Author Archives: Damian Garside

SIDE

SIDE

smokestack lightnin’

wild side
other side
                  flip
side

bit
on the side

I hears you
   can’t do nothing
when twelve bar slide
or blow
   that blues harp

so much death in that ocean
under that mud-brown river

hell yes

I’ve studied that time
saw how
it lost
     its colour

all that
glorious grey

      war never over
till its over

divide outside always
                   first inside

STONES

STONES
  
I saw the scene
in the Chess Studio film

so iconic and
yet the moment did
not know it
yet

revolution in the music
of the muddy river
with all
its deltas and
tributaries
(do not
   trust me to
describe it, go read
Derek Walcott’s
fabulous poem)

broke blues legend affronted
at the cheek of these
five skinny
     ultra pasty white
long-haired
dionysian ruffians

unloading amps on their turf
like it was all
        in a day’s work

just part of the process of
legend, transformation of life
into mythology

yes, Mr Waters, welcome
to epic
    they took their name
from one
of your records (or maybe
it was some
Jewish folk singer’s)

step opon Olympus
they say and of course
do not say

they are the music of this time
this changing time
come full circle

from hereon in
it is pure Rolling Stones

LOVE DUST

LOVE DUST

came across
a speck of love
dust
    in the Universe

travelling at, near,
or beyond
the speed
of light

in slowed down
approaching Earth

like the alien
mother ship
in Independence Day

which became an issue
of global security
national concerm

world waiting with baited breath
praying it would
burn up
    in the Earth’s atmosphere

failing which
there is always the
nuclear option

deflect the trajectory
or vaporize entirely

for if that speck of love
should touch anything human

could go extreme viral
wreck our civilization
the one we have spent
decades
     building and
re-building

love bringing
the extinction
            of all we love

FAIR PROPORTION A

FAIR PROPORTION

they bring the hybrid
to his cell
she needs to talk to him
since species-wise she
has a fair proportion
of his genetic makeup

here she is
for what it’s worth
I agreed to meet her
hard to figure out
exactly what
is human
but one must
presume
it is there

so this is it
this is in me, embodiment
of what I am
capable
   the likeness is
there but everything
about him
seems guarded, hidden
as if he instinctively realizes
all that is terrible in
his capacity
   all that
    can be wrong, go wrong,
and he did terrible wrong

she aaked to talk to him
get answers to questions
she felt she needed
answers to, for her
crucially important

so she could figure out
for herself what is them
what is us

we talk
    She is so insistent in
going over things, knowing details,
minutiae, everything
exactly

I look at him one lsst time
try to see through those eyes
(I do not have human eyes
to me they
      are untrustworthy,
thoroughly upsetting)

I want to tell.him.
he might have, ought to,
have sought forgiveness
for his crimes, these
humsn crimes

senze
    a moment– out of nowhere
of grace
and dignity

so I leave with a wish
that he finds courage and
composure at his execution

having killed so many of
my people, pure and hybrid,

so different and yet
who knows how close
in what is felt inside.

She leaves the cell. We
ask no questions. What
hopes she has, what
reassurance she found
is hers alone. We
should not enquire.













GARGANTUAN

GARGANTUAN

my room is expanding

I am expanding

everything is expanding
emptying out
taking up space

this, as I checked with my
man De Grasse Tyson

is specified by
the recipe
  
      prescription has it
                   nailed

(never using the word nail
without conjuring with the obvious)

you must check
          it is possible
if infinite time in an
              infinite universe

that you might
        have misread the message
or not
received it at all

on your lonesome out there
contracting contradictarily
or at least
      counterintuitively

heading down to a size
where subatomic gets huge
takes on
       features best
described as epic and
gargantuan

this everything notwithstanding
whatever will be
        
and so we must conclude
that right from the outset
was
   huge aspiration

room tearaway expansion
including both
        window
and door

and yet, as relayed earlier,
nothing seems to have changed,
all appears stable

world still the case in
its logical ways

as much as is deranged yet
perfectly in range