Damian Garside

TRANCE

I love this trance
feel it tingling
presence
in my bones

beyond belief
that we are
all stand so
mesmerized
together

except we
are never here
ever
allowed
to stand

always
carefully positioned
to
lie down.

SPACE

there is no
absolute space

distance
is relative

watch me
before your
very eyes

wrinkle up
into a chrysalis

emerge at the end
of the day (my
long night)
steel-winged sharp
ready
to fly

and you so
spaced-out
you readily
comprehend

if only you might let
me search, find your button,
switch to
transformation

together we could soar
without end; without end

DOUBLE-SPEAKERS

double-speakers
demon-reapers
seem to be trying
to reverse
polarities, change
the direction of the
Earth’s spin
(counter-clockwise just
not doing it
for them)

Oh, how their lies
have grown and prospered
high towers of
Empire brick and
mortared from
so much
crushed bone

and always
same tune, old words,
old laws
and prohibitions
jazzed, re-
fashioned to fit
the glitz of
an age

double-speakers
forked-brain thinkers
trouble-
breeders
in the extreme

you
will be
the death of us

our death
our human
mutilation

as you
have been,

throughout history
from
word first
recorded

so many
millions and now
perhaps billions

lives of suffering
to attest to this

TITLE PAGE

TITLE PAGE

I close the book on you

hear you worming your way
from page to page

soon we shall be
at the end
of our story

could try to track you down
strive to find you

wondering
how our stories now conclude
which no longer
speak to each other
of eacj other

are so fully finally intertextual

might not be in the same library
any world of shared
heart or
mind

stuck barely between
the covers
on the title page.

HIBERNATING

HIBERNATING

hibernating
on the farm

closing my eyes
to all the missiles
and bombs

do not think
there is the nightmare
to match this

as inexorably, inevitably
it gets ratcheted up
to an extinction exchange

and the world ending
and me deep sleeping

and the Universe
going its own way
doing its own thing
for physics only
knows how
many odd billion years

dream
themselves away

DOWN TO SIZE

I have no memory
it has all gone

maybe
it was never there
in the first place

maybe someone
somebodies
came in
the middle
of the night

sliced
it out of
my head

did something
unspeakable

that cannot
be spoken

so many words
too many to cope with
need to cut
them
down to size

thing
not to forget

resist
not realize.

THE WIND CAME

the wind came
blew me to
Timbuktu

all of which time
I found myself praying
that it might treat
you more softly

gently, with
more care

waft you
somewhere that
could not be more
congenial

more conducive to
the realisation of
all your basic
and
more intimate
desires

viewed from
where I find myself
so
far, far, far
from you

KEY

I turned
your key

and your clockwork
went off the wall

symbols crash clashing
wheels spinning crazy

what a heavenly
cacophony

music to these
tender ears.

EXCEPTIONAL

death will not
be satisfied with
simply thousands

death wants
millions, billions,
that’s the price
that was set
and will be paid

if this
were not so
why do you think
death had to invent
comets, supervolcanoes,
meteors, rogue asteroids?

to supplement the vast varieties
of weapons of mass destruction
its most beloved
of all
species
happened to event

including, not exclusively,
the vast thermonuclear arsenals
huge stockpiles of
megaton, kiloton
missiles and bombs

sheer numbers here
dictated by the laws
of necessity
of supply and
demand

and exceptional theory, but
sadly it ends here
with the demise of
its authors

of whose disappearance
the rest of the Universe
could
not give a damn

THE LIGHT

they switched off
the light

but could not
switch it back on again
or maybe
just refused

leaving the world
nor in state of day
neither that of night

just in that limbo darkness
betwixt and between

where all
their machinations
burgeon and thrive

reducing the value of
all that is
loved, all
that is life

taught
from the cradle to do so

finding this state
of being so
infinitely agreeable