Damian Garside

JIGSAW

Oh its
a fucked up jumbled
jigsaw puzzle

so many pieces lying around

broken

dead

badly mutilated
so much so

impossible to put back
together

never going to get
that slick sick
picture

that had you
sold on the box

HARD CORE

searching for
my inner Bukowski

scanning every word,
inclination

ruthlessly scrutinizing

fastening onto
all the scruffy, seedy places
where, turning over
some unkempt stone,
I might
just find him

turning
the tables upon myself
tables I can now easily
drink each
and everyone
under

sinking my last inspirational shot
to welcome first light of dawn

and
then there are the
creatures of night’s pleasure
I might now
feel
free to consort with

the boxes of cigarettes
stacked mile high
I should
suicidally smoke through

in
the name of art

burnishing an image
burning my trash
openly
on all and sundry’s lawn

that manicured lawn
cropped
close as a Brazilian

delight
in the mind as such

thoughts, hard
                 to the core just
spurt
   from my mouth

AND DICED

Oh the satire
ran away from me

shunned civility,
turned severe

demarcated sharply
for slicing

sheep on the one side
goats on the other

yet
to preserve some
semblance of balance
nothing in the middle

a house divided:
those who laughed
set against

those who cried;
and those, true
to the sport

who both
laughed and cried

and then up
on high prior so
monstrously reversed

those whose guilt of complicity
though masked by
whatever
fake camouflage

ran

horribly
deep

that like Vampires in the light
suddenly stripped of immunity
and with
ripped-off
disguise

all they dare do is lie
down with their victims
(human
at last) wither
and die

(sadly only
metaphorically, in my
wildest imagination, even
though the world,
planet,
cosmos

crying out for justice;
desperate for correction).

BETTER

you want
Peace

here
is your

piece

its
a bit seriously small

too
small
for anything

is bombed-
out; barricaded

but its the most
we are
prepared
to give

most we
dare spare

we openly defy you
to summon
Heaven and Earth

see
if you might do any better

NEAR PLANET CYPRUS

swimming pool breasts
that goddess is
the archetype
of woman
in water

no Pygmalion girl she
no labour of love
to put her
together

she was as add water
instant delight
as they come
stirred
not shaken
(we are the ones Honey
Ryder first
appearance shaken
Mr born-under-
Mars Bond)

and what
a recipe
something went
so wrong with the logic
flummoxed our expectations
gorgeous

complete antithesis of
imagined Kaiju type beast

(unless
as with Troy in absolute
beauty such much greater
capacity for
disaster
causal factor)

even now
plunging me into
state of arousal

suddenly suffused by
the light
of her
near planet

and yet it is for night
one night
I pray in vain to you

would
absolutely cross oceans
swim
out to you

WITHOUT EXAGGERATION

this poem
may,
without exaggeration,

be
the death
of me

even as I write
artificial minds
are reading
between the lines

which lines do not exist
since all
is dust, is code,
is wll that flickers
between
death
and infinity

this I do confide
as we approach a turnstile

time for anxiety should
cards
not be in order
should there be
no automatic passage

from desert
on one hand
to circus on the other

with such
an outside and inside

precipice, blade
of razor

all destined
to endure

system
is forever

our salvation our doom

this poem, without exaggeration,
taking the very life from me

JOY

a god walks the stage
the world in
a state of wonder,
state of fright

loses; forgets
its words

as above
so below

jets and drones
contest the sky

we are below, suffering watching
unless the god
rescinds his
refusal to elevate us

teaches us that which we need
to scoff at this war
thess wars
elevated to the stars

the words that turn
a world streaming out
from under that mask

direct from Olympus, words
to drive insane, turn
upside down

flood with intense
laughter and pain

dark understanding
filled with divine joy

so far beneath him
this thing they
will eventually call
history
terrible in its
truth

a god walks the stage

JERUSALEM

if this is Jerudalem
why do the stones not speak
the very walls sing hossanas?

why does God who owns
both symbolic rights and
ultimate reals estate

command his worshippers
to share, unite,

not flow into that darkness
of which there are no words,
solely mystery

as one continual, endless stream
whose only form and shape
and sense
is blood?

THIS GUITAR

this electric guitar
is singing, screeching
to high Heaven

and the Devil has
promised me a woman

before
I be baked in an oven
roasted in a furnace
reduced to
sentient ash
doomed to suffer forever
the flames
of an intense fire

and this
as fair, reasonable
payment for her beauty,
such beauty
your beaity

creature created to
define and express inner
and outer
the entire limits
of desire

DOWN

I am a god
demigod
hero
beloved by
all on
Olympus

I am switched to
panorama
I get the whole picture

and here, with the denouement,
I shall call upon
divine machinery
to
escape
the stage

leave them to splinter and
splutter, their
tongues
tied around them
constricting like the serpents
that swallowed
Laocoon and his
male chlldren

and here it is, my vehicle now,
dodging the heavy flak,
as it slaloms through
search-
light beams

luckily this is classic, no
thought of variation of outcome
alternate history

not a hope
in Hell do these aggrieved
little mortals have

of shooting me from sky
seeing me plummet down.