Author Archives: Damian Garside

SHORTCUT

SHORTCUT

taking a shortcut
across the river
to the recruiting office

need to get there
before the apocalypse and
before closing time

running across the river
and through the rainforest
where
     I can die next
to the bombed-out Church
like Sergeant Elias

defending freedom and
Democracy, for
the salvation of humanity
need
    to put my
    life on the line

before
closing time

     cpuld have been dropped
by a purple haze bird with
voice
    of  a mini-gun

but my feet just
     brushed the surface and
much to my My Lai rapture
I had
   reached ths other side

about to enlist staightout
but they needed
   to first test
         my morality

wanted no Sergeant Pepper
dreamer imagining
        peace upon
the
world
    community in our time

all you needing

           number nine

and me
      heading for the station
but it closing
                vanishing from
                               me

like the thing just apocryphal
thing
  a complete mirage

and me
     passing cross after
cross and
pyre
      after pyre

no doubt in my mind
this the last battle, the finsl war

in the midst of fire and
death and blood

     something feels reborn

BROKEN

BROKEN

poetry is sublime
code

bought you a nut-
cracker best
to crack it

heard the thunder, saw
the lightning created
by yout exertions

thpught if this
             be the reaction
of what we call Nature
tag
   as the cosmos

and if sweet Lennon-
McCartney lyrics be
the end
   of civilization

what would the lightshow be
like
      in store for us
   
  if we were to collide the
exposed
    God particles of the cosmos
                           (beyond
hypothetically)

in order to create singularities
         deep underground?

PROFESSOR SUGAR CUBE

PROFESSOR SUGAR CUBE

wanted to
      dissolve all boundaries
between
    self and cosmos, writer
and word

sucked that juice out
instantly
       on the road to
strangest territory

such a dark, dark terminal
sweetness

    and multiple many-track
dimensions trapped within the
confines
        of that cube
         

.

MR DARWIN

MR DARWIN

the observation
became conjecture,
became hypothesis, became
theory, became
scientific truth
    (most
assured of
        truths)

but it was
    when it became
metaphor that the world burned
                      burned
in the interests
of survival of the fittest

when extended into our
                realm of analogy

      a monstrous fitness
giving itself license to brutally contrive
        rewrite the world

                  slaughter half
the species

        in name of room to maneuver
space to
be

fresh habitat to colonize
      build that new fantastic civilization

some of us always dreamt of
          the rest, our worst
        nightmare fear

                    this on the supreme strength
of the
        shape of a scale
                          length of a
feather

HUMONGOUS

HUMONGOUS

human look
humongous
through
alien eyes

(forget any
cosmic romance
with sweet tentacled
creature)

the bodies we
born with

not
   for light-
speed optimized

what spring and
bounce born with

gravity level-best to
be levelling

so here we be stuck
all can do
     is wave as they pass
us
   any cosmic, astral travellers

then
    best write it off, crazy
to believe

when everything in
our Universe premised
                            on
plausible denial

MACHINE

MACHINE

“The autonomous logico-fantastic machine is something I like insofar as (and if) it serves some real need: the need to enlarge the sphere of what we can imagine, and to introduce into our limited range of choices “absolute rejection” by means of a world thought out in all its details according to other values and other relationships.” Italo Calvino

you must have
read this poem yesterday

or maybe you are
planning
to read it
tomorrow

stop me before
I ramble on erroneously:
you may well
have read the poem
today
    already

perhaps
    you are ahead of me

just how it is
       how this machine works:
nature of the game

it could be  stone-cold fact

that you
are always ahead of me

maybe you read it
when I was undressed

might have told me
I would have dressed
smartly for you

or gone all Lagerfeld
dressed
       to kill

but what use seduction
when I may
well
    be dead already?

what use
          putting pedal to the metal
linguistically speaking
upping the ante
so that
        my words
                 might touch you well?

you read this poem tomorrow

you read this poem
                     how things at
that moment dictated
                       everything

and
    short of signalling every cue
or clue

     nothing I could do

THINK I MUST HAVE READ SOMETHING LIKE IT BY H G WELLS

THINK I MUST HAVE READ SOMETHING LIKE IT BY H G WELLS

I feel it now
something
    burrowing
into
my brain

know the strategy;
see the tactical plan

how they plot
to nuke that landscape,
shred
    my opinions

reduce me to a compliant
all-accepting wreck

crucial my contribution
to this war
      of the worlds
upcoming election.