Damian Garside

EARLIER TODAY

read my poem
read my flow
saw it
go

slow; fast-slow

slower, faster
than Andrew Marvell’s
“To His Coy Mistress”

pored over, read until
it glowed
became cataclysmic

went Krakatoa, erupted
like Vesuvius

as if just
to prove
you ain’t never read
a poem like this before

read
you got
you to read me
like textually can
be nothing
beyond
this logically

like we wake tomorrow
only to realize
there
is no tomorrow
wrong
on all counts
when we thought there could be

a fit ending
I might add

for this
insurpassable dovetailing
of poem and writer
writer
and reader

flush menage a trois
of everything
fitting
beyond perfectly

AND SO (THE DEATH OF RIMBAUD)

and so,
a candle
burns quicker

when fed
oxygen and absinthe

the latter best
not from a drip
or medicine dropper

if if is
essential
to preserve the mythology
of most favored
of fan favourite
precocious outlaw

Oh yes,
let us take a poll
on this side
those who
might suspect
the drunken boat sank
on this
those who would
steadfastly argue
it is there if you
would care
to search
for it
safe at its Seine mooring

but you yourself
were a veritable personification
of resistance to tethering

and now
no longer with us
bond boundaries and bindings
do appear everywhere

the colours of the vowels
have lost their
surreal charm along
with
former deep saturation

we
should take a plebiscite
to see if
in this impoverishment
poetry
might survive

and you so
word-
agile reduced to
a meme expanded
to an
entire semiotics

stuck in
some library
every
library

where they
got you to behave
taught you to dance

their dance
nuzzle and fawn

FRAME

am at a distance
am

at an acute disadvantage

wish I could steadicom
my eyes go
rack focus

crane shot floating
over and above

give you the one-take
tracking shot of
my every life moment

diegetic sound being
the beastly bustling buzz
and freaking
hubbub of
technologized time

for which screetch of
whatever wheels will serve
as slick
sufficient synonym

and here
we cut to

me at fast food joint (fabulous
community)

writing fast I can
as if looming shadow of
terminal extinction event

thing dipping
into Earth’s atmosphere
to turn
up the temperature
eat all that
luscious oxygen

gulping us
down
with it

as in
so many disaster flicks has
already gone
mega-cliche

damning any hope of that
movie that
heavenly moment
of moments

where you and
I playing
antagonists as ever

find ourselves in
and on
camera

perfect in
same frame

IN THE FAIRY TALE

no the little boy
in the fairy tale,

didn’t stop the world
screaming the bare truth
the nakedness
of a beloved
Emperor
we had no wish to hear

no he screamed
like a Stuka releasing its bomb

that the Emperor
is riddled with holes
inside and out

and there we were
scales falling
from our eyes
desperate
to stick them back

hear
the old nursery
rhymes again

sweet corporate censored
rap

BALLROOM (revised version)

BALLROOM

we Brits (was once Brit)
two centuries ago
torched
your White House

but now
the special relationship
all is forgiven
all is
forgotten

and now, anyway, you
hard at work
knocking it down
(Donald confesses to
loving that sound)

but soon
to be revised, restored,
resurrected
into a glorious ballroom,
divinely beautiful
fit not
just for a King
but for a god

place
for the elite
to meet
meat of the elite

one thing
   about the true elite
will swear
to the media, to all
who might listen.
they are,
so bog
ordinary
      which terrible taste
kind of confirms
that they are
and here
     beneath this gloss
something exquisitely shabby

yet be
that as it may
everyone
will
fall over themselves
to be
first
to proclaim it a people’s palace,

open
to all
and sundry just
so long
as they be corporate, so
long as they bank billions

fantastic fever dream structure
that simply
pulls out all the stops

promises to give you
space to
express yourself to
trip the light
fantastic
waltz, tango, whiskey, Charlie,
delta

Lightnings, Eagles, Tomcats,
Apaches

whatever your wings
enough floor here to park on

rivalling
the USS Enterprise for
deck
to take off and land

returning from bombing runs
on incalcitrant blue cities
the governance
of America
not
leaving to chance

that no one
will
dance
out of step
play
different tune,

mess
with the waltz

rewrite
the text of this sacred script

that gave
us the blueprint for
this insatiable dream

and in the realization
of which

because money isn’t real
you need so much of it

EASY

poetry is easy
you
just write it
and there it be
it is there

look at these
lines for example
nothing here
of note
what
could be easier?

everything open
totally transparent

complete absence
of the overly complicated,
tricky metaphor
hint
of theory

stuff that might
mask, deflect, expose,
distract,
misdirect

present you
with who knows what
confusion, dissonance
about
the nature of
your world, the world,
and who in this
world
in fact you
thought
you really are

get you to stay
from what you
know
to be true

were
told to be true
in heart and
soul
battle of
hearts and minds along
strictest of lines

between which
should not read

so easy to
read these lines

miss yourself
falling between them

there

you

have always been
there it lies

MY LECTURE ON SATIRE

I was lecturing on satire
fancying myself
up on the stage
behind the podium

but
then

inexplicably
began to satirize myself

tear strips off
launch a monstrous attack
bombard with
vicious jokes about
my total lack of ability
limited intelligence

which I
would share with you

were it not
so viciously brilliant
beyond your comprehension
way outside
your linguistic abilities

far above
your mere mortal
everyday pay grade

OCEAN

we put

our heads
together

the outside of my brain
pooling its content

with the
outside of yours

so much outside
so much inside

beginnings

of an ocean

OH, PLEASE BOT ANOTHER 3I ATLAS POEM

OH PLEASE, NOT ANOTHER 3I ATLAS POEM

how big is this cosmos?

how meaningful?
how much information

Professors Shannon and Weaver
holding up speaking tubes
and ear trumpets
to catch
the galactic drift

no feedback
unless no rock bands anywhere
amongst the intelligent planets

maybe
the folk up there
like country

all all too Puritan
when it comes to
musical censorship
lack catholic taste
everything to
be pure
as original song
of the spheres

so where must
we turn
to get the soundtrack
to fit
that digital snapshot
they gave us

of something
from beyond our dimensions
to
override
time itself

we simple souls, thickies
of the thick disk
Milky Way
sector

too
startled and alarmed
to milk this strange visitor
for all
the truth
we can get

blasted by thoughts of distance
we hardly have
the mathematics for

when suddenly
it might just dawn

all this time
we have
been lodged between
walls

stuck in a tunnel

.
(

AT A FAST FOOD OUTLET

we thought

the Universe

would
notice us

but it flew
straight past

straight past

didn”t stop
for fries
sodas
anything

no interest
in food
reading the menu
making a purchase
paying
for a meal

blitzed through
the drive through

no standing
on ceremony
waiting for anyone

this we all
saw
at the fast food outlet

the Universe screaming by
must have
thought us unreal

a crazy
hallucination