Author Archives: Damian Garside

SHADOW

SHADOW

I misremember you

still
in your shadow

anniversary
of your departure

in size and proportion
shadow
     is giant

sometimes you cannot even
capture it on
old cinemascope screen

and you were giant too
when in wonder
first saw you
       peering into my cradle

wondering
    what you were thinking
who or what
you were

still wondering
what you
            were

what
      you are (immortal
philosophical question)

what you were thinking
all those years
              shrouded in shadow
what
you were thinking.

I remember you.
   Trying to forget
    does not come easy at all.

TRANSPARENT

TRANSPARENT

“Différance does not precede the elements of the opposition it makes possible; it is their mode of existence.” Christopher Watkin

don”t say
transparent

when best you can
aim for
ever hope to
achieve
is translucent
(thus ducking
quite neatly
the
   thorny issue of truth)

but then there is context
and then there is history

whose meaning
is deferred until
you
    write the thing

time lag
    side step

           every excuse for
spin, circumlocution, Derrida’s
Gitanes-smoking
deferral
       of what if is

Oh you Cartesians, what could
be more opaque than
your
    methodology of demons

heads spinning like tops
whipped by sticks

viciously, vicariously

what difference if the
fate is epic monotony

could your
      metaphysic possibly make?

TICK TOCK

TICK TOCK

tik tok
stop the clock

bin what’s there
gotta stop
the new narrative
at
   all costs

tik tok
anticlockwise
we got

    all is
on schedule
need to
     total shut up shop

those kids so misguided
will interpret
how they
         will
hear
    what they want

truth so disatrous, if it
spread to
          entire credibility

carefully cultivated
fiction
    of humanity

so tik tok
tik tok

don’t like what it’s speaking
need to
          bomb scare
that ticking

take down
      that clock

FIGURES

FIGURES

figures
were fashioned

no sooner so
than they produced
brutal beauty

an angular ballet across
a square battlefield

the mind stretched to its limit
to master
     have complete power over

surrogate for war itself
and yet still the shock
and
     sharp self-
recognition
            in defeat

figures were fashioned

you could spend a lifetime
exploring, imagining

that entire
little universe that
accrues to them

AND CRAZED CHESS GRANDMASTERS

AND CRAZED CHESS GRANDMASTERS

Nabokov, Nabokov,
there are
Lolitas in the room
and crazed
chess grand masters

who, to this very day,
gave never found themselves
in zugtwang

and
    know every opening
backwards

but
    the clocks are ready and
all will
commence

perhaps the greatest sequence
of sacrifices ever
to force mate

perhaps it would have been me
in an immortal game

who knows how many times
before
   the move was there and
I failed to
     see it

SEAT

SEAT

false flag;
true
    Cross

it keeps us, all
this uncertainty,

glued
   to our seats

on the sofa,
     in the pew

trying to go Nostradamus
eke out a precognition
based on some
over
    the top rhetoric, faulty
few sound bites

but those gleaming angels
of rapture, authors
of apocalypse

keep us good and clean

             above all faithful

and riveted

the poetry of the spirit
being

        the absolute
                          of fire

when we hear their song sung
what now
                but

sublimities in
            surrendering

CUT AND DRIED

CUT AND DRIED

thing about chess
is it’s

cut
and dried

you take my bishop
I bomb
    your hospital

there may be pawns down there
lying on gurneys
lurking
    in tunnels

one run
    through to
the perimeter
               and beyond

we could be facing
a brace of Queens

vying to sacrifice for
the triumph of their King

victpry
    defeat

        so strategic this battle
to an altogether special
                                  level
of native
       human genius

nothing in this benighted
                                   world

so cut and dried

CLASSIC

CLASSIC

want to see
the water
cascading
   down you

in my
scruffy little
shower find
you
    gone full
Botticelli

Venus
  newly born

and our love,
which you proclaim Platonic
shadow-shown
        on the wall of

my mouldy bathroom

though would rather that it
were enacted
           comically, tragically

in the cosy comfort
of our cave

GAVE

GAVE

I gave
blood

gave
money

gave
humanity

gave poetry
inspired by
a drink
made from
agave

gave gave gave
but you took
you pocketed
swallowed everything

finished the lot
shot
   through my resources

like a machine that eats
you up totally

run
   by artificial intelligence
they usher you
into your
world of debt

sweet electronic swindlers
connecting you instantly

to your
dream of wealth and capital

each replacing a host of humans
once the
     social face
of every bank.