Author Archives: Damian Garside

GAMMA

GAMMA

I woke to
gamma rays ‘n shit
woke to
a new star
in my bedroom

tiny asteroids
pinging off my roof

sound of one sweeping
tsunami of ecstasy

all of humanity
entire
population
in the Universe

hard at work
big banging big banging

cheek to
tell us alpha beta omega
how
infinitesimal we are

MATCHSTICK

MATCHSTICK

was thinking of
a thougjt experimemt
with matchstick men

not involving
time and sunbeams

light
split by gravity
from
a distant galaxy
a million years
took to get here

who knows how
much has changed
if anything is
left there

or it can give me fuel
for my thought experiment

which involves
imagining a world
where these figures of
matchstick
do not keep ending up
setting themdelves alight

or fattening themselves up
with demonic projection
with shadow matter
to become
multi-dimensional, warpers
of the fabric
of the Universe
in their
own right

building such figures
in their own image

only
able to
self-duplicate

hold in each flawless hand
the truth, the logic
every secret of fire

key to
forever advancement

sublime destruction

POEM IS

POEM IS

poem is
the private show

no one
can vote you out of

I see no very British
person giving me
a killer crit
sitting in
a swivel chair

Simon says
Simon says do you see

a Simon says
anywhere in this poem?

do you see any cameras
there to open my world
to your
every surveillance?

strategically placed for every possible

secret revelation

to thrill you
to the core with
the unquestionably banal

EASTER POEM

EASTER POEM

this morning
noticed a book on the
topshelf of my library

“The History of the World”
as if
there could be
only one

but history must end some time surely?

and what happens then?
who can write history
once it has gone, it is over?

felt that this thought
had been
in my brain before
and was coming back again

and for its part
the book behaved itself
did not spring magically
up off the shelf and
down
onto the floor

all the pages breaking out
of their binding and
flowing as
if upon a river
across the hall floor

and into the lounge
and dining room

telling all my other books
their gospel news

so many other books
for my sins I am
a many book person, unfaithful
reader

should be sworn without
possibility of divorce to
the one true word

but as true words go
the narrative is scary
and there are dark,
brutally rich figures
hoping to
make it so

for what is wealth and power
if you cannot freeze-frame
time at
moment of
immortal Empire

for it is their hard work, sweat
and acumen raised them above us

and righteously

it is therefore correct and proper
that not as slaves, but
as gods
they should walk amongst us
be almighty

more than correct
and proper

it is written: they will make it so

WINTER

WINTER

you do it an injustice
to call it Winter
blithely so

even to inflate it
metaphorically as
a disastrous winter,
bringing storms
of Shakespearean proportions

no, this is something
of another order entirely

you would have to turn
to turn to the ancient
scriptures to have ang idea
of how terrible
it is, the narrative
we are all about
to enter now

one story
fits all

one story
destroys us all

and you thought the
crazy symbolism of
apocalyptic ending was just science fiction

was just poetry

the words are there

they are waiting for you

the power is there
the storm is here

RIDDLE

RIDDLE

“the sky is television”
Craig Raine

It’s a riddle:
a Martian sits in his lounge
somewhere in
Johannesburg South Africa
or the British isles

he attacks his postcard
with a wickedly sharp
pair of scissors
cutting up the postcard
into ever smaller pieces

scrambling every syllable
of the message
which already is
written in Martian
a language almost too
hard
for us earthling humans
to either speak
or understand

he is scared that the paranoiacs who currently
rule this planet
in the most all-
powerful authoritarian way
imaginable

will read into his message of
manner of things mistranslating and

misreading, turning “I am
so happy
to have made the acquaintance of Mr Raine”, to
“Mars must attack now
Earth has no defence against
our tripod devices
we can rain death down
upon them and seize
their planet, I will be sending some of Earth’s many
textbook manuals
on Empire and
colonialism,”

And now the message has been cut down to the size
of individual atoms with
their subatomic particles

to be sent to his loving wife
on Mars who he misses so much

easy to send at light speed
when in the form of gas plasma

she
should have little trouble
restoring it to its original

even my Martian standards
she is a uniquely resourceful lass.

FEEL

FEEL

practice
makes perfect

so let me give
gratitude for
being alive
(just about)

yet still aporeciating
that life energy, that
fierce will to be
in all its
glory
(sonetimes painful
in the extreme)

I sit here everyday
it has become my own
tiny ritual to tell
ths cosmos that I am
part of everything
in case I am
not noticed

and even I am floating
free in space, prey
to zero gravity at the mercy of all

that emerged out of
the explosive creation
of the Universe

and still overlooked,
completely undetected

yet nothing can deny I feel
no one can gainsay
the painful gratitude that
I feel
because I know I feel