Damian Garside

CHESS HYPRMODERN

CHESS HYPERMODERN

rooks be chariots

and queens
are aircraft carriers

or used
to be

dead in the water
she be
missile vectoring in
on her
down the file, across
the rank
along her sweet open
diagonal

hypersonically

GALAXY

GALAXY

in the marketplace of ideas
decentred place
that could not be
more
creativity friendly

I hunt for innovation
shop like
a billionaire

but when I get home
find all that I have
are boxes of
badges, reams
of slogans

piles of stuff that with
all your piles of stuff

will fill every single ocean
on every blighted planet
in our milky way galaxy

ODD WORLD

in your odd
volumpuous world

I bump into the sacred
trip over the profane

think of all those saints in
the skins of demons
and vice versa
who scrawled
their holy script
all night
with you

thinking
I could have
shown you something
shown
them something

but, alas, you
missed your opportunity
all and sundry

I sink so stately
into the grave

CAN DO

I had
a story

a short
story

but it
was

too
short

so I tried to
stretch it, really
extend it

turned out to be
so easily elastic it could
spread to infinity
swallow
the Universes

which is exactly what
the chip in my phone
allows me
to do

what the chip in my brain
compells me to achieve

BOOK OF THE STARS

BOOK OF THE STARS

the book of the stars

is full
of Arabic names

up to the brim
cover to cover

so clean
the script
no spots, blots,
typos, errors, slips, slurs,
smudges

Sadalsuud, Sadalmelik,
Formalhaut,

full of
the mystery of the cosmos;
they just
roll off the tongue

the book of the stars
bursting its seams with
Arabic names

VICTORIA (music track)

CHASING WEST

chasing the Sun
West is not
entirely
a great idea

after one hits the needle sharp
pyramid in the harbour
of the Saint
(where men
strong in
scarlet and gold
flatter to deceive)

and beyond this shoreline
the so wrongly named
peaceful ocean

chasing the Sun
hardly anything of peace
or beauty
to find
about this
wild plac

VICTORIA

go well
brave friend

you have slain
half your demons
there are
but a few more

and here he is
figure of power
spirit
of sunshine

a life so close
in the offing will
be
as if you
were welded together

just think of me
retreating from my last demon
after most beautiful battle

no terms of surrendef demanded
in truth we
found ourselves matched
fought
to a draw
a forever stalemate

no time here
for memories to
be clung to

winners and losers and
those who are neither

these
are the stakes

when the dream is everything
it is unbearable to fail

PISCES

a deam world
compelled to follow
the logic of dream

and there
beneath the surface
great tectonic plates shifting
moving
battering up
against each other

the killer
physics of this

dwarfing us as
all is upturned

depth
is real

its fault lines clear

POEM IN STONE

POEM IN STONE

prim village
but turn over
enough stones

shape shifters, Caesars,
serial-killers

and
at the tiny railway station
connecting nowhere
to everywhere
(all
roads lead to)

what slipped off
the rails
what
dark dreams?
(always a train
in a surrealist painting)

Oh and
there the tunnel

who knows
if there is light

if there
is other end?

something big
once stirred here
dared
a big net
to catch it

people remember, will
tell you,

people forget

what brought them here;
what took them hence