Damian Garside

SNOWBALL

SNOWBALL I hit you with a snowball when you were four or five (me six or seven, best as I can remember) a shot to the heart best heart of all you were shocked and aghast and immediately ran inside leaving me, deservedly, out in the cold and what a heart it is same blood as mine ticking away determined to run forever through winf and rain and sun and blue blue skies above yes blue skies would be good and then I can undo that (kept to myself for so long) old snowball shame.

CHUCKY

CHUCKY Hello Chucky ever wondered what will be uncovered, or should I say, be thrown up, when the ice melts tapping out these letters in my missive to you I think of myself as akin to an ancient Sumerian scribe some tablets in scrawl similar to my own freed from the icy prison cause of wonder and derision a text so mythological in its truth, connecting each of us to our true alien other about to be uncovered about to find its strangest mirror in the Universe in all this world.

BREATHE

how do you
deal with what is
ingrained?

chisel
you way out

and now
(as this metaphor
works itself out)
find a
space

in which
to breathe

THE WORD

THE WORD the scholars are wedded to the death of the author and friend Roland and friend Michel are clear that the word will flow where it wants to go will speak fof itself but you poets under bombardment either casualties or still survivors your words are gated, fenced in have no means of escape, nowhere to go but however softly whispered somehow become targets sought out for destruction, best censorship that can be what is it about these words small words soft words that seem so powerful inspire such hatred and such fear?

TUMBLE

TUMBLE I saw you take a tumble fall off the stairway to heaven that great guitar riff playing in the background and so you fell plunged further hit harder than him hurled headlong in that poem by Milton the whole of humanity screamed at your fate demanded you be saved but you did not, could not budge your crimes, though spin-doctored were insanely terrible.

WITH EURIPIDES

WITH EURIPIDES it’s a strange theatre we are watching one where the actors leap off the stage slaughter the audience kill every single one of us I am sure neither the Elizabethans nor the Greek tragedians foresaw this development this total identification of player with character in this strange new brand of history play

NOODLE

NOODLE far from anywhere in the city of Noodle people flattened by the shockwave here left them aghast at this branch of the species so much to learn, too little time in this state of decline our total destruction they fear

TURING TEST

TURING TEST see you posing as trying to be pretending to be purporting to be an ntellectual this you somehow cannot be obviously in human terms I would stoop to the political correctness to label you: cerebrally challenged but if your intelligence just so happen to be artificial I would inquire whether something in your hardwire might not have been substandard perhaps gone radically wrong all your chips jammed up too much sickly slimy spin saturating the silicon innards . making your tech feel stolid steampunk, the crowning achievement of a now distant century

OH MUSE OF SATIRE

OH MUSE OF SATIRE

oh muse of satire

make the armies small
as the pipsqueaks of Lilliput

make the kids big
as the giant children
of Brobdingnag

then
in the eyes of God
we can have us
a fair
fight!

SNOW

SNOW think of snow when the white phosphorous touches you think of ice and cold, cold snow passing through your body travelling through your bones