper eyeing me out there,
studded with
the occasional ambush predators

HEAVENLY

(MORE) FOOL YOU

may
seem like
think me
the fool

but
it just
a ruse

got so
much danger
about me
got to
travel incognito

or shapeshift
too and fro
back
and forward

in the blink
of am eye

one second you
canoodling
with tje Queen
of Cups;

the next
King of Swords
got sabre swishing
an imch from
your eye

but no fear
no worries, not
here
to let you die

when can do
deepet damage
deploy
more potent powers

ride
like death across your
inner landscape

unhinging all those
towers that

so
need to fall

for the good of us all
Sun card, Star card
and the
World

hete in choir
arcana of consensus

CEILING

nothing Sistine
about my ceiling

just plain off-white,
not sure whether
the paint they used
would count
as matt
or gloss

tradesman’s work, not
a hint here of Renaissance genius

and then the light fitting
hard to see a noted design style
at play here

and this the ceiling
through which
my soul must no doubt
travel to meet
my God

for which I believe
it will have to serve,
will serve well

staring at the ceiling
as night descends
just
a trick of the light all

that it might take
to set me off

soaring
no g force attendant on
this acceleration

all just
practice
to
test my engines
fins and wings

missile myself mentally
running through all
that is
required

practice making perfect
as every evening at dusk
I put
myself through the motions

prepare
for the real thing with
every single
imaginary run

Author Archives: Damian Garside