Damian Garside

BURNED

I sat in the shadows
where else better

to hear you proclaim
the light

proclaim yourselves
the light

and as
the light

to fight off the darkness
one must go
deeper into the darkness
than the light
could possibly know

I saw you
proclaiming yourselves
the light

messing with
the light
to counter the darkness

and getting burned
horribly burned.

SOLDIERS

had a box
of toy
soldiers

all red

took them
into and lost
them in
the South African
bush

all (presumed) dead

they fought across
India, America, China,
the whole
of Africa
in Europe too

but my little men
got lost
in this bush

and their flag,
it disappeared too

CONFLATION

so much conflation
in this V For Vendetta parliament

it could well
lift off, fly away
like the Hindenburg
or the Montgolfier balloon

fly away
to a sunlit upland
nativist Britain

one science-fiction secured
against any alien threat

for how will these tentacled
monsters in their
mother ships coming
to genocide
and colonize us

in their leaky sinking
dingy boat
fleeing the anarchy
we created
wars we started

just like anyone would
(but being British, they
look hideous to us)

THINK OF ME

I love everybody
I hate everbody

I love you
I hate you

I love your
ideology
I hate
your ideology

your nation
I hate
I love
your nationality

ask me again
what I love
or hate

I will hold two
mirrors
up to
your face

decide then
whatever you think of me.

HOUSE RULES

there is no
poetry
about
this house

no fibre
in this room
to speak of

just so-so people
who
when the word
was elevate

when the word
was transform

were absent from school
dreaming the dreams
that children
of Empire dream

of securing power
of the ever so nicely
polite and
compliant backs

of the suffering mass
of the British people

LORD JOE

Oh great senile
lord of the world

you brain is a barn
in a hurricane,
a barn without
a door

the wind whistling, wheezing through
telling you

you need some structure
to your stupidity

and perhaps Amanda to
write and perform you
another of her
golden,
inspirational,
nonsensical poems.

MOREOVER

got shot
at point-blank range
but you say
I ran straight
into a bullet

a good bullet
moreover

one that knows
the difference between
right and wrong

a silver bullet, a golden
bullet, a Willy Wonka
eternal
gob-stopping bullet

made by the great
celestial munitions factory

over the rainbow
before that got
shot to shreds

LIZARD

are you here
to read?

or here
to monitor?

looking for the words
that cannot, must not
shalt not
be used

by universal degree
laser-etched onto paper
by lord god algorithm

(by their fruit
you may figure
this is rotten

to the core)

BY GEORGE

by George he has
won the election

by a thumping
gazzumphing
tub-thundering majority

Dundee’s master
of words, knife-thrower
by vocabulary
a voice growling like
Churchill
from the benches,
resonant, indefatigable

leaving those who battle
to string two
words together

at a
loss for any of them

HOW

how shall
all this remembered

find its way
into the the books

be retold
by the old folks

taught
in the clsssroom?

will this desperate spin
you are Hell-bent
on manifacturing

find its way from
your dizzy life-ignoring,
image-igonoring
brains onto
revered pages?

or will history be
your bitch
as truth is now?