Author Archives: Damian Garside

TAKEN LIGHTLY

TAKEN LIGHTLY

e = mc Hammer

smack that anvil albert
till it gets red hot,
gives you a packaged beat

you can rattle off your
lyrics to

stuff ever ready like shirt
covered in his mother’s spaghetti

yes, mr em and m rabbit
I am talking to you

something light and street savvy
but pointed and existential

the chords in the scale
and the riff being the things

that might put in the mood
for a
    theory of everything

it all
    sewn together by
multi-dimensional string
     

EVERYWHERE

EVERYWHERE

I turn into
a statue

I pop up everywhere.
Timebound, my punctuality
is whenever
you least expect me.

I converse with vipers;
chat to elapids

see me in a debate here
with file snake, puffadder
and cobra

no time for niceties of argument
these guys,
    low on rhetorical nuance
on tactical subtlety

jump right to their conclusion
flying in the face of counter-
premise
     or inconvenient fact

and yet, something in me
herpetological too,
in awe of their
sublime
           beauty

agog
at their wisdom

                         shedding
my skin.

LITTLE LIZARD


LITTLE LIZARD

“The Tyrant Lizard, the most incredible monster in history. Sign this release. Anything happens to you, we’re not responsible. Those dinosaurs are hungry.” Ray Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder

I am a little lizard
in a time of final, feral dinosaurs

they shut down the children’s  library Mr Bradbury,
where I first read you

i think that they imagine
if they lock the doors
they burn ideas

children it seems
     do not need, should
not have
their minds expanded

no sublime terrors to
enrich the joy and horror
of their being

if I ask them regarding
the evolution of mind,
the fulfilling of the species

they tell me

      this is not my place
this is not the time

bite
    and swallow

there is no legend of a carnivore
greater than the nation

and my dead end is
a supreme blessing

       to those who dictate
the terms of all illiterate life.

HOW

HOW

how can I possibly
still love you
still
    want you

still imagine you
with me
            right now

now
now
              now!

so close, both of
us, the two of us,

would agree we feel embedded
wrapped up in each
other’s arms:
      the ultimate package

but
     this
                 is
not real, is pure
supposition, ghost conjecture

me here
     alone in these words, with

this poem

you,
       as ever,

                  so far away

HERE

HERE

if you were here

I would
devote myself to
your pleasure,

shamelessly, spectacularly
                                           so

bring you into my sphere
softly, slowly
           inch by inch
measure
by measure

until you cannot, would
not ever desire
to leave

     come down to Earth from
where we
     soared together

ON MARS

ON MARS

do not breathe the air
the atmosphere
will scramble your brains
more than
they have already
been
scrambled

this is the red planet
getting redder by the day

planet of war and
hard masculinity
in human mythology

sister planet; brother world
look into this glass
and see our world, the one
you left behind
collapse into chaos

the Martians, though, are
ready for you
     have read that story
by Ray Bradbury

are about to lull you into
the belief that
there can be a place
in this Universe to
find or build
equivalent to Heaven

will strike and destroy
when you are living that
dream
     threatening to
destroy their civilization, colonize
them out of existence

sometimes ones salvation
lies in the strategy
     most insidious of all

SWAN SONG

SWAN SONG

was singing the multiverse
thinking of travelling under
an alien ocean
in Nemo’s submarine

light years from our home planet
travelling metres deep
twenty thousand leagues
         under that sea

the pressure getting to me
rivets popping

no one
   able to make sense of my
song
        as it rises from alien
depths to cultivated surface

finding the ears
     of beings like me except
they have
     neither space, nor time

for outlandish things