Author Archives: Damian Garside

RED LINE

RED LINE red line green line yellow line every flavour of line labyrinth which is that you need to lose your way in this ancient place and this is forgetting all about biblical brown and regal purple one being sterile the other being sacred the stars in Heaven totally incompetent here by way of guidance cannot tell you whatever or, for that matter, any which is which

FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
(MORE LIKE HOME)

the Earth is
our planet

it is
a sphere

here, I fear,
there is a
     disconnect

something is not
correct, far
from right

should have been
an oblong, a T-
square;
      a triangle, a prism,
a duodecahedron

would
     have suited us better

better fit
   for the way we think

felt infinitely
    more like home

OF BELIEF

OF BELIEF Thought I should write love poem to (and for) the world but it probably will not end how I think it should how i wanted it to thos is the issue with creation never turns out how you hoped or thought and there is no going back to the drawing board Oh the architecture happening right now in my brain, my head, lying naked on the bed in my tiny house on this farm curtains closed lights left off (even if out of loadshedding but a moment before) imagining I could just rachet up the sensitivity and feel the flowers grow hear them breathe and talking (thinking) of nakedness, my dear, is yours not overdue? but hold that thought even worse news from the Middle East streaming in pictures of Dantesque horror words of insanity, of satirical vulnerability everything up to the max pushed to extremes (not what Aristotle was thinking what he figured on teleology would derail poor Socrates in his project of self-knowledge and moral sphere) things here so naked, exposed in all their ugliness (by every metric) bleak intensity things the world of the farm would not believe and so naked as I am speaking to you calling out to you wondering what your good self might make good or best and even better in whatever illogical gradation fullness of our together might sway the nature of belief.

TANGENTIAL

TANGENTIAL

as the camera pans
and tracks

keenly observant
as the eye of God

    note all of it
down
take it
      into evidence:

here a triptych of images
from the bowels
of Hell
            avenues of billboards
picturing the unspeakable

and here words untethered, words
     of wild association

and here
in consequence, dancing
                         on fresh graves

grinding down the monuments
crushing the flowers

all we
need is a river
                    coiled like
a serpent
        and we have apocalypse now

      *****

Excuse me
          apologies for

throwing you into this headlong
without thought of a preamble

felt you are
so familiar with this
terrain
          no introduction required

observe us now: myself
and an odd band
of philosophers
                in open formation

making huge headway as
we navigate the path
between
      battlefields

move from battlefield to
battlefield
      observing with horror

how far we have slid
from regime of rational truth

and the care
of the wise gods

finding the think tanks and
complexes and factories

structures wide
as whole cities, reaching
upward to Heaven
                      portals to
supremacy

foundaries for the steel and ghe stone for us to build
our lush monuments

utterly expressive of our
desire
     for eternal comfort
and peace

and as
      for the price paid

we do not
         let it run away from us
but
   (in tight formation now)
keep it
      carefully monitored

the debt in hard currency
always balanced
in blood

for philosophically speaking
this is
    a landscape of division
cruel dialectic
and dichotomy

those who did this finding
means to speak that
horror

      terrifying their madness
out of them

sculpting the darkness
                    of the species in
such
exquisitely warped
                      form

LINE OF SIGHT

LINE OF SIGHT

you are
missing my poem
it is
not

in your line
of sight

and dumb ordinance
not guided
no matter how
much you drop,
you fire

not
a single hit

and, to labour
the point,
furthermore,
this is not
the terrain for
attac
at high speed

all
turret
and tracks

and so
always begging
to differ

I feel I must ask
who has the firepower
here mustered
to put a dent
in the word, the living
word

surgically, single shot,
put that light

out
in an instant

make
a confirmed kill
for once

in this rubble

over and above
all that is wholesale
decayed, false flag

lying
through its teeth

not
best
for rebuttal

this ricochet from the truth