Author Archives: Damian Garside

EASTER POEM

EASTER POEM

this morning
noticed a book on the
topshelf of my library

“The History of the World”
as if
there could be
only one

but history must end some time surely?

and what happens then?
who can write history
once it has gone, it is over?

felt that this thought
had been
in my brain before
and was coming back again

and for its part
the book behaved itself
did not spring magically
up off the shelf and
down
onto the floor

all the pages breaking out
of their binding and
flowing as
if upon a river
across the hall floor

and into the lounge
and dining room

telling all my other books
their gospel news

so many other books
for my sins I am
a many book person, unfaithful
reader

should be sworn without
possibility of divorce to
the one true word

but as true words go
the narrative is scary
and there are dark,
brutally rich figures
hoping to
make it so

for what is wealth and power
if you cannot freeze-frame
time at
moment of
immortal Empire

for it is their hard work, sweat
and acumen raised them above us

and righteously

it is therefore correct and proper
that not as slaves, but
as gods
they should walk amongst us
be almighty

more than correct
and proper

it is written: they will make it so

WINTER

WINTER

you do it an injustice
to call it Winter
blithely so

even to inflate it
metaphorically as
a disastrous winter,
bringing storms
of Shakespearean proportions

no, this is something
of another order entirely

you would have to turn
to turn to the ancient
scriptures to have ang idea
of how terrible
it is, the narrative
we are all about
to enter now

one story
fits all

one story
destroys us all

and you thought the
crazy symbolism of
apocalyptic ending was just science fiction

was just poetry

the words are there

they are waiting for you

the power is there
the storm is here

RIDDLE

RIDDLE

“the sky is television”
Craig Raine

It’s a riddle:
a Martian sits in his lounge
somewhere in
Johannesburg South Africa
or the British isles

he attacks his postcard
with a wickedly sharp
pair of scissors
cutting up the postcard
into ever smaller pieces

scrambling every syllable
of the message
which already is
written in Martian
a language almost too
hard
for us earthling humans
to either speak
or understand

he is scared that the paranoiacs who currently
rule this planet
in the most all-
powerful authoritarian way
imaginable

will read into his message of
manner of things mistranslating and

misreading, turning “I am
so happy
to have made the acquaintance of Mr Raine”, to
“Mars must attack now
Earth has no defence against
our tripod devices
we can rain death down
upon them and seize
their planet, I will be sending some of Earth’s many
textbook manuals
on Empire and
colonialism,”

And now the message has been cut down to the size
of individual atoms with
their subatomic particles

to be sent to his loving wife
on Mars who he misses so much

easy to send at light speed
when in the form of gas plasma

she
should have little trouble
restoring it to its original

even my Martian standards
she is a uniquely resourceful lass.

FEEL

FEEL

practice
makes perfect

so let me give
gratitude for
being alive
(just about)

yet still aporeciating
that life energy, that
fierce will to be
in all its
glory
(sonetimes painful
in the extreme)

I sit here everyday
it has become my own
tiny ritual to tell
ths cosmos that I am
part of everything
in case I am
not noticed

and even I am floating
free in space, prey
to zero gravity at the mercy of all

that emerged out of
the explosive creation
of the Universe

and still overlooked,
completely undetected

yet nothing can deny I feel
no one can gainsay
the painful gratitude that
I feel
because I know I feel

HARBOUR

HARBOUR

I am at the harbour
looking for
thinking about, well,
harmony

but people believe
I see the world so differently
for me any kind of harmony
is going
to be difficult to achieve

in the quayside cafe I sit
watching the ships arrive
watch
them leave

in my coffee tiny things
appear to be swimming
as small
as ants, or even smaller
like atoms
or electrons

if I stir my tea the wrong way
suddenly it will become
the coffee
I should have
ordered in the first place

the coffee you believe
yoy saw me drinking
but a moment ago

and there we shall be back
in Duncan Dock Cape Town
April 64

and the mail liner passenger ship
that brought me
having just berthed divulging
my parents younger sister
and tiny (but not
molecule-small) two-
year
old brother

me never having been born
or not narrowly having
drowned in
the ship’s first class
pool
me thinking I could swim
me thinking

myself capable of anything
a whole wide workd and
brave
new land
to conquer (young
British boy
do we not
always conquer?)

and so I push off in
the deep end

make a few strokes
and go under

time enough for chat
with God

a terrifying few seconds with him
chance for him to explain
me eternity

and how alternate history
fits into that picture.

Tea coffee. Tea coffee.
Coffee tea. Cannot make my mind up in the queue for
hot beverages
maybe need a dice
or something

and here we are
where we were
sans little boy braggart
British confidence

long sans apartheid
and any kind of attachment
to any former self

perhaps this is
my gift, my redemptive
sole contentment

perhaps
here at the harbour
watching ship after ship
where I am not a passenger

arrive
depart

I can enjoy whatever harmony
this is and
what it might now mean

PROOF OF THE PUDDING

PROOF OF THE PUDDING

We sat in the Zen garden playing chess
the wind came up
sp we removed to
the gazebo

the wind died down
so we
     sought out 
the chess garden
to solve riddles and puzzles
all crafted many
many yeara ago
to inculcate mindful Zen

the sound of a well
half-full
    contemplating emptiness
contemplating plenitude 

since we left the gazebo 
a moment ago 
    it has entered a state
if steep decline

a winged insect noisily buzzes past
iridescent: almost like
a futuristic tiny
flying machine

an alien drone
         though to the besr
of my knowledge it
did not devour anything, 
neither was it eaten 

it did nevertheless I feel, we felt,
constiute proof
               that the world needs
chaos, the Universe needs speculation.
          
       

PRIZE WRITER

PRIZE WRITER

I was sick of writing
everything for him

poems, essays, novels
articles letters
tracts extending
for thousands
of pages

all of it done
in blink of my
laser-scanning quartz
crystal eye

just had
to do the business
take him
out
of circulation

get
Shakespearean
on his ass

so no more Pulitzers and Bookers
no more glitz moments
at the literary awards
(your face
admittedly, so good
on camera
would soak up
the spotlight)

no more
dreaming all day
of a Nobel Prize.

OLD SOUL

OLD SOUL

I am old soul
have been told
do believe

this life
I feel naked
without a katana

old souls
my beautifully spoken
exquisitely philosophical
Yogi tells us

have just
too much karma
are born to suffer terribly
every Kali Yuga
incarnation

but young souls
are so much happier

no karmic debt, no
idea who or what is Kali
Yuga

pretty much no idea
or feeling
to think deeply
talk seriously about

pretty much
no soul
to suffer at all.