Author Archives: Damian Garside

YOUR TRUTH

YOUR TRUTH

for so long
I swore by your truth

you must
have laughed

saw
me coming

led me
by the nose

and as totally
misleading narratives go
yours was a
beauty

reality, truth,
totally flipped
on its head

and what power
you now marshal
what wicked schemes
imaginations
     you do recruit

to save
that lie (fountain
of ever fabrication
that flowed their after)

your
    divine line

and here, frankly, I must
confess I am
        terminally disappointed
            

LATER

LATER

we have
to protect you
it is our
legal right

our supreme duty
your sacred obligation
to allow
   us to do what we
need to do
for you

hate speech
will hurt you horribly
break you, destroy
                        you
and so
a freedom
    we cannot possibly allow

can’t let it
get to you, consume you

whatever it takes
to protect you

even if we have to
blow your brains out
at point blank range

these the lengths
we prepared to go
                           you
may thank us later

PENMAN

PENMAN

saw those old school
photos yet once more

(was looking for something
relevant
and they just
fell down)

so angelic that face and
mop of blonde curls

would seem to have
“grows up to become
cruel spree-killer
written
     all over him”

so easy to strip, lock and
load an automatic weapon
after careful study
(nose buried
         in that manual)

so much harder a labour
filling basket after basket
with failute, screwed
up paper

battling the odds
to pen a poem

M (for MISTAKEN)

M (for MISTAKEN)

one of us
be destined to
pop first

skin getting thin thin thin
under oxygen helium
pressure
    way to go
at last birthday

or
aiming for the Heavens
aspiring
    for it all
golden ring atop
that pole

start to channel
the music of the spheres
as giddy we stretch
to embrace
the stratosphere

but here again
     skin to thin and
little big bang
be our evaporation

Oh I saw that film
the red balloon

cried like a child
because I was one

caught betwixt and between
a life that has been loneliness

a death that is nothing
nothingness
            unless
I am totally mistaken

STUCK

STUCK

stuck a mirror
on the wall

opposite
the shelves
containing
my kingly
horror collection

clown
down the drain
Jack so dull
when the words
not flowing

wonder
     what bricked up
behind these booksp
(technically closet
skeleton can
never
read
its reflection)

mirroring these spines
such a blessing
              that when I die
they
   will not need
to search
to find whereupon
           read

scare themselves
                to death