Damian Garside

SAMARITAN

tried
to save
my planet

couldn’t get
a handle on it

tried
to save
the cat

got
scratched

within an inch of
my nine lives

so many
a dastardly dragon, big bag wolf out there
slavering
at the mouth to
make mincemeat of
your fable, all
fairytales, itching
to dismantle the projector,
tear
the film
to little pieces
shred our victory scene all
over
the cutting room floor

but you
stabbed in the back
sent out into battle with
bogus plan
and cardboard armour

leaving even the ferociously
hostile wolves and dragons galore
totally shocked at
the unbelievable mismatch

suddenly human again
horrified to the core

GENIUS

who can
stand up to us

when we got genius?
genius here
demanding
sacrifice of blood
and elbow bone
in slavish following of plan

the plan everything in
its true brilliance

pity
they don’t buy into it
those eagles swooping
soaring
high overhead

SNEER

sneer is
your only word
your best word

the word that burns
all the style out of
your mouth
when you are it
when you speak it

when wholesale
you happen to caricature yourself

assume the brash
biology of a lurid cartoon

FIELD

it is not
my baby

this multiverse of
fluctuating quantum fields

I was fine with Lego
with all those
Pink Floyd
bricks in the wall

was fine
with looking at my arm
flesh and bone
before my mind dissolved it

and you and me
was what we were up
to mere ripples in the flow
producing
out of nowhere
ecstatic conjunction?

as I said
this is not
my field

not my baby I lack
the total mathematics
the Platonic wisdom

IDEALLY

I have an idea
for writing a poem

an idea
for creating the Universe

an idea for
making love to you

and now
thanks to all the angels
resonating in this field

we can now
give it a number, work
out the probability

construct a theory that
can be proved by experiment,

that traces all these ideas
as they do their damnedest
to alter
the nature of things

back to what it is
abstract physics will
no doubt insist
is actually me.

BREATH

the goddess dances

and even though
itcis only the few
the precious few

watch her dance in a place
that is neither Heaven nor
Mount Olympus

it is as if the whole
Universe has stopped
for a moment
to take
its breath

VOICE

I asked you
begged you

not to listen
to that voice

but even if you
did not summon it

you let it ring
in your head

something in your head
told you this was the song
the dance of life
music of
our very existence

and not the scratched old pressing
of a foghorn jamming
with an
air raid siren

drowning out
everything harmonious
there
might have been.

YES. MAXIMUS

YES, MAXIMUS

yes, Maximus,
we are entertained

we watch the spectacle
are the spectacle

are so glad to be right up close
close enough
to smell the blood

a little too far
to feel the steel

(the sacred heart of
Empire itself

loving
the power
of this shock reveal)

HEY POEM

hey poem

structurally
speaking

are you
wrestling? are
you
striptease?

looked for you
in Barthes mythologies

did not
find you

maybe you are
not a part of
any
system
of signs

have
nothing to do
with culture
at all

Author Archives: Damian Garside