Damian Garside

AI art for my poems — a digital window into my soul

STARE

I stared at a stick
for too long
suddenly it

snaked away
became rod
and staff
became a scepter

became a stick to help
me hobble away
from the damage that
words like these
are always creating

for those who need
tapestry, mosaic, pattern,
mandala

not ripped
from the wall

kicked
in the face

however much it happen
with ancient style, and grace.

BAMBINO

“Vivam!” Ovid,
“Metamorphoses”

so, bambino,
you wish to discover
life’s dark secrets
cannot wait until
you mature enough
to mesh in perfectly
with the official orthodox sanctioned
screwed up version

and so
your childhood has been ruined
by sudden advent of
erotic imagination

in my writerly stupidity me
thinking any
imagination in this
corporate dystopia
got to be good

and that
now your English way
better than ever my
French, or indeed
my surreal Latin

now you
the new Henry Miller
on your
way to next
Shakespeare

TOP HAT

I knew I was in trouble
when
at long last

rabbit refused
to jump out of the hat

ten years ago since last we talked
and you there in Puritan country
proposing outrageous
textual adventures
would test my
erotic imagination
to its limit

we lose people
find them lose
them again

and there are exoplanets out there
barren rock, weird jungle

but not a shred of poetry

but if
you find death in a stone
surely there might be
consciousness
even in a stick

stick
stick figure
stick tree roots of
a civilization transformational
generative language

consciousness leaks into
that microbe rich pond
and soon
sky is the limit

soon your saucer
is landing next door

you preaching to me about
humanity needing
to save itself, such
a selfish, self-destructive species

and me so wanting to
go cosmic with you
sublimate all aggression

rabbit
gone billion necessitating
nuclear
me suddenly so clear
about to
square peg hole
it in that
top hat

Oh we going to be rich
that fossil fuel money
gushing all over us
we can buy anybody
we can
strip the firmament
take all the stars become
supreme galacticos
no need to
ask the price just
funnel into
Old Trafford
lock, stock and barrell

and here we are sitting
atop the Super League
playing the other
Nation-owned teams
to realize our
dream of a world
of huMANity (Manchester)
United less, of course,
the people not
to care about
(including many of
our global own)
swept
under the carpet

No thanks but no thanks

on second thoughts

your kind kind offer
being who we are

we just have to decline it