Damian Garside

KEY

here’s a door
here’s
a key

come in
help yourself
look around

check what it
looks like
to be
in my dream

to find yourself free
to explore, free to
follow
your heart’s desire
find what
you need

since this,
this is my dream

I have
what I need

have found
what I need

here
is the door

here
is my key

NAMED

Lovecraft
Strangelove

have to got to
love the
love
embodied
in your thinking

enshrined
in your very names

ROULETTE

Do not confuse
redemption
and
civilization

so easy
to transpose

and though
evil be banal

there is nothing
to preclude
an elegance
to murder

brining out the
choice caviar

and a polished chrome
pistol
for Russian roulette.

PENTATHLETES

there is Hell to pay
in the non-fiction section

storms hurricanes temprsts
rising temperatures
signs of alien life

stuff creeping out of books
not even waiting
for anyone to read them

danger money for
sales assistants, librarians
as well

as they hack their way
to the undergrowth
to reach the stacks

no sign of an increase
seems like no one
of substance is
left in the union

no old style hero’s journey
pentathletes
able to have their backs

SPECTRUM

my books
are full of inferno

my books
are full of
paradise

Heaven
dreams
along with you

Hell just
jumps out at you

and I just cannot explain
why there is such spectrum

why the same little words
have such
a titanic range

INVESTMENT

death pitched up
to teach me
how to divide by zero
and to determine
what his return
on his investment
would likely be
.
meanwhile, background
microwave radiation made
it difficult to hear him

and so I set
my soul into
freeze mode, so not
a molecule might move

went cold cold cold
in my
outlook,
philosophically speaking,

laissez faired every inclination
as far as could possibly be

MOON

In my grey dressing-gown
I feel and look like Jedi

solar consciousness figure
I suppose, no daimonic
Plutonic energy
running rampant if released
all to the power of two
by two

Ah yes!
dark life dark matter
dark energy

infra-crimson spectrum emission
from the ultra quantum soup

out of which blood chaos,
quite naturally,
radical individualism
sith vicious boy emperor
you do it my way
steam punk gladiator
in colosseum 360
sensurround to
google into gorgeous
reality
every single Roman Empire
be and wannabe
under every single (or
binary sun)

so let me
meld with snake and spider
and creatures chthonic
in my rainforest
on my swamp planet
whipping up
some steaming mushroom stew

or find some shade and water
(just a modicum) in the heart
of the desert

think of oasis somewhere
in the desert of my heart

grey is ash, grey is
sombre, grey is plaster

grey is everything that
yearns to be silver

yearns
to be animate
to be animation

to be turquoise, indigo
or royal blue ocean
to
rise in triumph
on a gigantic moon.