Damian Garside

DECLINATION QATAR

Oh we going to be rich
that fossil fuel money
gushing all over us
we can buy anybody
we can
strip the firmament
take all the stars become
supreme galacticos
no need to
ask the price just
funnel into
Old Trafford
lock, stock and barrell

and here we are sitting
atop the Super League
playing the other
Nation-owned teams
to realize our
dream of a world
of huMANity (Manchester)
United less, of course,
the people not
to care about
(including many of
our global own)
swept
under the carpet

No thanks but no thanks

on second thoughts

your kind kind offer
being who we are

we just have to decline it

PISCES IS

Pisces is dreaming
was sleeping

but rising from the depths is
totally awake

deciding which direction to follow
(the eternal
problem)

swimming upsteam downstream
with and
against current
indifferent to tide

such a sweet silver creature
you say
forgetting the
brain of a shark.

RETURN

come back Isaac
all is forgiven

don’t want no multiverse
no wave collapse
restore
my comfort zone

force and motion, quantum
probability tells
me you must return

reinstate the old classics
that were
so ball-bearing

sex that is
simple mechanics
no
this way
and that

love that cannot be
entanglement

is there in the calculus:
mass meets acceleration
(what better
golden ratio?)

HERON

so many stars
the river reflects them
a heron
(blue)
splash landing
deletes them

looks at me with its yellow eye
as if to tell me
yes, one day

this
is how it will be

LECTURE

lecture me
censure me
assume
the moral
high ground

I will just
bend not
break
flow with
the blow

and then
show you
I am kensai
in the art
of villification

sit you down
squeeze at long
last
a poem out
of you, a work of
aesthetic sensibility,
heartfelt sensitivity
imagination

stuff you never believed
you had
stretched beyond
your limit
for this achievement

which
as promised
I will respectfully read
and critique

showing exactly how
putrid, unbelievably
shit it is
how someone
like you
should never ever
be let loose
within reach of a pen

WELL SPENT

that would be a night
well spent

getting
the taste of you
learning your flavour

how it shifts between
Empress, High Priestess
Queen of
Cups and

Sixty nine
of Hearts

RAIN

you had me
crucified
and cremated

because I did
rain on
your parade

but
second time round

I came back
stronger and
wiser

billion ton
collision trajectory

hurtling
through space

SPHERE

Where are they?

maybe there are
none

maybe
they are here
under your skin
in the biosphere circling the planet

inside the Moon
waiting ever so
quietly just
next door

or a class and several
levels if civilization above us
not even
bothering to watch us
like we
were to them
pretty much
old silent film,
syndicate TV

whilst they hold high tea
having solved all philosophy
every
teeny-weeny social
existential political problem
consumed in the
vast production of infinite energy
their galaxy already one vast
sun-swallowing, black
hole mining
absolutely invisible

spooky paradox
Dyson-type sphere.