Author Archives: Damian Garside

REFAAT

REFAAT

so now
they have resorted
to killing poets

because
the pen is mightier
than the sword
it is said

and they took that literally
and
    as is well known
James Bond carries
his old Q branch
speciality
of rocket-
launching pen

nothing
      more deadly

which
you know,
       we know
  
every spy agency knows this
it is something that
military intelligence
                even one
caught false flag asleep
at its post
has prepared for
extensively
trained for
exhaustively

knows
   only too well

and how can
target
    be a poet

if they are all animals?
that is the syllogism for you
to
   take to heart
the
   reactive-armour
heart they
gave you

as you plough through
guilty humanity
     steel-skinned in
your Merkava
   kampfwagen

hunting for the tunnel
will take you down to Hell

where
     poets, great poets,
will all be waiting

to raise a few things,
take issue with you

by hook
   or by crook

endeavour to persuade you
that there is
something in
this voice, about
                    this speech
that justifies itself

WHEN NC GOES MISSING

WHEN NC GOES MISSING

when Noam Chomsky goes
missing in M. I. T. they will
all say
  end of an era
I will say
  end of a planet

and
  we will both
essentially
be correct

though my
feelings on the matter
might be difficult to
express
      might struggle with
all sorts of
gatekeepers
    internal and external

battle to find both
the voice and platform
in which and from which
      to express this

eternal battle: beyond good and evil
(as Uber-Fred put it)
fight to
      the death and
beyond death

between
    the politics of print
and
  creativity of grammar

Oh we all await
our day of reckoning
but how we
    characterize them
so fundamentally
different

no rapture for me please, nor
May Day square tankfest

but to see you
    on the podium confirms
grace
  of intelligence
intelligence of grace

so much silver hair there
and beard

who now has the audacity
to argue the toss
            for supremacy
of golden?

MANIFESTO

MANIFESTO

I am
the Mike Tyson
of poetry

go straight
for a knockout
best
    pound
for pound

what’s that you saying
dissing me
at the weigh in?

sorry can’t make
head or tail
of it
  seems you
just walked into
an uppercut

someone who is a real
backstreet badass
did
    smack you
in the mouth

and there in faltered
your tactical plan and
halcyon vision

fell
  by the wayside

third
  knockdown

and out therefore
on a technicality

I studied this art
from Homer to Ezra
know
  all these
technicalities

you may say
I am completely au fait
with
    every tone and trick
and
    ruse in typology

seamless it be
                my artistry

which is
    why you not seeing it

later
    enlightenment, illumination
but for now:
          lights out!

GAZEBO

GAZEBO

(the) gazebo
is a portal

can
  whisk you away

transport to mainland,
ancient China

watch the Sengoku Jidai
run its course, take place

alter
  the outcome if
you feel that way

and so no
war with Russia or
Pearl Harbor

no cities devastated
by nuclear fire

unless it is shipping things
across the galaxy at
faster than light speed
tickles
    your fancy

like this insect-like, alien,
shapeshifting creature

          its antennae so switched on
ready to receive

huge, biomechanical possibly,
perhaps even shape-shifting

pushing the boundaries
of what we
        might conceive

here, outlandishly, to
communicate, negotiate,
wing
    its way to our leader
dictate
  surrender terms

or thrust us aeons ahead
as we crack the code
of its impossible technology

or stick you
with its stinger, run off
with genetic evidence

that others, no less curious
than our
    so far limited species

might like to study
    perhaps find

hard
  to believe

CLEAN

CLEAN

Senator HIJKL
dawdles through the hearing

playing solitaire
fiddling
with the Tarot

I see
The Fool
The Falling Tower
The Hanged Man

I do not see
Death
or
The Devil

but I am not observing him
as clinically as I should
those cards may
have slipped by me
by sleight of hand

and now
  a pencil is produced
for doodling or
perhaps sketching
              whilst the video
runs he
      doodles away

sketches a future
I’m sure as works of art go
it is
    no Picasso
not Cubist or
blue period

        certainly no Guernica

Oh JKL doodles
      doodles away

        the walls of Republican Rome
once covered
in such graffiti
                  under Augustus
were given
a clampdown extreme
    right royal
and (most) imperial clean

never had
      to suffer a repeat of
the process

never
the call to go
  through such a scouring
                            again.

TEXTBOOK

TEXTBOOK

it is a textbook case

need to
kill every
shadow

every
evil
    reflection

erase
as quiet as we can
with total
extreme
prejudice

kill
every word
    before
story escapes

anything
gets written

anything
gets said  

it is
a textbook case

textbook case
for all time
     remembered
as
   true, necessary
exercise

     the pages
soaked in blood

forever
      forgot

what
the law requires
what
the faith demands

WITHOUT

WITHOUT

poems written in the darkness
have a different timbre
a different cadence

a fundamental uncertainty
word insecurity

for light
            is the state
the statistics do show
heavily favored by readers

and without readers
          (stuck in the dark,
dead in a war that
suddenly escalated a
little
  bit nuclear)

who cares
what is written
on the page at all

at all?

KING OF SWORDS

KING OF SWORDS

War is
not part

of my nature.
Said
    many prayers
had it
excommunicated.

Hiroshima
      is not
my business, neither
is it in my chemistry

my molecules do not
resonate with that
Einstein equation, are
left stone cold by
Oppenheimer’s
        Gita paraphrasing

should you, when you
slip curved Katana blade into
                                     my hand

I become aware
of the gravity

way
     beyond my capacity

                         very thought
of shearing, slicing flesh

turning
    my fingers to sushi

                for a moment
but then the power
and the craft

      such beauty in steel

steeling my spirit to point
I can do anything

kill or
be killed       let those
ancient dice roll

for here
      the rush comes

goes

      and maybe wounds, maybe
death, perhaps
   slaughter and havoc

maybe
       not a scratch, blood
to expatiate

peace in my heart: who knows,
can hazard
       a guess how true

and longlasting

      sigh of regret even
in victory with the sheathing
of such
      a blade.

VIENNA GAME

VIENNA GAME

was playing against you
in the Vienna game

down to a tie-breaker
stakes couldn’t
have been
    higher

my light side
versus
      your dark side

my deepest dark
versus
   your brightest light

attack, defence
          defence, attack

my Freud to
            your Jung; Jung
to
  your Freud

Yin Yang
Yang Yin

                yanging
and yinging

               end to end
stuff
     up and down the board

lines moving      unmoving
broken                 unbroken

                                     lines
of our lives

two
     complementary strategies

right through to
          the desired endgame