Author Archives: Damian Garside

BURNED

BURNED

I sat in the shadows
where else better

to hear you proclaim
the light

proclaim yourselves
the light

and as
the light

to fight off the darkness
one must go
deeper into the darkness
than the light
could possibly know

I saw you
proclaiming yourselves
the light

messing with
the light
to counter the darkness

and getting burned
horribly burned.

SOLDIERS

SOLDIERS

had a box
of toy
soldiers

all red

took them
into and lost
them in
the South African
bush

all (presumed) dead

they fought across
India, America, China,
the whole
of Africa
     in Europe too

but my little men
got lost
in this bush

and their flag,
it disappeared too

CONFLATION

CONFLATION

so much conflation
in this V For Vendetta parliament

it could well
lift off, fly away
like the Hindenburg
or the Montgolfier balloon

fly away
    to a sunlit upland
nativist Britain

one science-fiction secured
against any alien threat

for how will these tentacled
monsters in their
mother ships coming
to genocide
    and colonize us

in their leaky sinking
dingy boat
        fleeing the anarchy
we created
wars we started

just like anyone would
     (but being British,  they
look hideous to us)

HOUSE RULES

HOUSE RULES

there is no
poetry
about
this house

no fibre
in this room
    to speak of

just so-so people
who
     when the word
was elevate

when the word
was transform

were absent from school
dreaming the dreams
that children
of Empire dream

of securing power
of the ever so nicely
polite and
compliant backs

of the suffering mass
of the British people

MOREOVER

MOREOVER

got shot
at point-blank range
but you say
I ran straight
into a bullet

a good bullet
        moreover

one that knows
the difference between
right and wrong

a silver bullet, a golden
bullet, a Willy Wonka
eternal
     gob-stopping bullet

made by the great
celestial munitions factory

over the rainbow
before that got
shot to shreds