Author Archives: Damian Garside

ZAPIRO

it’s no paranoia
just
bad fractals

not a tad of alien malfeasance
behind those clouds

focus
   won’t you

be like the Sun itself
passing through
a magnifying glass

observing
how a piece of paper
flapped in Parliament
(Parliament
of Parliaments)
might cause the wind
to howl
through streets shut down

a bad time idea
whose time is here

and now
only the anointed
wish to be
associated with it

loyal to
this final state
of secure being

iron wire and
tape spinning

nothing like it
even if your
paranoia run rampant

nothing in your
mind could be more off-beam

POLE STAR

Poles apart
and that gap
widening

though the melting
of the floes
bringing us closer.

So much
love in the air

you feel its warmth, are
suffused with care

drifting under
star clouds where
a break
in the grey

like you
are last chunk
of ice

once
a glacier, berg formidable

soon
to disappear, unable to
save a desperate bear

clinging
for dear life from
death by drowning

POLE STAR

Poles apart
and that gap
widening

though the melting
of the floes
bringing us closer.

So much
love in the air

you feel its warmth, are
suffused with care

drifting under
star clouds where
a break
      in the grey

like you
are last chunk
of ice

once
a glacier, berg formidable

soon
    to disappear, unable to
save a desperate bear

clinging
   for dear life from
death by drowning

BY A THREAD

my poem
is running
with the wolves

running
from the dogs

poems
always seem
to end up
chased into the forest
running from the dogs

sheltering
beneath the tall trees
trees stocked
with good wood

springy, workable,

chop/chop
                  /chop

and there you have it
a gibbet born of craftsmanship
set to hang

unless
      we cut out the middleman
let the trees themselves
do the culling, catching
chasing

me meanwhile
so desperate to
deflect
    win hearts and minds
counter-persuade
them

   I am repentant utterly
reborn to turn
over a new leaf

doing my best to change things
before the last line closes

leaves us
   between turnstiles
frozen in limbo

hanging
      by a thread, by
a single thread hanging

CANOPY

catch me
in the treetops

dodging
the attack butterflies

buzzing out
of character like
angry 109 Messerschmitts (someone
having stirred up
their nest to a frenzy of
National Socialist fervor)

below the canopy
burnt out hulks
civilizations scrapyarded

threatening the promise
of sacred, peaceful,
untroubled,
          no bumps
in the night sleep

parachutes
opening formally, things
mushrooming with
a wide radius

dreams as thick as dead leaves
as the last days of Northern Autumn
everywhere you look
littering the forest floor

THE RHYTHM

it is the
rhythm
that survives

finds its home
sets the edge
gives the tone

survives the centuries
connects the stars

lives
and dies
lives and dies

it is the rhythm
that outlasts
decides
what
stays; belongs

survives
the rhyme

NILE LESSON

I am doing my level best
to teach the art of poetry
to the Queen of the Nile

knowing that
the slightest pedagogical
mistake might turn
my body into
a pincushion for arrows

and so
words hang back, prove0
extraordinarily reluctant

stick in my throat
like fat scarab beetles

even as
a real, intrepid scarab
attempts to
  cross the palace floor
for which gross violation
and fatal impropriety

she does catch
    and crack it open
its
  carapace
being no match

and me left
thinking, wondering
if there be
a metaphor here
to elucidate
    for her desired
edification

but then
when (Isis-inspired)
I ask her to regale me
with list
   upon list
of words whose sound she loves

those lethal eyes dance

her voice
goes gold filigree

mind
    rises to the moment
as if
   a thing of fine silver
housed in bluest
lapis-lazuli

is all, she is all,
softest of waves
about
   to crash on the shore after
crossing the Mediterranean

I am, for my sins,
trying my utmost
to teach
      the art of poetry
to the Queen of the Nile