Author Archives: Damian Garside

TIMELINE

Christopher
in this timeline

never makes it
to the New World
his ships got stopped
in their tracks
by metal flying machines
with stars on the wings
and the power
to sink his
every ship
in half a second

huge metal boats
surfaced from under
the water
which appeared to
have a few aboard who
could speak Spanish
or Italian

who told him
in no uncertain terms
to return whence he came
M
there, upon his arrival in Cadiz,
no one would believe
his story

and even under torture
the Inquisition in Madrid
could not extract
a plausible account

and, thus, in these
grave circumstances
determined he must be silenced

the thought of such
an advanced civilization
across the Atlantic
would shake
the Church to its core
and threaten the sovereignty
of every European nation

deconstructing
every
rational premise

from final straw
to germ of an idea.

DO SHEEP?

do sheep dream
of electric androids?

last night I dreamt
of the temple
of the high abbatoir

scouting out which
I circumvented the butchery
in the dark, dense forest

perfect place (as
opposed to a desert) for
such slaughter
to be hidden

place
where two and two
make five

or will do if
they tell you it does

NO SWEAT

I smell
of sweat

smell of death

a smell
to savour
sweat
laced with death

raw odour
needing a tad more
of your perfume
and spice on my skin

and so this alchemy
whose secret
barely hidden
opens itself
to scrutiny

lead
turned to platinum

gold
to glazing

crystal to
diamond

water
to steam

and star  blazing
fissile energy
             force of
such
fusion

stuff of that
industry
to thing that you are

which
that old skald, old troubadour
Saxon
     Norman Viking
Celt
within me

can sing of hesitantly, imperfectly,
the superabundance you require
so
    much long gone
all its
    revelation

lending itself
            to
                all
that
is rival, separate
Other

distant in time
        faithfully elsewhere

whilst
I smell of sweat, do
speak here
of death
and other transformation.

      ****

THE REST

Verb
is alchemy

the rest
litany

as with big bang

making
       some big
once-in-a-universal-lifetime statement

  ever –
   unfolding text.
 

INHERIT THE EARTH

day blaring rock
cool jazz

night universally
reserved for
rhythm and blues

and would that
not be old Orpheus
picking, plucking at strings?

master of the fretboard can
make Rickenbackers roar
Tele-Stratocasters sing
so that all
   beauty-smitten stay
for the duration
trapped
  in that chord-sequence
.
and she
whose memory so jars me
following me
   from the underworld but
how faithlessly
I turned
.
so arrogant to assume
that time
    my be conquered, distance
a thing
  to laugh at

freeze – framed, an
ice
  sculpture

Aphrodite’s Adonis as
disaster made plain

HIP HOP VERSION

killing me softly
    (hip hop version)

at the fish
     restaurant

me there early
before officially open

the waitrons sweeping
cleaning shifting
tables

and me wondering whether
mussels or calamari
to be part of my order

and if tarrifs are going to
feed true revolutionary vibe
(Slavoj. Zizek on my
phone interviewed by
left channel

decrying
capitalist subjectivities
and off
the press acronym
for
  fuckable grandfathers)

and friendship with
Fred Jameson whom I once
hosted in Durban
where
   he did order prawns

and went up
to the Drakensberg to
imbibe
   the rock paintings

away from
cognitive mapping bugbears
true bane of our age

and
so killing me softly

that night I stayed over
my death was the softest

probably cannot blame you
so much wonder
there refused
       what graciously on offer
unbelievably rejected

and
    at the heart of all loss
and conceivably lost moments

that tyrant
of this life
          in the calling of time

killing me softly
sometimes the sampling
                 can change
song itself

RIPPLE

something living
in the heart
of a stone
or ar least we
might say
can’t rule it out

something to be sure
in there

waiting
to live, come to life
for a very long time

from time to time
almost a thought hosted
almost a moment
of birth
of stone consciouness
wondering its world
thinking
for itself

throw selfsame stone
that it skims the surface
of the lake
splash of wet stone
as stone and
water
create fresh parabolas leaving lovely patterns

ripples
within ripples

and
at that very moment

whatever joy you
share with the stone
ripples in you
ripples
in you

do not tell me you do
not
sense the feeling

you would not
want to swear to this
would you?