Damian Garside

JOSEPHINE

Josephine
I do not ask for your
cheetah
or your
anaconda

just let me
unpeel one two
three all
these dancing bananas

all eyes on you
as you mesmerize
me watching an actress
enact
your story

the patrons, and yes
even the Gestapo
in the world
of the solidly real

but, alas!, not one
from that dream-factory
fairy-tale land
you managed
to scramble away from

the sky
is the limit

but you are what you are
if you be
black or
brown (forever down)

Oh to be part of
if not your rainbow tribe
at least
your menagerie

or have some role
some task
that might
continue your legacy

touchstone for the power
of our human drive
to surpass ourselves

irrefutable argument
that we are indeed all one

OUT OF THE CORNER OF MY LEFT EYE

OUT OF THE CORNER
OF MY LEFT EYE

I am such a soft
precious revolutionary

I smother demons
(my own included)
with an exquisite pillow
where
it might well
prove impossible
to integrate them

put them on paper
place them before
the great
arbiters of
civilized society

in no way
a scion or off-
spring of Comrade
Vladimir Mayakovsky

whom
I espy, out of
the corner of my left eye,
flinging a Louis XIV chair
through a crystal
clear
window of
The Winter Palace

ISLAND

the island
appeared out of
nowhere

popped up
all of a sudden
before
pur very eyes

where we no longer
thought
an island
was possible

no longer
had any faith
in islands
a single shred
of belief

and yet
here it is
here it is indeed

Joanie’s stardust,
golden garden island
we have
to get back to
(mpre music,
more fun
way better
than Shakespeare’s)

where artist Ai Weiwei
can come fix the landscape
make everything painterly
using best
aesthetic primciples

a new Romer
a new Troy
a new Aeneas

an island
where we
can redo
history

miss
the terrible time
to found them

bombets
sent to destroy it
simply
wished
out of the sky

islsnd
rushing towards you
at the speed of light

EMPTY

Eden is empty

frozen over
or overgrown

no one comes
to clean up, ckear weeds,
pick up the garbage

here we
must consult with
the biologists, philosophers,
theologians
have coffee or a beer
with Neil deGrasse Tyson

to puzzle through the impact
of our human departure
on this now, to all
intents and purposes,
alien world

and whether, riff on
flower unseen meme,
the colours, the odours,
the sounds
very tactile feel of
the place
might exist
in our absence

forever persist
in their wondrous,
fabulous intensity

or has it
all just freeze-framed
forever capturing
the tragedy of
our great catastrophic moment

that coming to a consciousness
so acute we
no longer have hope
of the real.

NIBBLE

nibble
nibble
nibble

cit the wrong wire
armed the system
the count down

going
crazy

we both doomed
whatever explosion
between us

whatever
volcano
about to
erupt

magma
upon magma
superhot caldera

no hope for us now
started with a nibble
a single, fatal
total nibble

here is a desire
unleashed

devourimg
everything in its path

but from
the perspective of
Truth

that stuff
in the Bible
that thing
in Plato

it looks
a bit
different

here every
lying journalist
should be
shot
or hanged

along with
every lying
politician

made to
pay back for
the death and
misery
their lies create

the cost of the rope
the price of the bullet

I myself am prepared to negotiate

CUT

a pixie cut
does not
make you
a pixie

being called
Rose does not
turn you
into a
rose

being cut
to the bone
does not make you
any less
a person

but your death
dear Juliet,,,

cut to
your body wrapped
around the body
of your Romeo

elevates you into
a realm where
tragedy elevates the world
beyond our
poor
ordinary being
.

THUS

cut and paste
cut and paste

photocopy the copy of the copy
how fuzzy and blurred
can the world
of your dream
you
new reality
actually become

no social political problem
that cannot be fixed

a jigsaw puzzle
where you
are a
piece whose
place is determined

from moment
of conception
to point
of delivery

you are product
and producer
construct and
consumer
endless cycles
within cycles

understand
accept
this is the picture
this is how
it captures

all
totalled and
accounted for
reshaped and
refigured, all
change
incidental

the system persists
persistence its meaning
we
are creatures of
stasis
continued continuity

there
is no
final, no beginning
no ultimate

this has it been
will it be

it has always been thus

Author Archives: Damian Garside