NO SOONER
no sooner had it landed
on your desk
than you take
to task our rainbowness
ascribe
all sorts of outlandish
bizarre
motivations
showing how
far we are in our thinking
from the holy logic
you
invoke in
the destruction of mankind
Author Archives: Damian Garside
JY WEET MOS
OLD JOHANNESBURG
OLD JOHANNESBURG
waiting by the roadside
in old
Johannesburg
maybe
resurrection
will
befall me
maybe redemption
will come my way
failing which
perhaps
a circus or carnival will
come
round the corner
sweep
stubborn old ideologies
off the street
as serious joke or
perhaps just giggles
a parade of Zizeks
tumbling past me as if
Red Square
comedy
where figures from the
Commedia del Arte
are here
to replace tanks
look
seriously at the world and
it suddenly goes
Toy Town
confirmation bias
on open display for
everyone to see
fat
conspiracy here:
buses passing every few minutes
not stopping for everything
the drivers
believe
waiting for the curtains to open
waiting for the means
transport a boardgame
on my back
set
of lewd Cluedo
for whomsoever might
wish
to join me
help me
to survive
life on a billiard sphere
hustling to get by
wanting to be Master
always
a slave
waiting for the lights
to darken
have
lost the book
in which
I was made
****
after a
while
everything
slithers
snakes and
ladders
perhaps better to
devote time
to generating boardgames
rather than
squandering my existence
writing
poetry or composing fiction
****
bumper to bumper stacked together
owe it to them
to not close my eyes,
keep looking
or everything before me
will disappear
and this funeral procession
miss its target
some poor
exclusive dignitary
about to skip his rendezvous
with captivating tombstone
of proportions extreme
so much here
so mechanical
yet so many
vital nuts and bolts
****
bureaucracy
is horror
bureaucracy
is death
I sat with
Slavoj Zizek
through yet another sunset
telling jokes
about philosophers
telling jokes and
the end of the Universe
(not that this necessarily
implies a causal connection)
today the lawyers
of old and new Johannesburg
are
heading North
with a holy bone to pick.
I sat by the roadside
play after play
oodles of
words, scenes,
dialogue
even
still in my head
ghosts of tales
still
to be told
(media marvels yet
to unfold)
old Johannesburg
WEAVER BIRD
WEAVER BIRD
always on the farm:
flash of bright yellow
across my
line of sight
furiously at work
building their nests
chirpy
masters of
twig engineering
brandishing their
golden purpose
meanwhile, since we
are on the subject of
nest-building
and things
with wings
let us observe old Nick
leaving his helo
having just be ferried
from quite distant shore
to Mediterranean ship
pausing a moment to
stroke brash steel,
sculpted aluminum
of the true
spirituality of the war machine
lover
extraordinaire
paramour to the extreme
blowing kisses to his image
where
reflected in such surfaces
every drop of bloodlust
contained in booklet form
in jacket
inner pocket
there
blueprint
of a world gone skew
slavery redeemed
refreshed anew
Sun
itself
blind to the glaring ironies
so much
to fix with
all this weaving
.
TUXEDO
TUXEDO
tuxedo
is name of
the game
you file your suit
hoping
to agree
of definitions
promise not to fight
over whether
this or that
homonym
accidental or
intended
all puns here
quite intended
but here they all are
creatures
of the South
my fellow-travellers
fat portfolio in their satchels
speaking in each codicil
humanity out loud
arguing
that a single sluk of
this evil
can
erase angelic face
pollute the God-given concept
of eternal, outright righteous
hold mirror up to Emperor
to deconstruct
all mind of god
yes
a time when
courage must be superhuman
to vouch for
civility, decency
to put us on the spectrum of
one indivisible being
and this to argue
before history, in
tuxedo
lest the lie, the quite lie
the brutal lie, the truth
denying
crushing line
find its path to become supreme
RUBBLE
RUBBLE
my poem
lies under rubble
dead, asphyxiated
would be on
life support
but
there is no life
is no support
my poem
is getting
amputated
will lose a whole page
has already
lost
stanza
after stanza
without antibioticd
without anaesthetic
each line screams
as they cut
through
bone
you will have forgotten
these words
and the mass graves
of those
that have
spoken them
as you stare into the sunset
across the Mediterranean
from
your beautiful
seafront property
looking out towards Greece
the rubble
of great Troy
and the gods
of Homer’s world
SHOOT
SHOOT
shoot
what moves
you can wash
your mouth out later
top
up again, be carefree
who cares what
you did, what you said
still out there
got stuck somewhere
but maybe
water not strong enough
need to
liberally swish with
concentrated acid
something stronger
than any dream juice
than you could
possibly imagine
take you head off before
full rewire
SIMPLY PUT
SIMPLY PUT
am here
for my brain
wash
get a new, shiny
gloss
am so excited
about the process
feel so
out of synch
with the world
today
everybody
thinking
another way
so hard to
adapt if
short on
cynicism
lacking
stupidity
am here
for my brainwash
things
from here
on in
going to
simply improve
FOR HUMANITY
FOR HUMANITY would like to thank you for what you have done for rationality thank you profusely for what you have done for the truth above all, thank you for what you have done for human decency and humanity but for what you have done for God I think best to leave it to Him to thank you Himself
SHINY
SHINY
.
people
become evil
it happens
every
day
especially
the shiny ones
in all they do
and
say
people
become liars
it happens
every day
they gibble
gobble goebbels
the
truth
it happems
every day, every
single way
and who do it
best? you ask
well who
could it
be but
the shiny ones
justified in
every single
lie
lie
upon lie
because they
are
the ones who
need
to shine
day in
day out, day up
day down
the only
shiny side
they
are the shiny side
poems 2 die for 