Author Archives: Damian Garside

IN PARENTHESIS

long division
square root
(stick night
black night
in parenthesis

before you take the liberty
to photon bombard it)

I would write
you up
if you were
worth the trouble
let you
take me in
your arms
and multiply me

all your chromosomes
gotten into the habit
or reading
me like a book

backwards forwards
straight line, arabesque,
turning
     your story my story
into a flip thru
pop up
  illustrated manuscript

shaving away those
bad dreams, wonky genes,
picking and choosing
choice bits
     from my D

N

   A spiral

not all behind
the scenes
        the clothes
the blinds  the curtains

so
   seemingly old  inert,
entropic, horribly
outworn
    and outmoded

see how fresh how suddenly
green
   when you edit, splice
cut through
sheath
    down to essential fibre

highest factor lowest
common denominator

blend with which
life can perhaps do something

BOX

packed
my universe

into a box
not Pandora’s
not Schrodinger’s
and nothing

Chinese
a
b
o
u
t
  it

set it
on its way
cast it
adrift

packed it
a box lunch

the universe never
giving
   a free lunch

but here
we are talking
        about the space
outside it

PIGGIES

three little piggies
high tailed (or short
curlied) it
to market

dreaming their dreams
ignoring the scene
of the town
all around
falling down being
bulldozed

earmarked
for gentrification

and behind them
still stalking that
big bad
      business brained wolf

becoming more
of a friend
     and worse of a wolf
to find
  them so flush
with money

huffing and puffing
with big bags
loaded
   schemes and
policies and deals to
make eyes water

no one
going to have
their house
blown down and invaded
and be splt
roast before breakfast

without
    peace of mind of
adequate compensation

SCRUB

scrub what I
said

previously, delighting
in your company

I am not prone to
insincerity, bound
to lie
about my infidelity

not going to dictate to you

theoretical or
otherwise (perhaps
the thread
running
counter-clockwise)

nor will I
allow myself to be
railed (meaning
mono-rsiled)
unwittingly into it
led by
the nose to find
Nature’s soft truth
bound by
those laid-down trails
marked out
as alluring reams of
ribboned finery
that all the world
might see and believe

no let me
unusually direct
sparing in
extravagant epithet
or punctuational necessity,
far from being
abstract voyeur or
philosophical contemplation

stuck at my window desk
sifting through papers
so much
     snow, white
space
inside and out
already falling, falling
beginning to fall

already
       up to my neck in it
obviously lost count of it

not a
bird (in the hand or
bush)

nest
to cuckoo in
within a proverbial mile

BANK ON IT

would not want anyone
written out of the picture

nor should I agree
with law of the bottom line

a wild economics
of division, profit, superfluity,
greed
    will not stand, leave
anyone standing

alternatively, I do not
see myself, feel myself
in my millions
spruced in
standard blue overalls

waving proverbial red book
to spite laws of Nature

would
that we
      had such power
were
a true collective

but
bells roll
walls fall
astronomical figures
locked in binary
simply
    disappear

my anaconda
mythic tail-
swallowed, tale closer
inches closer

I hope
pray to God
I reach the counter before
countdown to closure
.
before
    time goes Dali, melts
at its
leisure

but it would not
be prudent to bank on this

IN PARTICULAR

so much to give
no one
to give
it to

you in particular
telling me you have
no need for charity
(or space
for that matter)

and me
here laying before
all that I am

every tiny package
oscillating,radiating energy

enough
to cure, curve
kill

perhaps I should
stretch my mind
to accommodate,
rethink everything

no one
affording me
the time of day

giving me the feedback
needed to survive