Damian Garside

MONETIZE

monetize
demonize

I am
writing a new thesaurus
looking for
a common denominator

even as you
wait in the shadows
crumbling
to dust

once wondering but
now given your answer
as to
how it is

all going to
end

RAIN

the writer writes
the end of
the world

but the paper
is putting up
too much
resistance

somehow he just cannot
write his way to
his vision of
an ending

quietly cataclysmic
apocalypse falling
upon us soft as rain

SOFT

your poem
is soft
is malleable

when you call
it answers
fawns
rolls
at your feet

always there
to do your bidding

is as safe
a wicked pleasure as
anything the Universe

contrived
to devise

as harmless an intervention
as can be imagined

desperate to
appeal

this
I really feel

deep in the heart I’m
pretty sure I have

GAME

saw you reading
my poem

in a Video game
and there I was
writing this poem
as part
of that narrative

an Escher etching hanging
on the wall
windows
mirror
smoke dolls and
boxes

looked around but failed
to see anyone writing
about to
reboot me

so I just
drove to the ocean

to admire the artwork
the artwork there almost
beyond belief

EXCHANGE

EXCHANGE

paradox of choice
constant of change

let’s just surrender to
life, the flow, the poem

forget writers and
readers
who is where
who is what

where to find our story
the narrative that spreaks us
captures us totally
in its
open-
ended box

NATURALLY

a nation of shopkeepers
without shops

a nation of conquerors
without conks

a nation of accountants
called to account

in the event of
analysis

it’s a lout
rout

AS IT SO HAPPENS

as it so happens
the Church and State
are both
outraged

the Sun and Moon
have begun to
tango begun
to samba

and some devil drunk
on tequila
is in the vestry
demanding communion
damanding absolution

quoting from a mash-up
of Neruda’s sublime Cantos
and visionary
holy books

and all are aghast
having booked their places
these
sons and daughters

not a tatter between them
no missing thread

and thus
in assued completeness
remain well aware

that devil on tequila becomes
devil in tequila becomes
democratic
host of devils that
bring decorum down

become god of thd people
hacked to pieces and
resurrected
become
the bones
of the philosophers doomed

until the end
of argument
to host
perpetual return

BIT

you summoned me
for party-games,
for romantic
themes

or so it sounded,
so it seemed

given your dancing through
all protocols,
your show and tell
and mystery

graceful
as all Hell but too
leopard fast that
I might anything retain

and there we ending
playing Monopoly diplomatically

diplomacy
monogamously
unless
in Triple Entente or
Menage a Trois

and me
in inquisition mode
determined
to interrogate your very
sensuality probe you
high and low
for heresy
(whether best
or worst of its kind)

the Turing test
the litmus test the blind taste test

with control

and me busy scribbling my way
through raw data
conclusion (and recommendations) thick
with crescendo

and to think
my original presumption
(seduced into
aberration by
Descartes demon)
was that I did not could not really exist

and therefore
would never get laid

an alternate universe somehow
devoid of sexuality

I am at
the bottom of the Seine in
Rimbaud”s
drunken boat

awaiting Nemo
my last hope of rescue

need
to go full Nautilus
to get
out of this place return
to my gone childhood

where robots are spooky by
no means mind-
expanding and
voraciously sexual

she sitting with me in a pose
that
given the technology may
well last forever

time whirling, whorling
into gold blue circular
star patterns
insistent
on their forever

soused in an artistic courage
determined to have its
(wicked) way

we are not anything
nowhere
nothing
like,the rest

merci beacoup
for
the darling sex
(you so
so slickly
do
your bit)

NARC

NARC

beautiful planet

so we
can expect narcissism
everybody
overdosing on blue

smoking thick cloud

but now
like a battered football
a bit sore
about its looks

sad for the planet
        sure it is has its own
ideal of
    something to which
                 it once

so
tragically aspired

PYGMALION

the gods pitied Pygmalion
his love for his statue
(so nubile under
his fingers),
her reflected love for him

decided to bring them.together,
enshrine in marble

make
their love immortal,
permanent

aching to embrace forever
inching closer each
millennium

a tale with enough true
sadness for
our age

though the fable
Iives
inspires in
different form

secure in
its impossible irony