Author Archives: Damian Garside

SOUPER

SOUPER

it is the souper
souped-up cup

supermen ubermensch
teams of eleven Messis
eleven Cristiano Ronaldos
each managed
       by eleven Pep
Guardiolas

no offside law, infinite
omniscient VAR

four quarters, half-
time penalty shoot-outs
everyone wins but
survival of the fittest
massive
      reigns supreme
most gladiatorial of
all festivals of galactico
                     
those about to do
do salute
             load of their shoulders
now no stupid
qualifying
     the algorithm determines
and (above all) relegation free

giving the people
the fans

exactly what
they have been told to want
(who says you can’t get
     exactly what
                         we want?)

no boring overthink
of structures, formations,
systems, tactics

in fact no such thing
as tactics at all

      the numbers
determine

FOOTPRINT

FOOTPRINT

your brain is
suffering the side effects
of El Nino

there is too heavy a
carbon footprint in
the cerebral cortex

fossil fuel deposits
there are there but
should not be
touched
until fossilized further

but the whole can be used
just like camera to get
critical snapshots

so we can do a cross
and longitudinal section
analysis

          to determine what
across a lifeless mental desert
are the
      climate change short
and
long-term effects

FEAST

FEAST

Thank God that guy Pope
never put me in his Dunciad
or any other
South African poets there
for that matter
which is a bit
beyond belief

long since Roy Campbell
Wayzgoosed everybody
from Cape Town to
Durban to Maritzburg
Joburg and Pretoria

enough idiots with pens
and processors around now
to make
any such revival
a royal satirical feast.

TO END ALL WARS

TO END ALL WARS

you call me
an animal
but you
are the ones
who kill
poets

shoot them
through the back
of
the head

civilized style
execution style

and amongst animals
who could be
less worthy of
life

than poets
what poet anywhere
(looking at
         you, Wilfred Owen,
Erich Maria Remarque)

did their bit
      for humanity

by winning a war
         (the war to end all wars)

LIKE IT

LIKE IT

I like it when
even
   in full flow
(the joy
of flow)
you catch exactly
how your
mind works
how it all works

have your
self-reflexive
meta moment

finish the poem
with its special twist

and the Universe
(whether it is
              real or
simulation)
smiles and
           welcomes you
to postmodernity.

CONJUNCTION

CONJUNCTION

I am writing
              a poem

and the world is fucked.

I am writing a poem
but
the world

     is fucked

I am
writing a poem

however, although,
the world
                              is
                      fucked

am writing
notwithstanding, despite,
in outright opposition to

the
   world

being fucked.

I am writing a poem,

have written a poem,

just trying to establish
the precise conjunction.

QUESTION MARK

QUESTION MARK

thank you
for not inviting me
to your
prestigious event

not up
to your level
I think I get
the message

we poetic bottom-
feeders must
take what
we can get

but is it not
“true”, by
definition that
anything appearing
on this stage

part
of this show

is horribly compromised,
by no means
capable of
doing

what words
should do?

HOMEWORLD

HOMEWORLD

a lot of tourists
came to our planet

behaved despicably
threw their weight around
(which in the case
of creatures from gas giants
could be truly immense)

worst of all, as to be expected,
were the various species
of humanoids
and worst of these
were this truly abhorrent
species
       from a planet called Earth

who gave us no choice
but to strike at their Homeworld
and eviscerate their leaders

since it is in the nature of
this species to choose as
their leaders the greediest
and most depraved
and insensible amongst them

without which
we calculated

this species had a future
might have
     some kind of chance