Damian Garside

WRONG WAY

do not take this
the wrong way

do not
take it all
quite so personally

the best metaphors
are the ones
you cannot help
but take personally

the worst,
the ones you take
the wrong way
are
diabolical, lethal

some unidentified metaphors
on and beneath
your radar
are winging their way
to you right now

even as we speak, shoot

the breeze, could
be angels,
might be devils

might be
arrows

soaked in love
killer envenomed

not being able
to duck them dodge them
shows
for better or for worse
they have
your number

can’t miss
about to hit

TO YOU THROUGH ME

have to confess
to not being
supremely invested
in anything

birth death cycles
blind repetition
in perpetuity

my eyes opening
for that first time
learning to ride my
bicycle
in the cemetery

doomed to retirn to re-
learn as if
on some Escher loop
believing I have
duly departed
but here
I am
returning again
and again

finding my way back
to the graves
I do remember and
each tiny
funeral chapel.

much hidden history
in every
minor variation on
pretty standard epigraph

taking them on board
as I free wheel along
the lanes
between the graves

and here I ask you
as you, and indeed
my sister
ride alongside me

to define, via differentiation,
what penetrates
and, there again,
what remains

taking a deep long draw upon
that cold Northern air
as it comes
to you exactly, if things
should vanish,
happen
to burn, if smoke recalls,
does at all remember
.
a complete, and, yes, complicated
tapestry
we all swore to finish
but never do

and me thrown by
the strangeness of each
and every queation
unsure as to

where they
came from

and how could possibly
find their way.
to you
through me

INFINITESIMAL

my desire
for you so binary system massive

so why
didn’t space time bend
everything bend
to my will
and with it,
you?

everything stop
in its tracks slow down
to extremity?

must be
what you felt for me, tiny
a void, antithetical, infinitesimal

as quantum
probability
worst case scenario

thing massive in its negativity
whole universe size
singularity

HONG KONG ZOOMED ME

Hong Kong zoomed me
loaded with questions
about my
Viking heritage

don’t know
if I waxed lyrical

don’t know
if I spilled the beans
since we
are old friends,
philosophically cannot
say we
chatted like
old friends

jabbering, joking,
exploring the very
concepts of
difference, sameness,
myth, reality
and construction
of identity

a dragonship longboat
out there sliding up
the river
as requested

what is Viking within me
having first
claim on my soul

Hong Kong zoomed me
questions seeking
me out
finding acceptable answers.

GREEN LAND

they hashtagged
hyphenated

took away the sky
up there, a tiny square
Mr Rockefeller,
Jets and Giants,
have to
strain your neck
to see it

before
their thoughts lurched upwards
it was the green
they took
had disappear

no one casts their mind back
to dawn days of arrival
striding across the shore
feeling
exceptional
albeit just a sprinkling

a dust of darkness
misconstrued in the light
but
not entirely for the better
changing everything

and we
too
were disappeared, story
of our disappearance,
that
disappeared too

ghosts and bones
beneath those cities,
remembered
perhaps as irony, regrettable
tragedy, parody

voices long gone
and with them all the words

other green lands out there
waiting for
all this to repeat

BARBED

Martians had landed
were disintegrating
every one
and everything
left, right
and centre,

the radio told us,
warned us
was very clear
on this. broadcasting
every horrific detail

we ran
for our lives
all the five boroughs,
evacuated the city

except
the stoical, smart few,
aficionados of
one or both
of Orson and Herbert
those unspeakable twins
in everything
but blood, though, well,
their surnames
spelled out that affinity

and there they were, those
apocalyptic sci fi diehards,
desperate
to get a glimpse at
a tripod, if not
an extended peek or
even guided tour
of the, cockpit

which might
just have shocked them,
seriously subverted
their assunptions

to find
these hideous, monstrous
creatures,
having an
affable, charming side,
with poetry and
painting, culture, architecture,
religion

as alien as us
on the outside, and the inside,
as human
as us too

like us
spreading their humanity
in their worst
possible
most human way.

TOMAHAWK

tomahawk
was just
an axe

but now it
fills the horizon
with death
and fire

seeking out
its enemies
there can be
no mercy

when
such is the power

EMPEROR

“The only Emperor
is the Emperor of Ice Cream”.
Wallace Stevens

Let’s get some
ices

currently spelled “iceSS”
the big esses there
to signify
exceSS

one fat lick
and you get
the instant brain freeze
you may not
have voted for
actually been asking
for

or,
iced in a trice,

may just be
three bullets point
blank through the face

catching
up with you
nine decades you
ducked them
but now they are here.

BECAUSE YOU STILL LISTEN

BECAUSE YOU STILL LISTEN
“My tongue betrayed me to the
butchers” Brecht

someone is listening
monitoring, eavesdropping,
looking for something

to
nip in the bud,
find full
flower
in their heart

someone listening
is about to plonk
me Adrienne
at the
dinner table
hold me hostage

vaporize humanity
whilst
we dine
all night

but truth
be told
I am quite hungry
am so hungry
haven”t eaten
a square meal
for a
thousand years

that starving
prodigal of
the parable
how effortlessly
I exceed him

what
fatted calf
was ever
sent my way

and yet
fortunate I am
compare those
who
simply died
at the very outset
or lived
through worst
of worst times

plague, famine, blitz,
slavery, torture
and every
subtle (and
not so subtle) flavour
of oppression

myself just chilling
at my desk
at school
told not to sit
exposed but
climb under, find
perfect safety

some rum run in
over the question
of missiles
blockades
and bluster
land of sun
and sugar
embracing
the red philosophy that
told America “no”

the villain’s
children’s
smiling faces
on some canned
goods in my
Mother’s pantry
(bound to
be
simply
bound to be)

day of disaster
beyond
any other

somewhere children beaming
asking “what
is thermo?”
“what is nuclear?”

would not
be beaming if they truly knew

someone is
listening got
my gist

left
me thinking

if my tongue did
betray what
is there
to say?

DOVETAIL

the days dovetail
they print out
dot matrix
dolphin death to life
life to death
across the tawny edges
of the bottle blue/green sea

stuff
out there arcing
in and out of the water
my life
so flat by comparison
when I want
to am asked to
speak up speak out
my squeak
of a voice drowned out
by crescendo of a wave
mighty
as those at Nazare

and to think, metaphysically,
long as, I can remember,
I longed
for fluidity

inclining
towards the deep, I searched
for quantum level
affinity

and now
the deep, unannounced,
breaking protocol,
coming to find me,

no idea
of the rationale, no

idea what this means

the days dovetail
someone out there
could be
so kind as
to dump to print