Damian Garside

FIXING

FIXING
“where I’m wrong, I’m right”
The Beatles: Fixing a Hole

let’s
see what
we got here

check if
there is a hole
if so
how to
fix it

if not
why not?

poem need
the right kind of holes
(where would
we be
without holes)

just jokin’
poem got to be
fun
poem got
to be serious

we had some
fun so
let’s go
serious

switch of a sudden
turn on dime
between
fun and serious

truth to power: break
in through the back
leave via
the front

do your dreadlock goldilock
thing
   have your Gulliver
child’s play
                   turn it
          all
upside
      down

seems like you serious
but
can we be
sure to
be sure

that last line
gleams wickedly, such
a look in your eye

and eye need
the light

how else
delight?

bend those bars in
before out

your light coming in
your light
going out

see here: a VOICE

in with

a shout

SHADOW

SHADOW

in my previous life
I was a shadow

a millisecond after
the flash evaporated everything

fatboy, bigboy,
littleboy, bigfatmacboy
whatever
you called
it

and so
this time round

far
from that shore

forgive me
and my haiku mentality

where
I struggle with life
and consciousness

remembering only
my fear of the light

COUPLED

COUPLED

be careful
what you
wish for

imagination
coupled
with
distance

is such
a killer

the creature of
my dreams
was
so different
strange, alluring
utterly unique and
exotic

sadly
she is
light years distant
in space
and time

her species across
the galaxy on a
distant
epic planet

however
you do spin it,

her species not having
begun to
truly evolve yet

at least in a direction
I would extremely like

CLOTHES

in the field of forever contention
tunes battle away

they waltz around you
whilst and even as
you fail to
consider

how naked you are, and
naked not only
but how

transparent
such they, as in the fable,
they instantly infer
that you are Emperor

drunk on the fiction
of power and grandeur

not to
mention the illusion
of flesh and blood and,
of course, clothes

BOMBSHELL

BOMBSHELL

so much life
surrounding me
desirous
of investing me

before
the night is over
I’ll probably find
myself

stripped
to the bone

down
to my core

even before they get
to lug me to
the graveyard
screw me down
in my coffin

talking about life
commerce between creatures
predators prey
opportunistic strikes
best
evolution

on a You Tube video
was astonished to see
a much
critiqued young lady with
monster flippers and
aqualung
frolicking amongst
tiger sharks in the sea
off Hawaii

same species that savaged
the sailors floating
in the ocean beside
the torpedoed
Indianapolis

heading to the depths of
the Pacific to
a now long-
forgotten grave

doom
shadowed ship that
the Japanese had
been stalking

on its return to
home port after
slipping into
Tinian

as per schedule, to drop
off the bomb

DESERT DE ZERT

DESERT DE ZERT

walk through the desert
calling things into being
wishing things into being

I articulate
but the words I pronounce
live on their own planet

sometimes
when you see
ocean you
write desert

sometimes when desert
you write ocean

this is how poetry works
how delusion words

which is the affinity
that allows me to gasp
with hateful admiration

see exactly what you are doing
X-ray specking your brain
as it processes
its a lie so deep, so
outrageous it cannot do justice
to your sacred spoken
mission to protect your
people
transparently transposed
from the
truth of the need
to protect yourself

ABOUT

ABOUT

so South is heading North
turning
things
around

the globe
in your bedroom
best turn it
upside down

South on
the Equator

giving its all
all that it takes

dreaming
a new vision

no more
Northern mistakes

so
South
heading North

simple
replacement;
this what it about

CHILD’S PLAY

CHILD’S PLAY

like a child:
but did not mean
infantile

did not mean
psychotic

did not mean
projectile vomit
all over that globe spinning
in the living room

did not mean
you blood-painting
yourself
into a corner

all the while selling us
your story that you
are
responding to
Tik Tok and text message

direct
from above

BECAUSE BECAME

BECAUSE BECAME looks off the charts sharper and so much brighter in full extended spectrum of colours and booming panopolies of sound look closer, feel the width, check the texture decayed, deceased, delimited, disinclined frozen upon demand and so beneath the flash flesh colour paler shades lurk already haunting shadows at best of what was big screen Technicolor huge popcorn before essence of all that was before before became

NIGHT FLOWERS (PROFANE)

NIGHT FLOWERS (PROFANE) night flowers vanished sunlight put paid and so it goes: desperate levity, quick fix beauty on social media aspects of your hot body (Aphrodite parts) jammed into my face a place to shine: her scent is there to tell us today she is ghosted by the thought of a lover, her lover not can get no satisfaction sorting her an instant poem there if not resonant then at least afterglow fine tune the world therefore whilst it is turning exactly for sleep and chemistry are apposite in dream (flood of words and, behold!, a ship sailing home on them) what is lost in this exchange: ancient joy to master or be enslaved always, even in the bleached church courtyard, something pagan, much that is profane