Damian Garside

FOUND FOOTAGE

FOUND FOOTAGE

I recall
the footage
am

still haunted by it
those days it was so fresh
(I was born
just less than eight years
after the war’s end)

thought
      for a long time
there a level of darkness,
depravity, racist inhumanity
the likes of which
we would
      never
             see again

terrible to say so, but our species
is nothing if not
a creature
of irony

delighting in proving
(here so glaringly) everyone
horribly wrong

one monstrous darkness disappears
another

is creating itself

a darkness whose reversals

were they
not so cruelly logical
would

be impossible to understand

at last, I think,
I am beginning to understand

NOTTOKNOW

NOTOKNOW

crash the cymbals
bang the gongs
trumpet the
chosen

for they
are multitude

you are
so holy
you are
so handy

are so
holy handy

you have crucified
more souls this month
than in its entire
history

did the
little city of Rome

have slaughtered
so many
seems you
were you
to go Genghis

given permission
from
up high

and dig a hole
big enough to bury
all of us

while we all shout “hosanna”
and raise nailed
fists to the sky

CLOCKWORK

CLOCKWORK

like clockwork
everyday
somewhere
in the world

a poet
jumps under a train

they know
it’s a poet

because
they find poems

send them to me
to fix, to edit

a labour of love it is
piecing them together
making them
whole
editing
out
all

the
stuff
that might
derail the project

all the unconscionable hurt
and real raw pain

SOFTLY

SOFTLY
(for Emily
Maitlis)

speak softly
when talking
truth to
power

walk
circuitously
and carry a small
yet not
too insignificant stick

above all
addressing
the voice that
must
never
be addressed

don’t go for it
call
sign
Maverick
like a
shrieking naval jet
on a strafing run

however much
after-action satisfaction
however
much top dollar

sheer
redemptive fun

TO SEED

TO SEED

I swim
in the hot sea

the sharks
making

a cup
of tea

the dolphins
having a siesta

and the octopus
(whose name is Alice)
has
contrived a garden
that is
itself an
eighth wonder

shells and pearls
fragments of coral
and
sea cucumbers

something so
Imperial in all
her
propensities

(expanding to Empire
the germ
of an
idea).

ROSE?

ROSE?

is that
a rose

or is it
a bullet hole?

red rose
red rose

so many of them
slaughtered in the snow
days of
York and
Lancaster

tried to stitch those
wounds together

but blood still leaking
through that tapestry

carnage
somehow still
in your
poetry

freeze
framed you thought
for all
of history

not forever displaced
from theme to theme

SHORTCUT

SHORTCUT

taking a shortcut
across the river
to the recruiting office

need to get there
before the apocalypse and
before closing time

running across the river
and through the rainforest
where
I can die next
to the bombed-out Church
like Sergeant Elias

defending freedom and
Democracy, for
the salvation of humanity
need
to put my
life on the line

before
closing time

cpuld have been dropped
by a purple haze bird with
voice
of a mini-gun

but my feet just
brushed the surface and
much to my My Lai rapture
I had
reached ths other side

about to enlist staightout
but they needed
to first test
my morality

wanted no Sergeant Pepper
dreamer imagining
peace upon
the
world
community in our time

all you needing

number nine

and me
      heading for the station
but it closing
                vanishing from
                               me

like the thing just apocryphal
thing
a complete mirage

and me
passing cross after
cross and
pyre
after pyre

no doubt in my mind
this the last battle, the finsl war

in the midst of fire and
death and blood

something feels reborn

BROKEN

BROKEN

poetry is sublime
code

bought you a nut-
cracker best
to crack it

heard the thunder, saw
the lightning created
by yout exertions

thpught if this
be the reaction
of what we call Nature
tag
as the cosmos

and if sweet Lennon-
McCartney lyrics be
the end
of civilization

what would the lightshow be
like
      in store for us

if we were to collide the
exposed
    God particles of the cosmos
                           (beyond
hypothetically)

in order to create singularities
deep underground?

PROFESSOR SUGAR CUBE

PROFESSOR SUGAR CUBE

wanted to
dissolve all boundaries
between
self and cosmos, writer
and word

sucked that juice out
instantly
on the road to
strangest territory

such a dark, dark terminal
sweetness

    and multiple many-track
dimensions trapped within the
confines
        of that cube

MR DARWIN

MR DARWIN

the observation
became conjecture,
became hypothesis, became
theory, became
scientific truth
(most
assured of
truths)

but it was
when it became
metaphor that the world burned
burned
in the interests
of survival of the fittest

when extended into our
realm of analogy

a monstrous fitness
giving itself license to brutally contrive
rewrite the world

slaughter half
the species

in name of room to maneuver
space to
be

fresh habitat to colonize
build that new fantastic civilization

some of us always dreamt of
the rest, our worst
nightmare fear

this on the supreme strength
of the
shape of a scale
length of a
feather