Author Archives: Damian Garside

TEMPLE TUNE

TEMPLE TUNE

Odd you should miss it

how you estranged us
lifted up the carpet
pulled back the curtain

suddenly
showed everything

and all that history,
that mythology
came
    tumbling down

something ingrained here
about the Sampson option

bringing the temple crashing
about you heads

sadly forgetting
these are
our heads too
      our heads too

we were part
   of that story

but now we see it for
what it is

             a wild, psychotic dream
danger to humanity

OLD EMBASSY

OLD EMBASSY was sleeping in the old Soviet Embassy dreaming of you naked crashing through the wall driving a Sorbonne student, Paris Commune best May Day Parade tank a T-68 I believe, though I stand to be corrected the crumbly modernist structure recoiling under impact looking for all the world on the threshold of collapse and then we made love, parted left the bullding in swopped Che T-shirts swearing undying Comitern Pact exchanging best childhood Cold War finger on the button scary memories such as that ancient Castro Cuban missile crisis alarms blaring holding hands in fear but much secret juvenile love fascination beneath the impenetrable shelter of my school desk

PARABLE

PARABLE

love once
talked in this place

hard as it is
now
to believe it

holy city on the hill
awash with blood
fallen
to soldiers of
Empire

its legions;
its cruaders

and oh
now through the wire
I hear violins, hear
house music
hear Oompah Bands

see Willie Wonka take
Roger Waters on
a tour
of his factory

pointing out the safety
features, hotly
denying

that this rich sweet
chocolate has anything
about it
remotely intetesting
to cannibals

as he suffers not the children
and the world can attest
to every
delight he deals

love once walked
in this
place

born in bombarded Bethlehem
since
synthesized, appropriated

so much our shame
this love

once
here

in this place

SHAPESHIFT

SHAPESHIFT Jung saw it archetype before his eyes come alive from light to darkness we can all shapeshift learn so much from shadow so much from the light carry that darkness as deep memory inflicted upon it ss always shapeshifting its essence into imagined gods creatures of pure archetype absolutely mistaken, basking in the horror of our own darkness so convinced they own the light are very embodiment of the light true terror of which no one can describe