Author Archives: Damian Garside

SO

SO

cotton
   burns

is inflammable
set fire
    to North and
the South
of
   North America

blue men
    grey men

black people

on a flaming merry-
go round
harum-scarum

sins
  of the fathers

shadows
cast forever

as you sow
      so reap

as you sew
    leave it to posterity
to unstitch

CEMETERY ROAD

CEMETERY ROAD
“may not mean to/
but they do”

I’ve read that
this be the Larkin poem

by any metric
it’s a real shocker

give it its due
painfully spot on
must have
   begun somewhere

with Adam and Eve
tragic trace elements
springing out
of the big
bang
catastrophic for
the happiness of our species

and so me
      not yet teenage

about to be whisked, nay,
catapulted to Africa
and apartheid
South Africa
at that

far from this little British
cul-de-sac
        joy there in the sweet
English place of
pastoral they
call
   a pastoral

where my father dutifully
taught me how
to ride
a bicycle

not much interest in my
life

     this broken life

after which
my father’s little dream
of upping
roots, defining
his Empire

       somehow not
translating

finding purchase, believers,
means of manufacture

will not
     let this poem end as
dead at
    point blank range
as Larkin’s does

HITHER

HITHER

I wandered through poetry
thought I knew
this place
well

looking for wisdom
looking for humanity

my outlook by
no means negative
      though by no means
expecting
wonders
        miracles, transformation,
soul-shaping
life-
defining metaphors
and sadly I must add
conceding
   no possible hope
for love

which is exactly where I found you
    chatting to my Muse
(why is
   Muse never lover?)

man
     most well-measured
not a syllable out if place
but your
voice
      your voice

I do not hear
       perhaps it is just too
comfort-zone, risk
averse

   agrophobic
when it comes to

to the beyond, the boundless,
our freedom
           in a nutshell

shattering it to smithereens
with the force of
poetic pressure

and perhaps
     the poet too

perhaps
we should stay contained
work like
jewellers do
in miniature

for this is a dangerous age
bad time
      for words

and I, for my sins and
pretensions of
truly sinning

have wandered so far
of course, too
far away            thus
with
    grace

let me leave
             you here

for who
would now come hither?

LUCKY MAN

LUCKY MAN

lucky you were
to survive
terrible things

you did not bomb Dresden
or Hamburg

or all the towns
and bridges
in Japan

prelude to
that most terrible
of all
invasions

in avoidance of which
they removed two
whole
   cities off the map

writing me into life
and thd whole of history
a bit differently

and you
      not plunging to Earth
fear and panic-striken
in a crippled Lancaster

symbol of war’s
    terrible fall from grace

the Icarus
in us all

the suns, twin suns
they dropped

casting
        such a shadow

lucky you were
        lucky your life in

regard to terrible things

COMMUNION TIME RHYME

COMMUNION TIME RHYME

The God we share
like food and wine
as we do bond
and bind
and indeed commune
spirit,
    soul
       and life

now finds himself
under lock and key
(remember keys?)

thing
   least like to hoard
and
   privatize

yet
    here we are

what could be more
pleasing than
to pray

for abundant
         store

he who closest to
the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit

rich thrice over
in his
prosperity gospel.





STORE

STORE

I hate it
how you
divide

my attention

playing chess
and you
do things
that divide

telling me
you a great grandmaster
(or should
that be
    “grandmistress”?)

drawing attention to
how strong you are
in every
Queen’s pawn game

(look at my black square bishop
gliding down
     that juicy open
long diagonal

pinning you
forking you
skewering you

doing exactly what I
feel today I just
need
    to do to you

Oh I hate you when
you divide me
from my mind

    you and
your diagonals

seems I better just resign,
enjoy then
    what lies in store

SOMEONE ELSE

SOMEONE ELSE
“My only regret in life is that
I was not born someone else”.
                 Woody Allen

you looked through that
special drawer

for mementos, treasures,
precious relics of time past

you you found were
poems, love poems
written
    for someone else

told
their own story

self-
explanatory

no comment necessary
or required

it is always; there
is always
     someone else

it iz in the nature of desire
who we are
     you don”t need
a doctoral thesus on
Jacwues Lacan

to figure it out
    but it just might help

things
might help

and everybody ultimately
knows that ws all
want, wish
   we were someome else

want to pour our hearts out
to somone who might love
us, want us
or at least listen

but they have no time
for you
      and your pain and
all ypur somebody else troubles

becausw
   in the hearts they know
what you are
is
    less, is negative
is not what

they thought

          too young you were
to figure out the disappointment
on all those faces

first breath
you took

    meant for somebody else

SO LET ME

SO LET ME

so let me
try to understand this

you write stuff
different form and
better than
anything better than
what I could write
more valuable to
the human race

than anything that I
could
    or might write

more truthful
to our
human
condition

than, you are sure,
as a principle of faith,
anything my ilk
could
    ever have written

when, truth is,
this stuff is incidental,
peripheral to who
we are

of absolutely no consequence
except where
in its excess, in
its call to arms, plea
for
    essential truth and
species transfoemation

a huge threat and danger
an evil setting itself
against my and
   all other’s
way
     of life

for which we must not
neglect our dury
to destroy
      you and your kind completely

no place in this world
for so insane a practice
and.
   pernicious conspiracy