Author Archives: Damian Garside

NAME OF THE GAME

NAME OF THE GAME

how to write
a poem

how to
not write
a poem

right track
start
from scratch

now here’s a scratch
could work upon it
open
     up

make into something
way bigger than
something your
domestic
    feline
might deliver

leave a scar? there’s
always a
scar
    par for the course,
name of the game

it is what
     it is

your child, your offspring
looking nothing
    like you
      wanted it to look
saying nothing
like
you wanted it to say

you thought it would
stick to you
   like a tatoo

change your voice, your look,
everything
     inside, how

you see
    the world

it’s just a poem, do not
fool yourself, on your way
to Sun, Star, Moon
Magician,
        La Maison Dieu

become
the Tarot Fool

poem is
     last word, final
analysis

          when all
is said
and done: something,
nothing, something and
nothing

everything no one saw
every word you spoke
                   but didn’t see
foresee
           .

MORE

MORE

at once
a suffering and
a fufillment

at once
ink and psint
and canvas
and wood

but
also blood

fast raw red arterial
but black where
death has
already infested

out in the heat, the cold,
across every extreme
I see you slaving
   trying to bring
to state of
truth and beauty.
some murderous,
             killing idea

there where the ice is
point at which
some
   gas freezes, there
where flame can
easily smelt steel

maybe you should shred
smash crush
     all that tortured you,
so altered you
    by way of
acceptance and repentance

but she, the Muse,
has got her sting and fangs
and claws
     deep into you

tells you
there is more, you
                         know there
is
    still more
   

MUG AND BEING

MUG AND BEING

five types
of bread

seven kinds
of beans

a bean smorgasboard on
a tiny toast

tell me Juliet
you are the expert
on the names
of things

could this bland name
cover
    such a
stupendous thing?

or are we now forced
to jack up
our language
    as common parlance
turns
cordon bleau, basic
foodstuffs
forget
   their station in life
invert such an
ancestry to
plead
  their case for
being haut cuisine?

once upon
a time
   coffee was
just coffee

being
before essence
bean before
steam

and so much de Beauvoir
Sartre cafe existentialism
beat
    poetry: Corso, Ferlinghetti
hinged upon it

but now
     you need a handbook of
coffee phrase
and idiom, a coffee lexicon,
a coffee thesaurus

not just
spolit for choice but
thrown into
infinite quandary

whilst
business is buzzing
deals are
going down

brains going whole full
minutes without
delectable roast
flavour
   indispensible caffeine
(unless caffeine
free because
   trendy to be so  special
stylish or
in caffeine
cold turkey)

to drink to take to eat
to go
  
  dolce dolce rapido
latte expresso

sweetie
   dear

would you like a house cup
cup of
   house brand with

sublime piece oc toast
(actual piece of art)
and
   the being of your beans?

Need your answer now
before
     beford you very eyes

I percolate
      become      pure dream