Author Archives: Damian Garside
BOOKWORM
BOOKWORM
(for MARK Z DANIELEWSKI)
a mysterious book
appears
what am I saying?
a mysterious collection
of texts appears
housed
quite compactly
in a mysterious bookcase
(in fact the fit between
books and
bookcase
is,
uncertainty theorem aside,
mathematically exact)
my fall from grace
was reading these books, taking
from this tree
though the fruit was gorgeous
waking up
from violently lucid dreams
and vomiting over
the bedspread
I figured there might be some value
in the sacred prohibitions
against the blasphemy
of writing
reading
but
who wrote these books
and who wrote the words leaking
through the brickwork
suddenly
manifesting themselves
on the walls?
I write down my dream
but then read further, find,
it was
already written
suddenly the term “intertextual” is no longer
just radical polyphony of meaning
but being stretched and pulled apart
by the conflicting
gravitational pull
of dramatically dissonant worlds
I burn
all I have written
the storehouse of my life
stacked in a pyre
having failed the inquisition
we are
all locked in a fiction, a forever
thread-creating, fabric splicing brain
stuck
in
either hemisphere
doomed
to tell our tale
leaves pages
things metaphoric,
synonymous
left
all over the place


IN THEIR NEED TO BOND
IN THEIR NEED TO BOND
“Oh, Mr Bond!” Raul Silva
“Skyfall”
the rogues
want to prorogue
they want to
go Klingon
they want to buccaneer
they are the
best worst pirates
you had
rather you
had never heard
of
when ferocious alpha aliens
arrive to conquer in
(of all things) their mothership
they will be desperate to
host, put on
a show,
suicidal in
their need to bond
play footsie-
tentacle
under the table
with these creatures
human, or alien,
nothing ever
on the level
nothing
above board
Sent from my iPhone

ONE DAY ON MARS
ONE DAY ON MARS
Mars bars
Mars bars
the man has been
eating far too
many
Mars bars
his brain
is reaching
escape
velocity
reading too
much Martian poetry
I blame you
Mr Wells, blame
you Mr Raine
blame you Schiaparelli
dug
all those
canals
in is brain
and above all,
I blame you Mr Bradbury
filling his head
with Martian mushrooms,
telepathic Martians
losing a war
of colonial conquest
most basic parallel
with Earth history
a writer
strolling across
a desert
plain
munching
on a Mars bar
(overhead the irregular
shaped
Phobos and Deimos)
might feel compelled to make
Sent from my iPhone
WOBBLESY
WOBBLESY
My wobblesy body feels like it was made of TS jelly wobbles and was
dragged Through the Looking Glass in search of a body of knowledge
manga fans oh how all the animations allow you to stylize my body horror
They do not give out Nobel prizes for nothing come
Follow Me
I shall take you out deep into no man’s land to where the Nobel Prizes grow graphic, thick and furious like a jungle or an industrial complex
oh this thing entropy nothing on earth and under the spell of gravity can resist your will
under your Sith serpent
power
avoid
becoming aged and bent,
crippled by time or
flattened entirely; rolled tighly into a Prufrock ball
silver-papered
collapsing under mass of own gravity or hideous weight
such as the case
with its monstrous prosody
that
cuts through carves through
sinew and line
thar mighf be way better expressed
But I am consciousness, damn it,
and will
not be so undermensch, slave
mentality addressed
and so will resist
have it in me: in my D and also my A
to pull a radical chemistry, total
kitchen-sink alchemy
become blob of early science-fiction
horror
terror of the cosmos eveb
with ridiculous prop and
sans world-altering green screen
philosophy-rewriting graphic
(that
book hollowed out
where Neo
hides his truth
truth you
have to see
and feel)
and as blob
name up in lights and
star of the John Carpenter show
lovecraft loving myself
(yet nothing masturbatory)
demigod of
sexual psychosexual
sixties psychedelic acid
dissolving everything in my slow inexorable path
and
then some
putting paid (style of
late capital
economic erotic orgasmic ectoplasm)
of all that
Borg resists, fails your
cosmic Turing test of simple logic
suppliy and demanfd
not to speak of Malthusian
stupidities of my sweet but stupid
biodegradable humanity
float tp the surface stuff in
the primal soup and
expendable offal connecting tissue
body fluods
in event of war and advent of
armanents’ industry
could cry for
this humanity
if I had eyes
and I had tears
lurking in the undergrowth in
alien camouflage
so far beneath ice and
fire
and blasted rock planet
of your proverbial, perpetual underworld
below, beneath and
so incomprehensible
to ali
that is Aesthetics of Guides and Gods and
old outworn mythology of
Anglo American poetry
modernist to
a cataclysmic
fascist failing fault.
