Author Archives: Damian Garside

THAT WILLIAM BLAKE CHARACTER

THAT WILLIAM BLAKE CHARACTER

saw that William
Blake character
on social media

disagreed about the war
had a few sharp words

fresh from this exchange
looked him up
found
   not a word on Wikipedia
save a reference to a character
in a Jim Jarmusch film

which seriously flustered me
for I had got this notion
into my head
   about this far from prototypical
radical
      early nineteenth century
English Romantic poet

but seems it is all a myth, a false flag,
huge disinformation

which 
     stands to reason,
for if there were really
a Songs of Innocence and
a Songs of Experience

think how
different the world would be

HEAVEN OF THE UNREAL

HEAVEN OF THE UNREAL

somehow I have ended up
in the Heaven
of the not real

I do
apologize

do mythologie

am unsure at this point
whether I be many
or am alone

every choice
so critical
    slight preferences
of tone and shade
altering how
the Universe should appear

so much nuance at this point
infinite possibilities

and yet so
     austere

feel
     so abject       so incomplete.

BLACKPOOL

BLACKPOOL
“how many holes it
takes to fill the Albert Hall”

I came to
Blackpool, Lancashire,
to be conceived
my soul already garbed
in tangerine

inland from the Irish Sea
I lived
our little river
up to something

revolution in music
to be remembered forever

there in that old, dead
slave port
swept up by voices, songs
steaming in
from a wilder West

brief Renaissance they
just had to
weed out

the fiction of Empire
in such dire need of it.

I came
to Blackpool to
get conceived

though sex, as Larkin said,
waiting for its establishment

INCONVENIENCE

INCONVENIENCE

I am an inconvenience.

The outs
outweigh

the ins.

Suddenly I am a
question that
leads into an issue
that creates a problem
                  in need
           of a solution

that will
speak bare faced

only after generating
euphemism
             upon euphemism

euphemism to
                       truth
         being as absence
                       is to death.
          

NOT TO CONCERN

NOT TO CONCERN

mystery planes, crazy
ambiguous figures
suspect characters

appearing and disappearing
popping in
and out of existence

later we shall be told
move on
move
on

nothing to see here
nothing of interest

do not concern yourself
what you are looking for
is at best
speculation, figment
of your imagination

how can there be
a story to uncover
an
astounding narrative

no words were ever
spoken about such things

in every dimension of
space and time

these are phenomena
that never existed

SLURP

SLURP

I drink your
strawberry
chocolate
salted caramel
hazelnut
even
      vanilla milkshake

slurp your sarcasm
as if
    it were melting ice-cream

munch your foaming banana
fudge

as if
it were
direct from drug store spigot

sweet Vesuvius, blessed
Krakatoa

fallen
    like hot manna
into my lap

        swirling like
          a spiral nebula in the
machine of your receptacle

thoughts
            of cosmic body horror
subsumed by the

rush of your
            sudden pink
flamingo
        sugar

treacle and absinthe.

EZRA AT THE METRO

EZRA AT THE METRO

Once delivered a
paper on
Pound

when I told
them it was
          all of
thirty (30)
    handwritten pages

(hardly imagist
certainly no way haiku)

the apparition
of those listening,
                  sickening faces

    bloke called Coetzee pounding 
his head on the table
                      in exasperation

this Modernism moment

        suddenly all avocado
on
a leaf-
green surround.

SEED TO STORM

SEED TO STORM

seed to
perfect storm

let us
consider
that dynamic

explosive this energy
in the million
volt zig-
    zag of its release

Nazaré
        Teahupoo

surf that water mountain
until it crashes into
a swirl
       of demented foam

when the world breaks for us
against us

              when storm
supercharges our
lives

         go with that flow
at ultra velocities

       plug yourself in
what
      else can you
                   are you

        supposed to do?

seed to
           perfect storm

storm to perfect seed

CROSSING THE LINE

CROSSING THE LINE Oceanic white tips gather it is all so pagan this ritual of Poseidon as we cross the line and are in the Southern hemisphere tipping the world upside down so that beautiful Cape Town where oceans and currents meet the new apex city seems only fair if the North wants to humiliate itself standing on its head turning somersaults a reversal of perspective seems a necessary corrective in Universe of absolute relativity it is long overdue