Damian Garside

BOOM

bing bang boom

hit me over the head
with the sound
that fosters appetite,
alters, enhances
consciousness

turns brain
Yogi from
spaghetti

turns from
meatball
into lasagna

in this age of Kali Yuga
gives you
your moment
of peace

MEDUSA

Medusa, she of the serpent tresses,
unjustly transformed because
women cannot be innocent

knows they are coming
the reporters, the cameras,
the cliche
hunting commentators,
the writers and poets
with all
their reflective surfaces

knowing
she can never
forgive or be forgiven

and this her logic
is that
until she is killed
(sure she
is to be killed)
she must
strive to turn
each of these
paladins of brutality
contempt, injustice

to mute outcrops
of fabulous stone.

IF CHESS

if chess
were music
it would
be Mozart

the melodies sparkling
and yet fastidious
scarcely can tell
anything of
rebellious Aquarius
in there at all

if chess were
soundtrack

wouldn’t be
punk rock, wouldn’t
be Led Zeppelin

yet
   Mozart seems
prepared to
rock-
hard
            go hard
                  rock

be our favourite snotty-nosed
neo-classical punk

inclined to
    tease the establishment
as far
as he could get
stick
that
       dissenting finger
everywhere, from
tune to theme
(cleverly disguised to
rhyme
    with the times)

see them
for the wooden
major minor pieces
that they are
carved
for the ranks and
files and
to dance the diagonals
(Archbishop black and Archbishop white)

IMMORTALS

INMORTALS

as the division between
dream and reality, sanity
and madness
ultimately collapses

I think of the identifications
made and the frameworks
devised
for living our lives

at one time or another we were
anarchists, liberals , communists,
conservatives, reactionaries,
empathic social democrats

becoming neo this

and that
as the years whooshed past
and the spirit
of our youth
unmistakably began to die

and now we sit
wisdom badly waned
rationality denied

so much worse for wear
the world
(much worsened world)
made to suffer
for our
presence

great sin of ego
desire to keep
what
was for all
for our
few selves

our wealth a
sign of favour,
as if
selected
by immortals

BLESSED

blessed are
the pure in spirit

most
distilled
amongst us
transcendent
beyond compare

for them
that most cerebral reward
of white pieces, black
pieces
chess for all eternity

hoping that in the course
of infinite play
they will most certainly
discover, find,
simply stumble upon
the perfect game

whilst
those no lesser
on this sliding scale

might find themselves
charting the incredible
magical features
of a sublime simulation.
wondrously
generated world

in which
no law is called
sacrosanct
unless by truly
consensual overwhelming agreement

the idolatory of markets is
crazily absent (yet not
decisively forbidden)
as is
the presumed eternal
law of
supply and demand

CROSSBOW

I interrogated Aphrodite
after the fall of Troy

so much death and devastation
through her direct interference
all for a single
golden apple, and the required
abduction of a queen

holding her in
the sights of my
crossbow whilst
I bombarded her
with questions

on the nature of love,
her sacred domain, and
why
it should exist at all
when it destroys
so many of us

or leaves us
alone and yearning
victims of its disdain.

DARK POETRY

no twist, turn,
switch

though by all means
a switching on
of the light

a searching, probing
light

the kind survelling the landscape
scanning the skies

enough luminosity there
to scare anyone away
from
subterranean explorations

writing dark poetry,
commonplace anathema

who knows in
the darkness
what razor’s edge
what peril to hard-won
community?

what sways and bends, plunges
deep into itself
goes full on despair
of Garden of Gethsemane
petals of
blood there
to be seen?

yes
what we have here
must say what it says write
as is written

in the absence of light
suddenly that which dazzles

what
the reader demands
never
an abyss, no dark
night of the soul

SYLVIA 2026

Sylvia i would take blackberrying again
out amongst
those luscious, vicious.
brambles one
last time

be like children
unrestrained. gorging
ourselves stained red
returning home
bloodied
with load upon load
in plastic bags
telling ourselves
soon soon soon
we shall all be
in pie Heaven

it was a war
gathering them
but we
were unshakable

so having
fought a war
to capture this
wild treasure

let love
be the power
we next consider

so much we both
need to redeem there
we have
our mad symbols which
to some extent will
serve us, help
with the co-creation
of one common reality

much
lovemaking to learn
starting from
the ground up

with the care of watchmakers
dealing with a machine
of such sensitivity,
such intricacy

all those cogs and jewels
and tiny immaculate gears

watching your fingers
move through the thorns
is
as if i were watching
the playing of
some strange, exotic
beautiful instrument

transcendental
as if composing
writing the exact music
of this scene
for every berry
a sublime note.

XENO POEMS

1. SUN

the xenomorphs
were playing
in the Sun

having such fun – –
I did not think
biological creatures could
survive such. unseasonably
high
temperatures at the heart of
the corolla

****

2. BOOK

the xenomorph
was reading me
like a book

a Lovecraft book
one which
turns its
own pages
tiny tentacles reaching out
from inside the book itself

****

3. FOOD

the xenomorph
shared its, food with me

after which, as act
of reciprocity,
shared me
with its food

****

4. CHOIR PRACTICE

The xenomorphs
having attainef consciousbess

found
religion

are gathered together
to conduct a huge debate
whether to
crucify, or
simply burn at the stake

the worst of all heretivs, apostates and sinners
and those
habitually
late for
choir practice

****

5. WAR

humans sent a delegation
to the xenomorphs

attempting to
civiluze them
moderate
their savagery

teach them the
gentle art
of human warfare

annihilating cities,
with state of
the art
weapons

fire
and forget

aimed at targets
thousands of
miles away

so
casualties
not an issue

RENAISSANCE

let’s have a Renaissance,
invent new styles, devise
new rules

a whole new way of seeing
small r, big R, modest, huge,
tailor made to alter
this mind set which
has led us
to follow what we
are being told
into year
upon year of
extreme disasters and
insurmountable crises

and to get this off the ground
before directly or
indirectly fire
finds
and destroys us

burning us to a crisp
devouring all hope, guzzling
all food

this in the name
of
the highest ideals, as we
now see them
by virtue of which
we would
slaughter one another
destroying ourselves

believing this alone,
above everything,
sets us
on the right path
to the transcendence
of species

hurtling towards the right,
fully moral, sharply spiritual
fully linear
incandescent realization
of our
determined life path

so
let’s have
a Renaissance, rewrite
everything here utterly