Author Archives: Damian Garside

MY FLAT COUNTRY

MY FLAT COUNTRY my flat country scrub divided by highway stretching further further Oh, the luxury of a small town with a library chance to drink coffee be philosophical mediocrity entropy won’t say they’re married but rented a room by the hour for much of the night and when it comes, when all stalls at risk of repeating myself Oh, what a night incomparable night

HISTORY CHANNEL

HISTORY CHANNEL (KIND OF REMEMBER ME THAT SIEGFRIED SASSOON) watched a video on World War One who started it who finished it who went who stayed at home who came back like my Mother’s Dad big gong of a medal around his soft young neck which is just as well otherwise wouldn’t be here myself to waste your time as Siggie’s bishop himself didst poetically proclaim the ways of God being satirically strange watched a video on the channel on World War One same as the last one same people won

BEYOND (YOUR) EMBRACE

BEYOND (YOUR) EMBRACE no melding tonite your mind closing like an anxious wound infection, infiltration, metaphors of sickness seep still into the body politic have done so, I am afraid, since the beginning of time but the risk, you tell me, the danger sheer danger of reaching out whatever the payoff, whatever heaven in that yield risk run (you calculate) is catastrophic better to err on the side of hate

CHANNELING

CHANNELING

a pretty derelict
unused space now
(like an
interstellar void)

but once
tge SkyVue drive in
used to cover
acres of territory

and the bush under the screen
where as kids
we played
cowboys
and savages

remember that screen
well it used
to fill half the night sky

saw Spartacus there, and
Cast a Giant Shadow

which wars, it seems,
never really died

Rome always lingering
Empires of Man versus
Empires of Heaven

but now
the whole planet
is our
screen

we have screens in our pockets
screens in our heads
inescapable
channeling

and there enough projection
to fill every known desert
desert of the real
Neo

truth having
dissolved, truth crucified
by fiction

truth’s fate to be enslaved
by the narrative of the day

and like
the poem says we
have all
become cyphers, organic
little molecules
in the dance of supreme fiction

the new reality to be
broadcast twenty-
four seven

dreamworld Neo, germane to
the Zhuangzi parable

cowboys, savages, think
like
a butterfly

the wild gift of technology
the premise to allow

without any
lingering sense of irony

to speak of self as supreme,
and, yes indeed, the world


.

GENRE

GENRE we presupposed it was fairy tale it was a natural presupposition we were not well acquainted with cosmic horror and understandably, who expects the great ancient demigods to claw their way up to the surface right in the midst of a military campaign of ethnic cleansing fuelled by religious demands for mass extermination clearly we need to learn much much more about the spectrum of genres

SOLITAIRE

SOLITAIRE which way is the wind blowing? empirical, metaphysical equally valid as a question so let me sit here debating whether to play solitaire or show my solidarity writing a poem must not cannot absolutely unable to face the thought that one less casuality one less maimed or broken soul if I had sat playing solitaire rather than battling with each angry bitter word trying to shape them shape of this poem

WAY

WAY I am considering the weight of the rain said considering meant contemplating taking its temperature tasting for salinity, acidity sweetness wondering how much of this a single drop can bear and not be soured by the blood and ash it is carrying such volcanic emptiness here every drop needed, regardless, place of most brutal imaginings waiting for the rain to have its way

ALL YOU READERS

ALL YOU READERS Saw all your readers of hard science fiction hunting for signs of incipient technological breakthrough and places of extreme, alien-like anomaly in both planetary hemispheres places too in ancient hermetic texts where they frame things on the cutting edge of current discovery in cognate metaphors, framed to capture the mysteries of the time text speaking here outside itself; way beyond itself and all that has survived purely on the basis of its own enchantments, presently divested, devoid, emptied out decides to self- sublimate or otherwise disappear civilization playing a game of dice, sophisticated beyond all measure, but dice nevertheless hereby to make each and every call on where there will be life continuity and where disassociation and death life of itself only valid as logical and conceptual emergent phenomenon via and courtesy the creative mastery of death death’s complete philosophical mastery of itself