Author Archives: Damian Garside

DEAD RECKONING

DEAD RECKONING

just a flash
a photon of
light

could be a
wave could
be a
particle

my eyes
not exactly twin
slits
   so why
should I give a fuck
if every
experiment goes paradox

flicker
   in the void
     not even

to even be
that would be
blown out
of all proportion

and no night
       spent with you to
posit
  as my salvation

unless my sense
of true dead reckoning
is thing
     absolutely wrong
or only valid
between the hours
on weekdays
nine to
five
or when the temperature sticks
at absolute zero

and truth be told
much red wine in my system
I however it is
construed, whatever
angle
is taken

I have been waiting all along
in my most
    chaotic of configurations
perhaps when
you do
    hourglass it

from the light this candle
beginning of time
should
    time have a beginning
if it
make any sense at all

SPIDER WASP (SEQUEL)

SPIDER WASP (SEQUEL)

spider wasp buzzing
the hell out of me

yes, sir, madam
I know your history

how you and that Darwin
bloke
       exploded ET phone home

got us
        alien-inseminated on
LV 426

       scared us out of our wits
and got a knighthood for
Sir Ridley

I’m watching you my little friend
coming in close giving me
a buzz seemingly
offering
      an improbable friendship

you should watch it too
Sigourney

        terrible if a wasp embryo
should eat its way through
your fine fine chest

don’t climb into the loader might
then think you
                 got eight legs

don’t ever want to give it that idea
since you know
      James Cameron going
to be calling for a sequel

BELIEVE

BELIEVE

hands up
all who
   need a roof, require shelter,

hands
steepled together
can be a roof, a church, and
you don’t need
to be
William Blake
to see it

book, far book,
epic novel
or Bible
    can
lend itself to
the very idea of a cathedral
doing the best job imaginable

which idea
we might well lean into
squatting under
this tree

not the safesr place to be
considering the deadly
accuracy of
the sky’s static
electricity

even as
a great religion seems
about to
be born
and then instantly
take root

or perhaps
     I indeed misread the sign
and should be
talking revolution

not exactly
a binary opposition, just
a matter of what you
believe
and how you frame something.
        

DEEP STRUCTURE

DEEP STRUCTURE

and suddenly, totally
unexpectedly

I fell into a poem
talking of manufacturing
consent for a
“great artist” and
the deep
structure of
irony

thinking of you
too excited for words
flying to that island
that
   great M.I.T. brain
up in the clouds

eliding
   your Kubrick
redacting
your Nabokov

soon to be
there with Woody
playing it again

and the gods of satire
drooling at the
         thought of
the fall
    from great grace

into their
     realm of scruffy
syntax
   and superbly sordid
                     semantics

PARTY

PARTY

mad hatter dude
is throwing a party
crimson locks
under scarlet hat
being
less than mag-
unanimous in
every
discussion
(all of them
shading into
existential struggle)

things
getting bad since
not a shred
of Alice
Virgo acumen
at the table as yet

lumps of uranium
lumps of
lead

the tea in the pot
hitting a
level of sweetness
already heading
beyond dangerous

things
transforming across
this fantasy landscape
(your fault
reader, with
your alien chemistry and
catalyst fabulous)

and opium from the East
fresh from funding
colonial wars

there in this Wonderland
everywhere if
you
do know
where to look for it

cool for
quietening infants, deadening
assegaai wounds

heightening the pleasures of
your every
textual addiction

here in
this archetypal monarchy
where
power

parties day
and night, awake
asleep

speaks
in a dialect of allegory
that feels like
quintessence of
dreamworld
and simply sounds so strange

FUNERAL PLAN

FUNERAL PLAN

they keep
phoning me
to sell me
funeral plans

somehow they got
my number give me
their spiel
so want
a “yes” for an
answer

but as death
capitalism goes
nothing here
strikingly imaginative
deeply inventive

not
a single offer
of a burning on
a pyre
    compressing into
a diamond, exotic
ship burial

talk of
days in Elysium
drinking pure ambrosia

flying through
the clouds eagle-
winged to
commune with
the Great Spirit

on take
the escalator down to Hades
consoling Orpheus
swopping tunes
lovely threesome with
his darling Eurydice

or
speaking of wings,
winged helmet things,
being
   swept up to
Valhalla in
the arms of a Valkyrie
there to eat
meat, drink mead and
do
   my Viking thing

wondering why
I
  denied myself
such wicked joys

believing saintliness supreme
kind of life
     and mode
of being

a host of Valkyrie
working on me
                 doing all it
takes
   to shift that perception

now that
is what
      I would call

a funeral plan

RPG

RPG

let’s
RPG this
poem

the algorithm
summoning us
bringing us together
leading
you to me
with a purpose

imagine it,
this thing here,
rewiring your brain
fixing those circuits

expanding your consciousness
maximally until
it explodes out
your skull

turning you into
a player, sublime
role creator
     true high-five ace
of a destiny shaper

feisty, and as deadly
as a rocket-propelled grenade

targeted at everything
smug and
confident, no idea
how horribly
armour – piercing
                 you are
have
    become

zeroing in on
all you
         now believe

you are so within your rights
to love to hate

ODDS ARE,

ODDS ARE

odds are
   there are
planets made
of chocolate

odds are
there are tricolour planets
made of Neo-
politan ice cream
(wonder if they speak
an exquisite
blend
or total mash-
up of French
and Italian?)

out there
   planets so delicious that
the greedy inhabitants
tub
    by tub
devoured their homeworld

at least
      it tasted good
       while it lasted

when we have consumed ours
no one is going to buy
the cosmic lameness of
that excuse