JURASSIC
JURASSIC
we grasp
we create
imaginary worlds
in abundance
hold up mirrors to
our nature than little
old Hamlet could never
have foreseen
would have
fallen off the stage
in pure
stupefaction
(and his author too,
for that matter)
and yet
for all this gnosis
we remain in essence
still prehensile
machine-like, true,
but prone to self-
subvert
and so, like the entire planet,
I was spellbound watching
Mr Spielberg’s tale cautionary
wondrous meditation
upon Mary Shelley’s theme
still
some of that ancient T-Rex,
velociraptor inside of us
the monstrous beauty of
these creatures
blazed across the screen
huge thrill
massive awe
but ultimately, big money,
every cent of which
drained out in sequel after
mindless sequel
these creatures
so passe, defunct,
dead
and threadbare
a different fable
here
about art
and story
and the death of
our species
to be
dragged out kicking
and screaming
into
the light of day.
GO
GO
Let me go
hunter-gatherer
my last breath
burning in my lungs
no need to cry out
try to communicate anything
just take in the light
sharp as the flint tip
of an
arrow
light like this
still a
mystery
and let them think
they have solved it
these
men of science
only for it to
bed to differ
take issue with them
who do see
how we continue
on that wave
one wave
capturing this life
bringing it
all together.
EXCHANGE
EXCHANGE
We thought the goddess
was here incarnate
to impart her blessing
we thought Aphrodite
but it was
time of Kali
wrong mythology, wrong
about everything
and you
hot-stove focused
when
I made my move
the chemistry I thought alchemy
much, much mistaken
this
kitchen stuff, basic
premise of our evolutionary trail
exchange of fluids, no
noble elements, grubby
hydrocarbons
no catalyst here for
transubstantiation
trans-
formation of the real
and we, after the greedy, grasping
clamour of our exchange
left wondering
where we were heading
praying
we not taking
our Universe, the Universe
along with us
for some dark ride
and Kali’s dark eyes filling
with the light that is
her darkness
needing
our little, paltry,
insignificant dance
to spur her upon
her cosmic charge.
WAYSIDE
WAYSIDE
Not a doubt
my script is being written
by a severe Russian novelist
giving me really poor lines
a Dostoevsky life
this piece here
being pretty prime example
poem, if that’s what
you can call it
falling
quite by the wayside
and me
wandering through life
seemingly without an arc
let alone
driven by quest, on
pilgrimage
following
the flow (if flow it is) of
words
wherever they go,
wherever they take me
with what false promise,
fatal lure
ot gnosis, wisdom.
sublimation
revelation
that I am no one’s fool,
no one’s text,
no one’s flawed or
anti-
hero, character-whatever
puppet told
to prance
and then put back
in the box
ECLIPSE
ECLIPSE
got kissed
by an eclipse
full
on the lips
nothing sensual:
something industrial
about the sound
of those
suckers locking
or truly confrontational
like the clash
of contending blades
and you
in your headset
oblivious to my
life-and-death love battle
having zoned yourself out
of the untidy range
of all the ambient
swirling noise
and feedback
waiting for the light, the
total light taking
too long
about its dawning
waiting
for new
colours,
different darkness
still
same old old playing
play
rewind
play rewind
the
tunes of our time
tunes of our time
