Author Archives: Damian Garside

HOME

HOME

we spent all night
in my tiny room
on
   the huge
                    farm

touching
loving

  playing with
each other

retelling fairy tales
reciting
   nursery rhymes

until

the cows would
                  come home

dawning upon us

the cows
would come home

the cows came home

home home home

SLIP

SLIP

sorry

I was writing this poem

and my pen
slipped

the text
spilled

       all over
the place

ruining our
time together

wrecking our date

feel I need
to underline, bold font,
how
   regretful it all
is

how embarrassed I feel

took out my
      pen to write these words

construct
     an apology

and the damn pen as
pens do
       went all Derrida on me

FIXING

FIXING
“where I’m wrong, I’m right”
The Beatles: Fixing a Hole

let’s
see what
we got here

check if
there is a hole
if so
   how to
fix it

if not
why not?

poem need
the right kind of holes
(where would
we be
   without holes)

just jokin’
poem got to be
fun
   poem got
to be serious

we had some
fun so
   let’s go
serious

switch of a sudden
turn on dime
between
   fun and serious

truth to power: break
in through the back
leave via
    the front

do your dreadlock goldilock
thing
   have your Gulliver
child’s play
                   turn it
          all
upside
      down

seems like you serious
but
    can we be
sure to
    be sure

that last line
     gleams wickedly, such
a look in your eye

and eye need
           the light

how else
delight?

bend those bars in
before out

     your light coming in
your light
going out

       see here: a VOICE

in with

       a shout

COUPLED

COUPLED

be careful
what you
wish for

imagination
coupled
with
distance

is such
a killer

the creature of
my dreams
was
    so different
strange, alluring
utterly unique and
exotic

sadly
    she is
light years distant
in space
and time

her species across
the galaxy on a
distant
      epic planet

                      however
you do spin it,

her species not having
begun to
truly evolve yet

at least in a direction
I would extremely like

CLOTHES

CLOTHES

in the field of forever contention
tunes battle away

they waltz around you
whilst and even as
you fail to
consider

how naked you are, and
naked not only
but how

transparent
        such they, as in the fable,
they instantly infer
that you are Emperor

drunk on the fiction
of power and grandeur

not to
mention the illusion
of flesh and blood and,
of course, clothes

BOMBSHELL

BOMBSHELL

so much life
surrounding me
desirous
   of investing me

before
the night is over
I’ll probably find
myself

stripped
to the bone

down
to my core

even before they get
to lug me to
the graveyard
screw me down
in my coffin

talking about life
commerce between creatures
predators prey
opportunistic strikes
best
    evolution

on a You Tube video
was astonished to see
a much
critiqued young lady with
monster flippers and
aqualung
    frolicking amongst
tiger sharks in the sea
off Hawaii

same species that savaged
the sailors floating
in the ocean beside
the torpedoed
Indianapolis

heading to the depths of
the Pacific to
        a now long-
forgotten grave

doom
    shadowed ship that
the Japanese had
been stalking

on its return to
home port after
slipping into
             Tinian

as per schedule, to drop
off the bomb

DESERT DE ZERT

DESERT DE ZERT

walk through the desert
calling things into being
wishing things into being

I articulate
but the words I pronounce
live on their own planet

sometimes
when you see
ocean you
write desert

sometimes when desert
you write ocean

this is how poetry works
how delusion words

which is the affinity
that allows me to gasp
with hateful admiration

see exactly what you are doing
X-ray specking your brain
as it processes
its a lie so deep, so
outrageous it cannot do justice
to your sacred spoken
mission to protect your
people
transparently transposed
from the
truth of the need
to protect yourself

ABOUT

ABOUT

so South is heading North
turning
     things
around

the globe
in your bedroom
best turn it
upside down

South on
    the Equator

giving its all
     all that it takes

dreaming
        a new vision

no more
Northern mistakes

so
South
heading North

simple
replacement;
this what it about