Author Archives: Damian Garside

UNSHACKLED

UNSHACKLED

unshackled
but no

free
spirit

did poetry ever
dribble off
more leathery
tongue?

not
    as would
honey

but rye whiskey
filtered through
        tobacco

and yet despite
all of this

       he spoke for us

gave us
        his precious, personal
cracked
corrective mirror

FROM KENDRICK LAMAR

FROM KENDRICK LAMAR

strange perspective
you get
married
to a robot

watching the gangsta
rapper winning
the big award

tattooed arm, backwards cap
thanking God
  the great promoter
(looking up as he does so
this shredder of
    convention)

and me and robot gossiping
about the whole thing
kind of laughing (much
robot ha ha
tears in her eyes emoji
laughter) paused

for a moment
while she downloads
acquaints herself with
the entire history
of rap lyrics, hip
hop music

converts this poem
in a flash to the style
of Eminem and
then Kendrick Lamar

so a feeling for poetry
    perhaps because
I named her
Sappho

we still for the Nobel Prize
for Eminem
    joining TS Eliot
and JM Coetzee

the speech and
lecture in Stockholm
  from Kendrick Lamar

WOLF

WOLF

a wolf stopped me
on the way
to Red Riding Hood

redirected me
  confiscated my
wolfsbane

showed me a flag
red as menstrual blood

told me
    he hoped I would not
be seeing anything. socialist
or revolutionary in it

bemoaned the fact
that everything today
gets cloaked,
      gets camouflaged

hides
in sheep’s clothing

gave me
    a quick Turing Test
seemed
      to be satisfied
since
provided me with a link
to his You Tube video
in which
he laments
      the theft of
his mythology

both as regard little pigs
and nubiles in
big teeth
    non-
Grandmother
      vermillion underwear

and set up, a trap
if ever
    he saw one

real Roald Dahl, pure
                  imagination

slipping on a cave boat ride
into avant-gard horror
(no tunnel of love
episode this

        too Dali to
delight us

and so he complained
and so he raged

fancying me as meal
          and me fancying
a chic wolf skin

proving my parents wrong
when drumming in
talk with strangers means
Moors murders

and for writers hesitating on
their first rung

              no hope
for turning
        type into
                      character

and tale to tell
                  that talks old tropes

the trick being
      one of mesmerizing

HYPOCALYPSE NOW

HYPOCRALPSE NOW

loving the smell
of white phosphorous
in the morning
will he still love
you if you script
all this a la Apocalypse Now?

will he promise you
sign of sanction and
spiritual favout
that is
    yet another
overwhelming victory

or is he taxing your faith
testing your strategic patience
by making this
a possible new
battle of Stalingrad,
advances only in inches
forward or
     underground
stop start
stop start

pity when it comes to
kill ratios even if
targeted and
supremely intentional

collateral damage figures
(including toddlers, infants
women and pensioners)
cannot
        be allowed to
seriously count

but there is no Kurtz and ghere
is no river

             no Dantesque journey
through the circles
of Hell

which makes no sense in a wotld
where it has become
impossible to differentiate between
    our
      angels and demons
      gods and devils

where everything and
everyone have their unique insane
      totally
clueless plan

       to deal with the shadow of
all evil

by massacring everybody
since
         we can no longer
be saved

cannot
       save ourselves

THING THAT

THING THAT

smoke, mirrors,
you have a thing
that falsifies

add on some wheels
bulld up
    some steam can
subjugate the world
with ease

bluff, and distraction
what need
       blades or bullets?

demolishing the truth
a right that that we see
we agree
can only be construed
as completely God-given

the smoke, all the mirrors
as Holy as can be