Damian Garside

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

the cabin I once graced
now lies
at the bottom of the sea

seems it was something
of a cursed vessel

and where I am now
this semi-desert
an inland ocean once
paleontology
has determined

in the long long view
that tingle tremble
beneath your feet
may
at the end of the day
be a matter truly
tectonic

I almost drowned
on a ship
in sea water
the day before
it docked in harbour

thought I could swim
just sail majestically
across the water

me being
most water
of all the water signs

sank
like a stone, a thing
of lead

thought wrong

somehow feel that this is
not the last
episode in
an ongoing saga

me,
and the bottom of the sea

NOTE TOWARDS A SNOWFLAKE APPRECIATION SOCIETY

Why should I not
appreciate a snowflake

(such a lovely
devil
in that detail)

melting
on my tongue, between
my fingers

each one
unique

cold,
precise

I guess one
might argue

superior in
every way to
a poem

even
a poem about
snowflakes

OTHERWISE

this flower
might well have been otherwise?

how on Earth can you not tell?

watching from the wings
I will always be there
as my snake self

coiling, uncoiling, sliding
over under
slurring those many
hissed syllables

in order to educate Eve
as to
words, possible worlds,
way
beyond her current
Scrabble set

and in one of these
an Adam without sin
who remains
eternally alone

looking everywhere for
a trace of that beauty
he has
yet not an inkling of

feeling, despite himself,
an inexplicable sense of
emptiness, incompleteness,
loneliness, loss

whereas
in all other permutations

he faces a time that
will come when all gardens
must be levelled

where
the leaves, the trees, the clouds,
the crystal streams and
mirroring waters,
the beasts and birds or the air
whose names
Adam gave

will all forget, be forgotten,
no one will remember, no
one to remember

YAMA

yam a
mammal not
a vegetable

not
a mineral

be a breast-sucker
that tugs, tugs, tugs

neatly strangled
at birth
by the cord
that bound me

gave me
my connection until
snip, snip, snap

smart smack to
my derrière to
help rush the Os
to my brain

and now
have these death-
fearing words pouring
out of
me like crazy

seeking
the Great Spirit

which is why
rove the plains

on
back of RV
or in
caterpillar-tracked weapon

it is
being much in my nature
to be always about death
find space
to roam

CRYPTIC

rearranged the furniture
in my head
(a few dry walls
had to knock out)

started to resemble
a mausoleum

which
so startled me
ended up
forgetting entirely
about my bed

and how and why
ended up in
the first place
fighting with this allegory

but did sleep
and collided with
all I had
moved and misplaced
throughout
my dream

in dream
no GPS no
proximity scream

things as they present themselves
could hardly be
more cryptic

ORIGIN STORY

I have totally
equipped this poem
for survival

to be a
lean,
mean
break-
dancing machine

sharp in tooth
incredibly soft in paw entirely.

PLAGUE

after years of boarding
and other water torture

he wrote his poems
to continue
the struggle

ease
his pain

avoiding
the word “raindrop”
like the plague

CHAIN

For you, Sir,
who have
seen been everything
and so much besides

I am here to announce
my bright design:

a
Seraph

in a clam

can
evolve to
the summit
Sirrah,
can do what it can

cutting out
the middle man

whose passes
everything up
down
down
up

in the chain
of command

STEAM

let’s make
fire together

in
our little boat
bottom of our boat

when
the sea rushes
in

we may drown
well drown

unless the fire
the water
go
for each other

turn us
to steam

COMPOSITION

pass me your pen
and I shall note down
those distances

the chalk on the blackboard
having list its imperative

the writing
on the wall changing
the moment it
gets written

the truth of relativity
not yet board-dustered off
yet already
done and dusted

and how many tiny white
flecks
look like motion-
captured stars, galaxies
in their movement?

at if
squeezing
the truth out of us,
pinching our analogies

the Universe were
writing us
writing the Universe itself

putting us
into, pulling us
out oh the picture

trying to figure out
which composition
works best

which
makes the
most sense