Author Archives: Damian Garside

BETWEEN EXTREMES

BETWEEN EXTREMES get twisted by the cynicism blown away by the naked irony throws me this way and that up and down the human spectrum and yes I can do Socrates can do Atilla can do St Francis and do Genghis Kham in my genes I am both Norman Viking and Catholic martyr every word here part of that inner negotiation solution plotted in the dialectic and reconcilation between extremes between extremes

FORGIVE ME

FORGIVE ME forgive me O poets of Palestine for I sat round idly looling for rhymes, for couplets whilst you were targeted and killed something about the word even at its softest, most musical cannot but be a threat to the iron mind of power and so I am trying to compose somwtgknv here asking for forgiveness looking for redress but my imagination is failing feels annihilated have no means to express how it feels, what it means to be hit by bombs and bullets in thd middle of a poem thrse tired old feet, these crippled legs putting up such resistance as I hazard a step in your broken, bloody shoes

MAMBAS

MAMBAS so complacent and complacent yet again left-brain, right wing such recipe for human stupidity deluding yourselves into expecting slow worms when we came as mambas — venom measured to make maximum use of every critical drop and prempting rebuttal speed off ths charts impossible to catch us and how you floundered losing your sense of place and actual places slipping into paralysis mamba neurotoxic venom stealing into your system taking slow but incontravertibly catastrophic effect

CASCADE

CASCADE weaponize this poem harshly weaponize it softly need to defend the indefensible suck good blood truth (and hashtag) out of my thumb opposable entity, fattest of fingers and hey hey Deleuze happy hanaka Hegel me in line with arm raised high to deflect legal contention from terror, my accomplice me now in bed waiting for breakfast, as simple as a one slice two slice open-face sandwich making for an interesting dialectic, however you elect to interpret reader writer master slave blurring of these categories, until, who knows?, look to the East! Look to the South! maybe a cascade

BY THEIR FRUIT

BY THEIR FRUIT

I have such trouble
writing this poem

my words swell fat
like overripe fruit
burst on
   my page, on my fingers

covering everything with
sap wet, thick
and sticky

in colour and feel
indistinguishable from blood

and these
    are the same words
the golden children of the law
use in the court room

where
      such words do
not explode, do not
shatter the auditorium
with blood-juice
          and bomb shrapnel

proving
     (sadly, sadly)

that there will always be something about poems, about

poets
and the power
of their poetry

that remains forever
                          at a distance

tragically unreal

STUMBLE

STUMBLE

we were falling asleep
trying to left-brain
follow every
technicality after
technicality
(South Africa got no case
because we forgot
to insist on
a reply)

but we will show you
dispute if you
diss our
deep integrity

(bet after this you
wish we were
your legal
arm)

but where
were your human fire and
intensity
moments of raw humanity

saw only a shifting of the goal posts
a stilted conjuring act

none of that Irish flair and poetry
threatening to scorch the beams in
the palace roof bringing it tumbling down, everything upside

down
and tumbling down

the world tipped South and
the Southern Cross

pointing the way
dear next Dante
away
from Hell
and towards Heaven

yes no poetry, not a flash at all,
just stumbling responses
and mixed-up
papers shuffled like cards but

all of them
jokers

not a poet
in the pack

not one
homegrown (perhaps
you did
them in

as you did every voice in Gaza
especially
those of the poets