Damian Garside

NEAT

neatly packaged
for death to
receive them

how many without love
like me
without love

far too
late for me
to love them now

neatly packaged
for death
to show them

love is a thing
one can live without

DEAD ISLAND

Oh something sank
in the history channel

something sank
having run aground

for our part
we floated nonchalantly
around that dead island
all those high tales, great fables,
dead as the stone
of a cenotaph to me

Oh spectral place
and yet
the juries are still out
it is conceivably not death
but a morbid moribundity
that plagues this place
fed its viral rage
a flag burned
not the whole fabric but
just a few cigarette holes skewered
right through it

as apocalypses go
it is like a half-wit
smothered, a
candle snuffed
the air
heavy with phosphates, nothing yet
so sulphurous
stared down to find the bottom of the tide

but there
not a live fish swam;

nothing
swims in this.

BROKE-ASS

came across a broke-ass poet

sort of all medieval minstrally meandering around

strange how the Carolingans also had their surrealists

just didn’t know it

thought that search for artistic holy grail

the most dubious pilgrimage,

most apeshit quest

of them all

and you have to be careful

in an age of belief

you cannot shake off

full-throttle God-rollicking

divine diss from place most

high

you are not going to come back from

recovering in sanatorium

placed

on injured reserve

but

here

in our age of sidetrack

no one

gonna get

allow themselves to get
railroaded

so hopelessly
find themselves suddenly cast up on desert shore

fate worse

than turning bankrupt

becoming the thing

your father’s whole being was

so well protected against

and yet

my dear saint, so grievously arrowed,

a smattering of suffering (dint

of raw chaos)

might just do the trick

to shoot you

to Olympus for

(statue, no statue) sweet consultation with Apollo

DRAGONFLY

DRAGON FLY

dragonfly came through the window

buzzed up a storm

behind the curtain

was messenger loaded with

heavy-caliber symbolic

and spiritual meanings

great significance for the

course life would take

but Damian missed this

stuck a whole different category

of special messenger revelation

searching the net to find

confirmation

that the semiotics of

such insects means

the Niners will be

buzzing down

in Arizona

putting things right which

went

awry

twice before

AND IMAGINARY

The women in my room
are unreal and imaginary

we spend time
drawing invisible Venn diagrams
all across the floor

in this world, unlike this
supposedly real one
(which is,
of course,
bullshit)

the gratification comes easy
is intense
and profound.

WHEN THE POEM READS …. YOU! reading my poems at Marionhill Monastery KZN RSA 2005

FABRIC

Have no idea
how much air
it has sucked

how it is going to
pay for itself

who is
going to to pay
for these lines:

the good lines
the bad lines
and the ones so
downright
                 ugly
say such
    unfriendly, inhospitable        things
        ripping the fabric
rocking the foundations

astonishing that we be asked
to support such
outpourings.

ZERO GRAVITY my poetry collection

TRAVELLERS/TRAVELERS

TRAVELERS/TRAVELERS

Travelers

is close to the border

nation to the North where

people are

same same

meanwhile sat in Travellers

downing best Springbok-level

golden lager

just now

might get lucky

or the Universe

my Universe our Universe

might end

of a sudden

thanks to

climate change or

inertial

guidance

have drunk so much

am in no

fit state to drive

am in need

of some guidance

need to

go full Horus

align myself

with the stars

shame

on my masculinity

so drunk already much

philosophical discussion but

stinky finger

no sneaked innuendo

headed in

direction and to conclusion

could label

quick relief

but all your Northerners

(way further North than Botswana

if not

quite to

the pole)

must be bemused

by all these South Africanisms

just now

meaning

next few couple of seconds next

few

billion years

all is good in this haze-brain state

courtesy of Dionysus

perfectly scientific

given the relativity of space time

strictly

interpreted

according to

the single-wave

superposition (imposition)

totally out of

your right mind

brutally simplified

many-

worlds theory

of suiwer quantum mechanics whole- sale

human

supply

and cosmic demand.

TRAVELLERS/TRAVELERS