Author Archives: Damian Garside

GALAXY

GALAXY

Ah, yes, Professor,
that Gutenberg Galaxy!

first only one Church;
and now
everywhere a church
far as the eye can see
a billion church communities

religion
is booming
Jesus is booming, dividing
and subdividing
splendidly proliferating

first there was one text
now there are many texts

once many
texts, many libraries

but now, when it
comes to libraries
business is
on
a downturn

we are down
to our last one

GALAXY

GALAXY

Ah, yes, Professor,
that Gutenberg Galaxy!

first only one Church;
and now
everywhere a church
far as the eye can see
a billion church communities

religion
is booming
Jesus is booming, dividing
and subdividing
splendidly proliferating

first there was one text
now there are many texts

once many
texts, many libraries

but now, when it
comes to libraries
business is
on
a downturn

we are down
to our last one

AUTOPILOT

AUTOPILOT

“Vada a bordo, cazzo!”

Sank in the shallows
actually needed
more water to
make a good job of it

the sea sparkling
Champagne clear
nothing wine-dark
about it
and yet without question
still the lair of Poseidon

and he in charge, at the helm,
somehow abstracted, too
pressed uniform
for any hero’s journey

everything analytical
set
to pause, cruise
control selected for
vital and most critical

falling like Pantaloon
by sheer outrageous luck
into first seat in
first lifeboat

skew serendipities:
disaster sloshed out of
its amphora
as superrich cocktail

and no
tripartite structure: beginning middle ending
rushing
like an express train
(where
there is a will there
is a way and
rudder should find it)

catharsis — this the thing
if we are chosen to survive
we may well talk
about later

hubris: most brutal, un-
forgiving of our flaws

always available
to shoulder the blame.

IN THE GREAT LIBRARY OF MOSHAWANE

IN THE GREAT LIBRARY OF MOSHAWANE

sometimes I wake up
in the great library of Moshawane

and suddenly ir has become
all the great libraries
in the history of the world

the place is so quiet
has a charmed silence

and I think of she
who kept the library of
Alexandria
until they burned her
books and priceless scrolls

books so easy to burn
to take your anger
out on

to torch to suppress any
inconvenient thoughts, words,
expression of ideas

that do not fit the mould
that we are better
off losingthe circle of all we love

and know
needing to be
drawn
smaller, smaller
than any fabulous circle

until of a size
no bigger
than a noose

and here I am telling you
what it is the books are saying
talking to each other

in this charmed silence
feeling to
humble to speak

waking up in a library
of dream

EVERYWHERE

EVERYWHERE

everything is moving
and we
are moving with it

takes you by surprise
doesn’t it
to find there is
no still point

and this poem:
you think it is on
the page, on the screen

of this you may
be certain but actually it isn't

the words are, yes indeed
the words are but the poem isn't

it’s location is unspecified
somewhere betwixt
and between will leave you to find, discover exactly where

for I must fly
by metaphor and
transport

GAZEBO

I built myself gazebo
step by step
in my mind

hoping that it might be
pretty much the ideal
place to write Nature poetry,
Japanese tanka, and haiku

can close my eyes
feel centred, grounded
and put
pen to paper

shut out, if but for a moment,
the world of worry, serious debt,
huge obligation

alone except for
things I host
with a yen to explore

things curiously ambivalent,
hybrid-seeming, here
from the dawn
of time, perhaps,
but currently sharing
this address corporeal
in
manner internal

could be of our world,
most secretly so, or

genuinely alien, of home-
world extraterrestrial

creatures in size ever-
shifting, unphased by
change of shape
wholesale genetic
adjustment
and spatial orientation

like this exquisite, verdegris
dragonfly with
what looks like
neon
under-lighting

buzzing around my head in
size and demeanour
flitting across the

breadth of
every spectrum, between
tiny, metallic waspy thing

and
titanium-alloyed killer
drone

but
this my gazebo
this my throne.