Damian Garside

BANK ON IT

went to
the bank

not realising
that I was funding
the arms for
your next
military adventure

how could
I have been

standing their
transacting
in all innocence

in the exact
position

you would
wish me to be

CASTLE

you see
a bank

I see
a castle

you
see an
entrance

I see
a moat

you have
a horse, a title,
a suit
of armour

no problem
here asking

the manager
for a loan

BLOOD

I whitewashed
my poem

silly me
I got all my facts wrong

good job
the mainstream
media was
on hand
to correct me

poet nobody
cleans up his act
at least now
I might make
some kind of
headline

worth the whitewash
restoring the page
to its pristine blankness

worth
all the effort picking
up the body parts
mopping
up the blood

ACTOR/DIRECTOR

we came to
your open-air amphitheatre
to watch your
play

but were baffled
by all the mirrors
and smoke (so
much smoke)
and the optical illusions

hideous
optical illusions

further, we must also
confess to being terminslly
confused when it
came to identifying
the genre

obviously historicsl, with
a strand of absurdism
and much theatre of cruelty
(not to speak of
the spuriously apocalyptic
religious revelation stuff)

we could not believe so
many of the characters, the
actors, the production crew
and the audience
met their end in the firsr scene
first act, the number
in steady escalation

until no one remaimed
the bodies piled high on
and around the stage

no encore
no one there
for the final curtain

and no less a great loss,
no sign anywhere of
the original script

PLOY

it was my ploy
to throw some
poetry at you

see if it hits
before you
close me
down

see if it
sticks
in your flesh
like a longbow
arrow fired
at the battle of
Agincourt

and seeing how
I struck you so
grievous
this glorious shot
might incite
some band of
brothers
to loose some volleys
upon your insidious
self

send you off to a place
where you

should feel nore
             at home and
we shall
be so much safer

DRY

there is no everyday
there is no ssme street

everything has
been disconnected

there is no
same old

go home
pretend that home
is still as you
have always known it
nothing
has fallen into ruin
nothing has been resprayed

watch all the cheap
global disaster extinction
level event
end of the planet movies

you can get your hands on
an election is coming

you will need
to drink the drinks’ cabinet dry

GONE

same street
same street

you are walking down
the same street
could switch to
automatic
know this street
so well

same street
but not quite
the same street
not
the same street
at all

street has, whoops!
gone
hit by a stick
of huge dumb bombs

was here
a second ago

now you see it

now you don’t

no one sees it
street has gone

no one sees it
no one

sees you

BANDANA

she wore
her bandana
with relish

consumed every
banana I bought her
with radical abandon

and I just
sat there immobile
like a can of stewed fruit
as
she proclained herself

nothing
for her to gorge on here

nothing appetizing
about my
no-
name
pictureless
house brand label

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Is this the poem
you have been monitoring?
Is mine
the face in the feed
from your spy satellite?

Are their words here
that triggered
your security
algorithm?

And, even if you
loved or liked this poem

are you
going to swoop down
and arrest or
assassinate me
in the middle of the night?

WITH WHAT PASSION?

with what passion
do you make love
Oh my sacred soldier

returning from duty
returning from the kill?

does it excite her
that she can smell
death on you, taste
the predator inside
of you

do you murder each other
ecstatic touch upon
ecstatic touch

no seeming end to
your divine lust

the whole night through
the lurid love
that you do here
fulfil

viewed
       here
     through the cold, dead, eyes of those
     tortured, slaughtered,
                         mercilessly abused

a different,
alien perspective