Damian Garside

ANTS

enough of your antics
you
so-called politicians
most partisan of people

let the ants decide
the future of our planet

so many many
more of them
and one
creature
one vote
is that not what
democracy is supposed
to be
all about

the thing elites fear, historically
from Plato to
Nero and Caligula
and every
evil regime of brothers

no ants they got a matriarchy
and I’m sure their Queen
will be cool
with whatever saves
the day
averts the death of
our shared
blue
planet
(Janet)

before it goes like Venus
goes like Mars
atmosphere like
black lagoon
or none at all
full rocky horror

so no more fiddling
identity cards, restricted polls
delimitation, boundaries,
every
outright illegal attempt
to gerrymander the system

give the ants the vote
give it to
every creature

can’t
do worse than we
have done

no time for legal
linguistic quibbles

time we
turned partisan
into
“partisant”

(show this world, this Universe
what this species

is all about
narcissistically thought
to be
a Divine image)

MARS HAS FALLEN

Mars has fallen

the missiles stand erect
casting lomg shadows
firing position

buf they have been like this
for well over a hundred years

if I had the art
then I could paint them
you might bet the picture
would be
pretty severe

but I am prole
what do I know
so are
we all
what
do we know

Mars has fallen
the machine is broken
all is entropy
final state between
the have
and the have not

nothing gets sown
so there are no parables

just the explosions that will come
that they cannot stop
the pressure built up
simple, obvious physics
I would have said if I knew
such
basic things

but I am prole, must always
flounder in darkness, taste
bitter ash
the storm gathering

the storm we are told
is pure propaganda
the deepest
of lies

but Mars has fallen
we can feel it, smell
if
energy has gone, lifeblood
is drained

someone has
done all the sums
it is the end of the line

THIS IS NOT A

THAT IS NOT A

that is not a Rene Magritte

pipe or no pipe
that is not he

this is not
a Rene Magritte either

but this, this,
is THE Rene Magritte

supplement, complement,
signifier, signified,
index
icon
the essence before and after
existence

of the man so surreal he makes

mincemeat of
your preconceptions

sitting at table with Dali, Miro,
de Chirico, Man Ray
and Jean-Paul Sartre

me dropping all those names:
only way they
would let me
into the restaurant
not to mention this

their poem

BRUTAL FRUITLOOP

not here to
argue with you

having distinguished yourself
as the very personification
of poetry

that institutional medallion
blazing on your
chest like a second Sun

so take and digest that
with your kiddies’
fluorescent cereal

being in the exact spot
your heart
should be

and that is where I
shall leave matters

so much of what I might
have said,
wanted to say, in need of being

presented for sacrifice
to the great
god ellipsis (or should
that, O Sun deity)
be the
god eclipsis?

got my lines tangled, my
words in a bind seemingly tongue-

tied but arms free to pull
and notch and
loose a Parthian shot

dissing your models and icons
and heroes of the worked
word like Campbell and

Livingstone as a unhappy pair
of dead beat wusses

LAST GASP

last gasp!

every piece is now
in place

but no sooner assembled
that under its own
gravity or something
it falls to piecesp

and so
back to the drawing board
start afresh
labriously connecting
making sure
we find every piece
fits perfectly

but then again
as soon as completed
the pieces fall apart

a lifetime’s work:
the dissolution seems
irresistible

it is such a mission
every time the picture is
different
and yet I could swear
the pieces
are the same
must be
the same

there must be a parable,
an allegory in here somewhere

such a puzzle;
it is such a puzzle
tiny tribulation

for each remaining day

last gasp;
last gasp again

DARK READER

have to be careful
take things
in my stride

scribble at night
penlight, under the covers

and then
should I have something
keep it
under wraps

ghastly if even a word
could find its way
into the wrong hands

the kind of hands
versed in torturous
analysis
iron hard, having trained
for years
in the art
of dark reading

NOTES TOWARDS A SUPREME MUSICAL

Wallace”s notes
towards a Supreme Musical

just because
we happen to sing in tune
together

does not have the logical
consequence we going
to get
married or
anything

as far as I can see
life is not and can
never be
a supreme musical
though the enriching
of your technicolour might
say
otherwise

might point to glorious
constellations
that don’t exist
have not
be truly conceived
of as yet

even if
the lyrics of your songs
harmonize around imagination
and supreme fiction

doesn’t mean anything
beyond meaning beyond all

meaning
any meaning at all

SEA ARABIAN

Back where
I started not
quitw back.where everything started in
our two hundred million
year galactic rotation

I blow into the tiny sail of my
home-made ketch
sending it across the
puddle which is
now my sea Arabian

trading for spices not
for blasphemous, iniquitious things that Empires
need for gold
and glory

seeking out
fine wines and art and
cloth of great magnificence

trading with
what little I have to give

did not occur to me (since my
play play world
did not aspire to the realm
of thought experiment)

how toy boat is in motion, I am
in motion
planet is in motion
everything is in motion
at fantastic velocities

everyrhing, though there will.be
buy-outs, investitures, mergers
acquisitions, collisions,
the mighty galaxy,
Andromeda, blue-
shifting our way
whilst the rest of the Universe
hurtling away from us

moving so fast their light
disappearing

soon
not a hint of what was
out there
to remain

something in our hearts
perfect for such darkness

as I search the visible heavens
for stars with Arabic names

kingly stars, to guide my
puddle-boat as it navigates
its waters

dark drowning waters
so many stars even

captured in
my splash of puddle ocean
wish to
last until morning

reflection of the shifting
nature if the cosmos
(same puddle quite
obviously never
sailed the same time)

and the vagaries of
our time, human
time

with its moments of light
sagas of epic
darkness
disaster

unspeakable monstrosity

magic city of Baghdad
namer of these stars

its people slaughtered across
the sands more than the stars

far more far more

stood
in the path
of the golden horde

and my little ketch
so worse for wear,
battling nights
of all weathers

soon to be lost
wrecked upon some shore

back where it
we started:
movement
our purpose
movement
our all

MAESTRO

maestro
coverts everything into
four cubed

you and I see
trees and grass
but he sees pawns
and
major pieces

Kings and Queens in a
stylized death dance

can predict their required steps
six moves ahead this is how

his needle-sharp
fine-margined world
is choreographed

and you and I taking
world more multiple, less
polar, binary

awash
in all that green

you thinking how lovely
memorable as lived
here and
now
sensory (if not
sensual) real
experience

me, anguished at the thought
I might just mess
up the meaning of
all of this

in my
inescapable, all of
a sudden

win or lose
attack at a poem

DEMON

I’m a
shit poet

with a name
that sounds
like “demon”

so go ahead
demonize me
Frankenstein monster me
Salem witch trial me
send
me to Guantanamo
have me up
before
the House Committee

in an ideal world you house
will have long gone and
you
and your House Committee

will no longer seem vital
for the protection of
power and
reputation

will be a footnote
to a footnote

to
this poem
(we demons know
best revenge and shit

poet or not

how to
take care
of our horrible little selves)